Actionable recommendations for redesigning a pre-clinical dental course

Simulations and students’ perceptions of epistemic setting

Abstract

Simulations are increasingly used in dental education for developing students’ dexterity skills and improving the effectiveness of pre-clinical practice and assessment. The challenge is to embed these technologies into larger instructional frameworks, and to make contemporary teaching and learning practices and environments effective. This study focuses on investigating current simulation-based practices in a pre-clinical laboratory course in a Thai dental school. The purpose is to identify the aspects of the course design that need improvement. Ethnography is used to explore the current situation while an activity-centred analysis and design (ACAD) framework is used to analyse the design of arrangements in the laboratory setting (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014). This paper reports some results from the students’ interviews after the simulation-based laboratory practice. It focuses on epistemic affordances and constraints and shows that these affordances and constraints are not solely embedded in the design of the simulation system, but emerge with the activity from the interaction between the students’ personal resources that they bring to the situation and design of the broader learning environment. We illustrate how these results could be used for offering actionable recommendations for improving the course design.