AIM: To assess the oral health status, related behaviours, and oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) among OA children in Cameron Highlands (CH), Malaysia, and to identify the predictor(s) for poor OHRQoL.
DESIGN: This was a cross-sectional study involving 249, 11-12 year old OA children from 4 OA primary schools in CH. The children completed a self-administered questionnaire comprising information on socio-demographics, oral health-related behaviours, and the Malay Child Oral Impacts on Daily Performances (Malay Child-OIDP) index followed by an oral examination. Data were entered into the SPSS version 23.0 software. Non-parametric tests and multiple logistic regression were used for data analysis.
RESULTS: The response rate was 91.2% (n = 227/249). The prevalence of caries was 61.6% (mean DMFT = 1.36, mean dft = 1.01) and for gingivitis was 96.0%. Despite the majority reported brushing their teeth ≥ 2x/day (83.7%) with fluoride toothpaste (80.2%), more than two-thirds chewed betel nut ≥ 1/day (67.4%). Majority of the children (97.8%) had a dental check-up once a year. Nearly three-fifths (58.6%) reported experiencing oral impacts on their daily performances in the past 3 months (mean score = 5.45, SD = 8.5). Most of the impacts were of "very little" to "moderate" levels of impact intensity with 90.2% had up to 4 daily performances affected. Most of the impacts were on eating (35.2%), cleaning teeth (22.0%) and relaxing activities (15.9%). Caries in primary teeth is associated with oral impacts among the OA children.
CONCLUSIONS: The 11-12 year old OA children in Cameron Highland had high prevalence of caries and gingivitis with the majority chewed betel nut regularly. Caries in primary teeth is associated with poor OHRQoL. Future programmes should target younger age group children to promote positive oral hygiene practices, reduce caries, and improve quality of life.
METHODS: Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to 233 undergraduate dental students involved with clinical teaching. This modified and validated questionnaire focusing on students' learning environment was used in order to gain relevant information related to dental clinical teaching. Six domains with different criteria applicable to clinical teaching in dentistry were selected consisting of modelling (four criteria), coaching (four criteria), scaffolding (four criteria), articulation (four criteria), reflection (two criteria) and general learning environment (six criteria). Data analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 20.
RESULTS: Majority of the students expressed positive perceptions on their clinical learning experience towards the clinical teachers in the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Malaya, in all criteria of the domains. Few negative feedbacks concerning the general learning environment were reported.
CONCLUSION: Further improvement in the delivery of clinical teaching preferably by using wide variety of teaching-learning activities can be taken into account through students' feedback on their learning experience.
METHODS: A total of 255 dental students in Universiti Malaya completed the modified Index of Learning Styles (m-ILS) questionnaire containing 44 items which classified them into their respective LS. The collected data, referred to as dataset, was used in a decision tree supervised learning to automate the mapping of students' learning styles with the most suitable IS. The accuracy of the ML-empowered IS recommender tool was then evaluated.
RESULTS: The application of a decision tree model in the automation process of the mapping between LS (input) and IS (target output) was able to instantly generate the list of suitable instructional strategies for each dental student. The IS recommender tool demonstrated perfect precision and recall for overall model accuracy, suggesting a good sensitivity and specificity in mapping LS with IS.
CONCLUSION: The decision tree ML empowered IS recommender tool was proven to be accurate at matching dental students' learning styles with the relevant instructional strategies. This tool provides a workable path to planning student-centered lessons or modules that potentially will enhance the learning experience of the students.