Dental education profile in COVID-19 pandemic: A scoping review.

INTRODUCTION: This scoping review aimed to determine the frequency of different teaching methodologies, tools and platforms applied in dental education during the COVID-19 pandemic. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The search strategy was performed in six databases and grey literature. A total of 28 questionnaire-based studies were included, without language or time restriction, from 20 different countries. RESULTS: Six thousand five hundred sixty-five participants were assessed: 84% undergraduates, 9% of faculty members, 5% of postgraduate students/residents/trainees and 2% of dental schools/residency programs. The pooled eligible data for teaching methodologies were 62% of a combination of different methods (95% CI, 35.5% to 82.3%), 23% a combination of synchronous and asynchronous formats (95% CI, 8.2% to 50.2%) and 15% for only synchronous lectures (95% CI, 4.3% to 42.2%). The reported tools were laptops (40%), smartphones (40%), tablets (40%), desktops (20%), Blackboard (20%), Respondus Lockdown Browser (20%), eProctor (20%) and PowerPoint (20%). The most used platforms were Zoom (70.6%), Microsoft Teams (23.5%) and Cisco Webex (23.5%). A better time management (17.9%; 95% CI, 7.9% to 35.6%) and the possibility of revision with additional notes (14.3%; 95% CI, 5.7% to 31.5%) was the greatest advantages related to dental e-learning, while the increased levels of anxiety/stress/burnout/exhaustion (35.7%; 95% CI, 21% to 54.2%) and internet connection problems (35.7%; 95% CI, 21% to 54.2%) was the most cited disadvantages. CONCLUSION: This scoping review showed promising blended teaching methodologies, tools and platforms in the dental education profile. The evidence suggests that e-learning technologies can widely contribute to dental education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this study makes a major contribution to research by assessing the impact of COVID restrictions on dental education and further studies are needed to identify how restrictions in dental practice will affect future professionals.

Gamify gamifying: Learning with breakouts

Playing and learning by doing have become a very promising methodology for all levels of education. Its combination with existing online tools that also allow its use at times like we have experienced with the COVID-19, where face-to-face classes were not possible, makes of gamification a tool not only motivating for students but also extremely versatile for teachers. Moreover, it can be combined with other methodological proposals such as the flipped-class or cooperative learning. Therefore, the learning of digital tools allows the creation of games in an easy way, without the need of having great technological knowledge, and becomes essential for future educators. In the present experience, an activity was designed in which future teachers of the degree of Early Childhood and Primary Education had to develop digital breakouts for their educational levels, previously going through the experience of learning by playing. In this way the game was used to design educational games. In the case of this experience, the tool used was Genial.ly, but the results obtained and the response of the students to the activity encourage the incorporation of new tools to create pedagogical proposals using gamification and learning by doing as the main basis and in this way continue to deepen the options offered by gamification in learning and challenge-based learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Systematic Review of Educational Methodologies Implemented During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Higher Education in Ibero-America

Since the interruption of face-to-face classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Higher Education institutions adapted their courses to a virtual format in order to serve students during the contingency. This work analyzes, through a systematic review of a twenty-four-article corpus, which study the pedagogical models adopted by such Institutions in Ibero-America. The reviewed works have been published between 2020 and 2021, and analyze the implications of reorganizing the teaching-learning processes, based on the framework of the Community of Inquiry model. The results show that a high percentage of the research focuses on Teaching presence, especially in the educational and organizational design, and much less focuses on Cognitive presence, and a limited production on the Social presence dimension and the analysis of indicators that reinforce learning. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

University degrees adapted to new social frameworks

For years, many studies has been stressing the importance of incorporating new technologies and tele-education in universities across the globe. However, the implementation of new methodologies that take advantage of educational innovation supported by new technological tools has been slow and gradual. The new reality to which we have been exposed due to the health emergency caused by COVID-19 has hastened the incorporation of these methodologies hastily and has highlighted the lack of resources or training that universities suffer from to face the changes that have occurred. There is a clear need to modernize educational methodologies in higher education to bring it closer to the new generations and their needs, implementing more flexible models that provide transversal competencies. This work proposes a methodology based on social networks as a tool for support and connection between teachers and students. In addition, we explored different combinations of accessible software that allowing us to conclude the steps to follow for the successful implementation of social networks in the classroom. Copyright © 2021 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).