Abstract:

Careful measurements of knowledge, attitude, and psychomotor and communication skills are necessary components of testing in a competency-based approach to education in dentistry. In an effort to address these requirements, Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) has been applied to dentistry in the last years. The OSCE is a clinically based examination that could be administered in many dental disciplines including periodontics, restorative dentistry, prevention, orthodontics, etc. Different types of clinical operative skills scenarios have been compared and validated. In certain circumstances, it seems that OSCE implementation might have some practical problems such as a long-lasting wheel of stations, big amount of people involved, high costs, requirement of multiple, interconnected rooms, and need of a strict coordination. In an attempt to overcome these inconveniences, reduce costs and simplify its implementation, we aimed to create and validate a computer-based assessment tool as part of an OSCE that measured dental students' competences in the field of pediatric dentistry. For this purpose, we developed specific case scenarios to measure several skills independently, combining simple administration and scoring.