Perception of Undergraduate Dental Students Regarding Teaching Learning Methods in Oral Pathology.

Background Third year is considered crucial in undergraduate dental education as this is when students start to have clinical exposure and taught about various oral pathologies. Many a times, students fail to make proper clinical and pathological correlation. It is the responsibility of teacher to impart adequate knowledge to the students regarding a disease in most effective way. Understanding the students perception is an effective way of making new roadmaps for teaching. Objective To assess undergraduate dental student's perspectives regarding oral pathology along with the effectiveness of various teaching learning methods and assessment methods currently used by faculties of Department of Oral Pathology. Method This cross sectional study was conducted from June 2023 to July 2023 among 136 undergraduate dental students of Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences by using the pretested questionnaire. Convenience sampling method was used. The data collected were entered into the Microsoft Excel Sheet and statistical analysis was done using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 20. Result A total of 136 students participated in the study. Among them, 46 (33.8) were from third year, 51 (37.5) were from fourth year and 39 (28.7) were from fifth year. Half of the students believed that oral pathology is an interesting subject. Most of students; 66 (48.5) participants strongly agreed that knowledge of oral pathology helps in clinical training. Except two students, all the participants said that integration of oral pathology teaching with clinical training will help in better understanding of diseases. More than half of the students 71 (52.2) agreed that lectures and demonstrations taken by faculties has stimulated interest in the subject. Most students 80 (58.8) believe that formative assessment serve the purpose of analyzing the cognitive skill. Sixty six (48.5) students agree that MCQs are an effective tool for analyzing cognitive skills. Conclusion The overall perception of undergraduate dental students regarding the oral pathology subject and the teaching learning method used by faculties is good. However, incorporation of case based learning, integration of oral pathology with other clinical subjects and taking regular feedback from students may be of great use in providing holistic and effective learning environment.