Interactive Teaching and Basic Biostatistics - Do They add Value to an Orthodontic Curriculum for Dental Undergrads?

Aim: Integration of biostatistics content in the orthodontic treatment curriculum (9th semester) through practical exercises by the students. Materials and Methods: This dental-undergraduate curriculum includes the evaluation of the students' own dentition models. The models were 3D-scanned (ZirkonZahn AR600, ZirkonZahn, Gais, Italy) and virtually measured (Onyx Ceph® 3, Image Instruments GmbH, Chemnitz, Germany). Following a 60-minute lecture in selected basics of biostatistics, the students analysed the data they had obtained (R Project for Statistical Computing 3.1.0). Before and after the course, a questionnaire was filled out to evaluate the students' biostatistical knowledge and their personal attitudes towards the importance of biostatistics for dental research theses and future clinical work (10 questions, 5-point scale, "disagree" to "I agree completely"). A total of 68 questionnaires were analysed. To compare between the students' answers before and after the course, a Kruskal-Wallis rank-sum test was performed. Results: Students assessed their knowledge of biostatistics heterogeneously: while 61% claimed to know sufficient basics, 25% reported having no understanding of biostatistics at all. However, 91% of the students believed that statistics are very important for dental research. A stronger inclusion of statistical topics into the curriculum of dental undergraduate education was assessed rather negatively, but the agreement increased after this course. The comparison of questionnaires filled out before and after the seminar showed no significant difference, except in one question: a more extensive lecture in biostatistics knowledge was favoured by significantly (p = 0.04) fewer students after the course than before. Conclusion: Students' biostatistical knowledge is very dissimilar. A one-day course in medical statistics can only convey fragmentary knowledge, but demonstrates the importance for dental research and clinical work. The desire to learn more about statistics is low and was not increased by the seminar. Keywords: basic biostatistics, orthodontic, students, one-day course, medical statistics