Journal of Dental Medicine

Background and Aims: With the advancement of technology, the use of old teaching methods has been replaced by new and more efficient methods such as podcasts, to save the time of students and professors and to provide the opportunity for these two groups to interact more with be given to each other in the classroom. This method has advantages such as lower cost, the possibility of content courses, downloading content, and learning courses remotely. This study aimed to investigate the other benefits of this method as well as the level of students' satisfaction.
Materials and Methods: In this study, which was a randomized, single-blind educational trial, the students at Dental School of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences were divided into two control and intervention groups (via a random number table), with 37 persons in each group. The classroom was held traditionally for both groups in 3 sessions and the podcast file was provided to the intervention group at the end of the session. Then, a test was taken from both groups at the second and third sessions. The students’ answers were evaluated and each score was determined out of 5. The scores of this test were compared in the intervention and control groups. Finally, a questionnaire was provided to students to evaluate their satisfaction. The test scores were analyzed by independent T-test.
Results: In this study, with 74 participants, the average age was 22.47±0.85, and 43% of the participants were male. The scores of the two tests taken out of five were 4.86±0.10 in the intervention group and 4.04±0.94 in the control group, and a significant statistical difference was observed in favor of the intervention group (P=0.02). The average satisfaction of students regarding this educational method was 29.4 out of 50. After taking into account the confounding effect of age, the investigated intervention did not affect the average score of the students' questionnaire (P=0.031).
Conclusion: According to the findings of the present study, podcasts could be effective in students' learning and students had a positive attitude towards this method. The results of this study can be used as a feedback to the educational committees of the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education.