VARIABILITY OF TECHNICAL SKILL ASSESSING TOOLS IN PRECLINICAL PROSTHETIC DENTISTRY AND A PROPOSAL OF ARRANGEMENT DEVICE

Introduction:
Evaluating tools for technical skill assessment should provide many consistent features so that it can be considered for formative examination. They are regularly used at the end of a course or module to determine primarily student progression and secondarily weak knowledge areas. These tools are used as more of a diagnostic tool to provide feedback about the student’s progression, which can be reflected upon in order to make any required improvements. Formative assessments are usually not used for formal recognition, but to aid the learning process. An ideal assessment tool should have many facets, like reliability, validity, accountability, flexibility, comprehensiveness, feasibility, timeliness and relevance. In this perspective, reliability refers to an indication of the consistency of scores over time and the same results should be obtained regardless of the examiners and the timing. Validity refers to the ability of the assessment to measure what it is supposed to. In many situations it is impossible to satisfy all of these requirements and various assessment tools fail to fulfil these criteria. Enhancement of the assessment tool features helps the examiners, teachers as well as learners to ameliorate the technical teaching in prosthetic dentistry.

Objective of the study:
To analyze the reliability and consistency of two different tools used for assessing the complete denture teeth arrangement of second year dental degree students and to unveil the most common errors of teeth arrangement during preclinical training course. A new standardized device is proposed to reduce the bias and variability.

Methodology:
15 acrylic resin complete dentures fabricated by the second year students were selected randomly from 42 dentures for this study. Two experienced-examiners assessed the students ’works using “glance and mark” method and a developed tool based on detailed evaluation of each tooth and components of the denture. The data were analyzed and compared using inter-examiner and intra-examiner reliability tests and other statistical analysis to evaluate the two techniques outcomes.

Results:
Inter-examiner reliability of “glance and mark” was more subjective. However, for the checklist method, the results were more consistent overtime but its consistency was not different from “glance and mark”, however, more details regarding students’ deficient training areas have been retrieved and addressed during the post exam review session to enhance the weakness.

Conclusion:
“Glance and mark” and checklist tools were reliable and consistent methods to evaluate students practical knowledge. However, checklist offered detailed information of the teeth arrangement weak areas. On the other hand, glance or visual marking should not be used in detailed assessment exam or formative exam because of its subjectivity. A new device was proposed to overcome the variability of the tested tools.