Clinical reasoning is an essential competence to develop in the diagnosis and treatment planning of impacted maxillary canines to ensure good treatment outcomes. It involves skills of radiographic interpretation and mental visualization. To master these, postgraduate students learn to interpret 2D and 3D X-rays to locate these canines accurately. This process demands the creation of mental models of the impaction and resolving it either by envisioning the canine's movement to its correct position or considering its removal. To facilitate this cognitive exercise, a 3D-printed simulator, derived from Cone Beam Computed Tomography scans, serves as a tool to allow students to experiment with various movement simulations, helping them select the most viable treatment approach.This project aimed to assess the differences in expert and novice orthodontists’ clinical reasoning for impacted maxillary canines, and whether the addition of a 3D simulator would affect their reasoning. Thirteen (13) novices randomly assigned to a control and intervention group and three (3) experts took part in a Think-Aloud exercise to diagnose and treatment plan a case of bilaterally impacted maxillary canines. Experts and intervention group novices had the 3D simulator in addition to standardized patient records. Their responses were recorded and analyzed according to a coding scheme reflecting the clinical reasoning process. While experts demonstrated quick clinical judgment and found the 3D simulator redundant, novices were more uncertain and required additional cues. Novices using the 3D simulator described more elaborate treatment plans and had increased awareness of potential complications as compared to the control group.

Objectives: To evaluate the learning gain and students' perceptions towards Jigsaw collaborative learning in comparison with lectures in learning about pharmacokinetic changes in special populations. Methods: Undergraduates learn about A-D-M-E of specific populations via Jigsaw collaborative learning and didactic lectures. Pre- and post-lesson quizzes were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching method in terms of knowledge gain. Surveys comprising Likert scale statements and open-ended questions were conducted to elucidate students' perception towards the teaching methods. Results: From a class of 192 students, 118 (62%) and 110 (57%) students completed the pre- and post-lecture quizzes, respectively, while 176 (92%) and 168 (88%) students completed the preand post-Home Group discussion of Jigsaw quizzes, respectively. There was an improvement of 22.2% and 14.3% in median percentage quiz scores for the lecture and Jigsaw method respectively. Most students agreed that they have learned (54-60%) and collaborated (78-89%) through the Jigsaw method and rated Jigsaw as useful for their learning (54%). Open-ended survey responses offered a mixed conclusion where the didactic lecture was perceived to be as, or more effective than the Jigsaw method. Conclusion: Learning gains were observed through the Jigsaw collaborative learning method which relied solely on peer-teaching, despite students perceiving it to be not as effective as lecture. The method provided opportunities for active and peer-learning. Further studies are needed to evaluate the long-term effects of this teaching method.

PURPOSE:This exploratory study elicited the procedural considerations and inter-radicular site placement techniques of experts and investigated how the use of a simulator, with and without feedback, influenced novice learners' procedural considerations, placement techniques, and confidence. METHODS:Three orthodontic/oral maxillofacial surgery expert clinicians participated in a temporary anchorage device (TAD) insertion assessment accompanied by a think-aloud protocol. Expert transcripts were coded according to a coding scheme to analyze clinicians' (N = 18) procedural considerations and placement techniques. Residents were randomly allocated to control and intervention groups. Two placement sessions were conducted at two inter-radicular sites with audio recordings. The intervention group received real-time feedback on root contact from the simulator's sensor and postoperative radiographs for self-assessed feedback. Residents' confidence levels were compared before and after placements, and subjective feedback about the simulator was obtained. RESULTS:This study utilized the think-aloud protocol to capture experts' procedural considerations and placement techniques during TAD insertion and revealed a disparity between residents' and experts' thought processes. Only four out of 15 expert themes were mentioned by more than 50% of the residents. The use of the TAD insertion simulator in combination with feedback broadened residents' procedural considerations after one round of placement. Residents' confidence increased significantly in both groups (p < 0.05), but there was no significant difference between them (p > 0.482). CONCLUSION:When used in conjunction with feedback, simulator practice of TAD insertion broadened residents' procedural considerations after one round of placement. It improved residents' confidence level and was well received as a learning tool.

Assessments play a vital role in postgraduate orthodontic education. They are the means to ensure postgraduate students meet the training standards of their respective programs. The visibility of student learning is crucial to the development of a postgraduate's knowledge, skill and attitudes that will eventually define the clinician's education and competence for the practice of orthodontics. This essay presents the argument for making learning visible in postgraduate orthodontic education and explains its importance. It highlights the educational theories that underpin the practice of formative feedback and articulates the significance of formative and summative assessments approaches and evaluation frameworks. Integral to formative assessments is feedback. The essay discusses three levels of feedback - macro, meso and micro - and how each can support and enhance student learning. A brief description on the significance of peer learning introduces five formative assessment classroom practices in an ERASMUS-based postgraduate orthodontic training program conducted at the National University of Singapore. They demonstrate the value of peer learning and feedback that makes learning visible to the teachers and to the postgraduate students. The essay ends with a short exploration on how technology is being harnessed to make learning visible. In particular, the current trajectory of Artificial Intelligence development, such as Open AI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, offers educators and students new and innovative ways to enhance teaching and learning.

Interpreting radiographic lesions on dental radiographs is a challenging process especially for novice learners, and there is a lack of tools available to support this diagnostic process. This study introduced dental students to two diagnostic aids with contrasting reasoning approaches—ORAD DDx, which uses an analytic, forward reasoning approach, and a Radiographic Atlas, which emphasizes a non-analytic, backward reasoning approach. We compared the effectiveness of ORAD DDx and the Atlas in improving students’ diagnostic accuracy and their ability to recall features of radiographic lesions. Participants (99 third-year dental students) were assigned to ORAD DDx, Atlas and Control groups. In the pre-test and post-test, participants provided their diagnosis for eight types of radiographic lesions. All groups also completed a Cued Recall Test. Feedback about ORAD DDx and the Atlas was collected. Results indicated that the Atlas was more effective than ORAD DDx in improving diagnostic accuracy (Estimated marginal mean difference = 1.88 (95

The controversial bell curve has received considerable attention in recent years as a grade distribution tool where “norm-referenced grading involves comparing students’ performances with each other” rather than where they fall on a “predefined continuum of quality” (Brookhart, 2013, p. 258). Despite educators’ deep concern on the fairness of bell curve grading, there is little research done on students’ conceptions of that grading system in higher education. This correlational study uses open-ended questions and three instruments to measure students’ conceptions of the fairness of bell curve grading, their goal orientations, and motivation. Undergraduates from three universities participated in the survey (N= 211). Results suggest that students have a formalized conception of bell curve grading, perceive it to be generally fair, but tend to hold negative views about its impact on learning. The correlations with their goal orientation and levels of motivation, while yielding constructive inferences, were not overly significant.

Teaching assistants play an important role in teaching and learning in tertiary institutions. In this study, we explore the development and use of a scoring rubric to investigate Graduate Teaching Assistants’ (GTAs) competence in adopting collaborative learning (CL) scripts during a two-day Teaching Assistant Programme (TAP). In particular, we evaluate the extent in which the rubric can reliably help us examine GTAs’ effectiveness in instructional planning and implementation during the programme’s microteaching sessions. GTAs from one cohorts of TAP volunteered to participate in this study. Video recordings of the micro-teaching sessions and GTAs’ written lesson plans were collected and used for analysis with a scoring rubric. The scoring rubric was developed through an iterative process by student research assistants and a researcher, grounded in research literature about CL scripting, and included the following criteria: Prior Knowledge, Evaluation and the five components of a CL script. Overall, the findings indicated that the rubric provided a detailed evaluation of GTAs’ use of the CL scripts to structure and teach a CL lesson. GTAs were found to be able to design interesting CL activities, but were less focused on role assignment and distribution, and in monitoring and evaluating the outcomes of CL. It is through the evaluation of micro-teaching using the rubric that we uncovered how GTAs interacted with their ‘students’ to bring about CL, and to have a sense of how co-construction of knowledge worked or did not work. The implications of this study were discussed in relation to the development and use of a lesson planning and observation scoring rubric.

This case study aims to investigate the extent to which the teaching mode called flipped classroom is effective in enabling students to learn fundamental concepts in cost engineering. It adopted a repeated measure design and statistical evaluation to examine the learning approaches that enabled students to master fundamental concepts. It also identified the teaching modes that are effective in helping students to understand and apply fundamental concepts in solving cost engineering problems. The flipped classroom involved students learning one fundamental concept (TC1) via preclass online video clips in their own time, followed by in-class discussion, and applying the fundamental concept in solving problems in a face-to-face (F2F) tutorial setting. Thereafter, they were tested for their mastery of TC1. As a comparison, the same students were taught another fundamental concept (TC2) via the traditional F2F lecture and tutorial settings. The study was repeated in the following academic year, with the teaching methods for TC1 and TC2 switched. The data collected included presurveys and postsurveys of perceived learning approaches, pretests and post-tests, and final examination results. This case study found that students achieve mastery (measured by final examination marks) of fundamental concepts regardless of whether the teaching mode is traditional lectures or flipped classroom. When students adopted a more surface-motive learning approach, they also performed significantly more poorly, regardless of teaching mode. Students who adopted a more deep-strategy learning approach when taught in flipped classroom mode performed better in final assessment. The finding is important because it reveals that the flipped classroom is just as effective as the traditional classroom in helping students to master certain cost engineering fundamental concepts. It is recommended that instructors consider using the flipped classroom to harness technology in education. Students are advised not to adopt surface learning approaches because these are detrimental to their mastery of cost engineering concepts.

Knowledge and skills related to scientific thinking, practices and communication are essential, but they are rarely taught explicitly together in undergraduate research training. A course entitled “LSM3201 Research and Communication in Life Sciences” was introduced to teach these principles and skills explicitly to students engaged in ongoing research, hence combining course instructions to the process of scientific inquiry, in order to enhance their confidence and abilities in research and communication. This study was conducted to determine the impact of this course on students who took the course (the experimental group) by comparing with those who did not (the control group) through a quasi-experimental design of pre- and post- surveys as well as tests. The study clearly found that students’ confidence in their knowledge of and abilities in research and communication improved significantly after they had taken the course. The improvements were significantly greater in the experimental group than the control group, and were consistent with significant gains in specific knowledge. The control group showed minimal improvements in perception and levels of confidence in their abilities within the same duration of the study. The course was considered to have a medium to large impact on many of the items related to measuring levels of scientific thinking, practices and communication within the process of scientific inquiry. By concurrently providing instructions on scientific thinking, practices and communication to students engaged in ongoing research, the findings indicate that the course— in its design, delivery and assessment—has managed to enhance students’ confidence in their knowledge and abilities in research and communication.

This paper critically considers the attempt by a research-intensive university in Asia to draw on and make public the practices of teaching award winners in different disciplines through the use of narrative vignettes. More specifically, this paper examines what the vignettes suggest about the connection between award-winning teachers' conceptions of teaching (CT) on the one hand, and scholarly investigations of practice on the other, and to what extent the vignettes meet the aim of using the scholarship of teaching and learning as an instrument of effective academic development. Content analysis of the vignettes revealed that award-winning teachers' CT tend to focus predominantly on enhancing learning, followed by encouraging collective knowledge creation and transmission of knowledge. A two-dimensional framework was also used to analyse the vignettes along a tacit-integrated continuum and within an intuitive-reflective frame of inquiry. The findings are discussed in relation to teachers' perception of their impact on students' learning and ways to enhance their own practice, with implications for teaching awards, documentation, and dissemination of high-level teaching achievement.

This study investigates the effects of prompting on secondary students’ written peer feedback in chemistry investigation reports. In particular, we examined students’ feedback features in relation to the use of criteria, feedback specificity, and feedback levels. A quasi-experimental pre-test post-test design was adopted. Reviewers in the prompted condition were provided with question prompts that asked them to pose written feedback to their peers on what they did or did not do well and suggestions for improvement, while reviewers in the unprompted condition gave written peer feedback without prompts. The findings showed that prompted peer feedback has a significant effect on the number of comments related to Knowledge of errors, Suggestions for improvement and Process level feedback. This study supports the view that prompting peer feedback in the use of criteria, feedback specificity and feedback levels opens up opportunity for reviewers to engage more meaningfully with peer feedback in report writing tasks.

Peer feedback is an inherent feature of classroom collaborative learning. Students invariably turn to their peers for feedback when carrying out an investigative task, and this feedback is usually implicit, unstructured and may positively or negatively influence students’ learning when they work on a task. This study explored the characteristics of verbal peer feedback during a collaborative investigative chemistry task involving New Zealand Year 13 students. During the planning stage of the students’ investigation, the discussions of five pairs of students were recorded and then transcribed. Analysis of transcribed verbal data focused on interactions that involved peer feedback along two dimensions, interactive/non-interactive and dialogic/authoritative (Mortimer and Scott, 2003). The findings indicated that although students adopted a predominantly interactive/authoritative communicative approach, with peer feedback as confirmation or evaluation, they are also capable of a more interactive/dialogic exchange, characterised by elaborative peer feedback. We discuss how this dialogic perspective on peer feedback provides an alternative approach to the analysis and study of student–student interactions during science investigations. The findings should be interpreted in light of the limitations in terms of sample size, grouping and specificity of the coding scheme. Implications for teacher practice are discussed in relation to facilitating peer feedback discourse in the science classroom.

An early warning system can draw the attention of teachers to students’ learning needs early in the course of study, allow monitoring of progress in student learning, and guide the implementation of instructional interventions. In this article we report on a study in which we examined teachers’ views on using early warning systems to identify students who are “at risk” of failing to complete their NCEA qualifications, and we describe the measures that can be put in place to better support such students to achieve their learning goals. In particular, we found that a timely, collaborative, and coherent system of tracking and monitoring was effective in engaging teachers and students in productive learning dialogues, and in supporting interventions that keep students on track to achieving their qualifications.