Evaluating Student’s Perceptions of the Learning Environment in an Indian Dental School

Objective: To evaluate student’s perception of the learning environment in a private dental institute in India based on DREEM inventory.

Materials and Methods: This cross-divtional study included students in all four years of the undergraduate dental course of Panineeya Institute of Dental Sciences and Hospital, Hyderabad, India. Self-administered Dundee Ready Education environment Measure (DREEM) inventory consisting of 50-items on a five-point Likert scale was utilized to assess the students’ perceptions regarding learning environment in this academic dental school. Comparison for the total and domain DREEM score means was carried out via independent t-test for dichotomous variables (gender) and ANOVA for more than two variables (year of study). Significant difference was noted for p < 0.05.

Results: The response rate for this study was 86.8%. Mean age of the study participants was 19.61 + 1.50 y. The overall DREEM score for this population was 125.24 + 21.10 reflecting a more of positive than negative education environment in this institution. When individual domain scores were accounted, except for the domain SAS, females had a higher mean scores for all domains which was however statistically significant only for the domains SPL (p = 0.03) and SPT (p = 0.01). Likewise, significant differences were also noted for SPL and SPT based on the year of study, wherein for both the domains, third year students had significantly higher mean scores and least was recorded for fourth year students. Correlation of the various domains demonstrated significant positive correlation among the domains.

Conclusion: Overall this sample of dental students rated the learning environment in this dental institute as positive.

A conducive undergraduate dental curriculum plays a pivotal role in shaping dental students’ behaviour, academic progress and sense of confidence [1]. Students’ learning environment is key determinant for the success of the course. Moreover, the students’ level of competence is a reflection of their learning environment in their educational institution. The “Learning Environment™ has been defined as “everything that is happening in the classroom or department or faculty or university™ [1,2].

Bassaw et al., [3] have pointed out that the learning environment as perceived by the students’ is one of the most central component influencing the accomplishment of a successful curriculum. Valuing student’s perception of learning in a dental institution helps the institute to ameliorate the strengths and address the weaknesses of the institution. It also enables to make comparative analysis within the institution or benchmarking between themselves and another institution and test and apply it as a predictor of student’s performance [4].

Evaluating a learning environment facilitates quality improvement and innovation in a professional school. Since dental education is very expensive, academic success is crucial as academic failure is improvident both to the society and to the individual. An ever- conducive environment will reduce the hazards of academic under-achievement.

Several methodologies have been utilized to explore the learning environment like qualitative approaches [5], quantitative [6,7] or both [8,9]. Nevertheless, for most of the health-care related courses [4,10–15]. Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure (DREEM) has been employed to introspect the learning environments. The DREEM questionnaire developed by Delphi technique reflects a students’ overall perception of teaching in five aspects of learning, their learning, their perception of teaching, academic self-perception, educational atmosphere and social self-perceptions. Globally, this questionnaire has been employed by many dental schools [12,16–18], nevertheless to our knowledge only one study has been reported in India [11]. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to evaluate student’s perception of the learning environment in a private dental institute in India based on DREEM inventory and determine the strengths and weakness of the institution.

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