PILOT STUDY REGARDING AN ONLINE METHOD FOR DENTAL RADIOLOGY STUDENTS’ ASSESEMENT EXPERIMENTALLY APPLIED DURING THE 2020 PANDEMIC

The Department of Dental Radiology (UMF Carol Davila) implemented an online experimental method to examine the radiological knowledge of the students, adapted to the context of the SARS COV 19 pandemic. The study focused mainly on topics less assimilated by the students in the online teaching period. It was also performed a comparative analysis of the students’ results with the summative final examination (online grid test) based on the official university’s protocol of examination and secondly with the equivalent examination from the pre-pandemic period (face-to- face examination). The errors made by the students were linked to: periodontal diagnosis (34%), edentulous diagnosis ( 22%) dental diagnosis (19 %); bone diagnoses ( 12%), soft tissue diagnosis ( 1%) . From the dental diagnosis mistakes, the most common (40%) where related to systematization of answers. From the periodontal diagnosis, the errors of pointing the correct diagnosis ( 36%) where similar as percentage with errors of expressing correctly the diagnosis ( 32%). The Gaussian distribution of the scores from the experimental test were similar as shape and values comparing with the final grades obtained with the online grid test but verry different from the scores from the last pre-pandemic assessment( non- Gaussian distribution). Conclusion: the experimental method was reliable, appearing better than the previous face-to-face examination. It also showed the topics that needed to be better explained for an optimized learning.