Abstract
Background: Dental hygienists undergo 3 or 4 years of college education, and dental hygienist education must receive continuous feedback through evaluation. The purpose of this study was to compare the educational performance of students from the Department of Dental Hygiene in 2018 with those from other departments in the healthcare field. Methods: We used data from the National Assessment of Student Engagement in Learning, conducted by the Korean Educational Development Institute in 2018. The survey data of 55 dental hygiene students and 60 healthcare students at K University were provided after excluding all identifying information. An independent t-test was used for comparisons between the Department of Dental Hygiene and other healthcare departments. Results: Regarding class-related activities, dental hygiene students were passive in presentations, discussions, and projects and had significantly lower grades in cooperative learning and challenging learning. Regarding extra-class activities, dental hygiene students had significantly lower global learning and external experiences, domestic experiences, club activities, and interactions with professors. Regarding learning outcomes, students had significantly lower grades in writing, speaking, critical and analytical thinking, data evaluation, understanding of data meaning, problem-solving ability, goal setting and execution, core content extraction, human and material resource utilization, creative convergence thinking, statistical understanding and analysis, information technology use, collaboration, sense of community, stress management, time management, and foreign language proficiency. Conclusions: Dental hygiene education requires innovation in educational methods and efforts of instructors to improve poor learning activities and outcomes.
