Examining the level of satisfaction of clinic course students with virtual education

Abstract

Objective: In line with the emergence of information and communication technology, the most important challenge of education in the 21st century, virtual education has transformed the traditional ways of searching for information in today's research and technological world and despite challenges such as the increasing demand for higher education and lack of Adequacy of the budget, lack of full-time academic staff and the need to remove geographical restrictions have been given serious attention. In virtual education, quality is essential to prevent the wastage of human capital, and material and financial industries. This study was conducted to investigate the satisfaction level of Tabriz Dental Faculty clinic students with virtual education.

Materials and methods: The current study is analytical-cross-sectional. The students of the clinical course of Tabriz Faculty of Dentistry with a history of passing at least one of the theoretical courses of the clinic course were included in the study. This study was conducted by self-report questionnaire. Frequency and percentage were used to describe qualitative data, and mean and standard deviation were used for quantitative data. Descriptive statistics including mean, median, coefficient of variation, standard deviation, and percentiles were used to describe dental students' satisfaction scores from virtual education based on the year of entry. Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to determine the correlation between the total scores of the questionnaire and the number of related years of education. Statistical calculations were done using SPSS version 26 software.

Results: The average satisfaction score of dental students in the clinic course with virtual education was 47.05out of 84, indicating relative satisfaction. Scores ranged from 27 to 78, and the data distribution was reported to be normal. No statistically significant differences were observed between satisfaction and demographic variables including age, gender, year of university entry, and academic semester. Also, satisfaction scores did not differ significantly between different university entrances and academic semesters.

Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that virtual education, as a complementary method in clinical dental education, has a relative level of satisfaction among students..