Online or physical class for histology course: Which one is better?

Yu-Hsueh Wu; Chun-Pin Chiang

doi:10.1016/j.jds.2023.03.004

Online or physical class for histology course: Which one is better?

J Dent Sci. 2023 Jul;18(3):1295-1300. doi: 10.1016/j.jds.2023.03.004. Epub 2023 Mar 15.

Authors

Yu-Hsueh Wu^{1

2}, Chun-Pin Chiang^{3

4

5

6}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Stomatology, National Cheng Kung University Hospital, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan.
² Institute of Oral Medicine, School of Dentistry, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan.
³ Department of Dentistry, Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, Hualien, Taiwan.
⁴ Graduate Institute of Clinical Dentistry, School of Dentistry, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
⁵ Graduate Institute of Oral Biology, School of Dentistry, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
⁶ Department of Dentistry, National Taiwan University Hospital, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.

Abstract

Background/purpose: The coronavirus disease 2019 gradually slows down. As schools now progressively went back to the physical class, it was essential to think about whether we should go back to the physical course, shift to the online course, or try to combine both.

Materials and methods: One hundred and six students (including 67 medical students, 19 dental students, and 20 students from another department) who took the histology course with both physical and online lectures and the virtual microscopy for the histology laboratory course were enrolled in this study. Students' acceptance and learning effectiveness were evaluated by a questionnaire-based survey, and their examination scores were compared before and after the online class.

Results: Most students accepted the combined physical and online lectures (81.13%), considered increased interactivities in the physical class (79.25%), and felt comfortable when taking the online class (81.14%). Moreover, most students considered that the online learning was friendly to use (83.02%) and could improve the learning effectiveness (80.19%). The mean examination scores were significantly higher after the online class than before the online class, regardless of different genders and groups of students. Most participants (29.2%) preferred the 60% online learning proportion, followed in a descending order by the 40% online learning (25.5%) and the 80% online learning (14.2%).

Conclusion: Our students can generally accept the combined physical and online lectures for learning the histology course. The academic performances significantly improve after the online class. The hybrid course may become the future trend of learning the histology course.

Keywords: Digitized virtual slides; Histology; Hybrid course; Medical education; Online course; Physical course.