Impact of Learning Opportunities in Preparing Dental Students for Their Profession

Introduction: The emphasis in outcome-based education is on the outcomes or the products, and in the context of a medical or dental school, the kind of doctors and dentists it produces becomes the outcome. The young doctors and dentists coming out of these schools need to possess the competencies to practice in an increasingly complex healthcare scenario with changing patient and public expectations. The choice of learning opportunities (teaching-learning method) should be aligned and oriented towards achieving the expected learning outcomes. The current study established the links between learning opportunities and the expected learning outcomes in dental physiology curriculum through curriculum mapping.

Method: Learning opportunities were linked to expected learning outcomes by examining the conduct of each of them. Moreover, students’ and teachers’ views were obtained through focus group discussions and interviews.

Results: It what learning opportunities provided to students in the form of lectures, problembased learning and practical sessions served its purpose of achievement of expected learning outcomes. Furthermore, valuable suggestions on the improvement of the existing learning opportunities were obtained.

Conclusions: The study, therefore, confirmed the link between the learning opportunities and expected learning outcomes.