Evaluation of last-year dental student's opinions about undergraduate curriculum: before the revision (2010-11)

Opinion of students regarding the content, structure and quality of their training is a fundamental part of holistic evaluation of curriculum, and serves as an important information resource in policy making. In the present study, we aimed to contribute to the development, assessment and evaluation of the new national dental curriculum through evaluation of last-year dental students’ opinions regarding undergraduate dental curriculum.
This cross sectional questionnaire survey was done in 2010-2011 academic year. The target population was last-year dental students in 15 Iranian state dental schools. In these schools, all last-year dental students were invited to participate in the study. The chi-square test served for statistical analyses.
In total, 432 students (68.4% female) participated in the study. Of the respondents, 72.4% (60.7% of male and 77.6% of female, P=0.001) believed that their undergraduate dental training had been completely inadequate or inadequate. Only about one third of students believed that educational methods during their undergraduate dental training had been appropriate or completely appropriate.
In general, it seems that undergraduate dental training from students’ view point has not been appropriate in terms of both content and method. The results show the necessity of revision of national undergraduate dental curriculum.