Different Study Attitudes And Behavior Among Dental Students In Taiwan

Objective:  Military dental education is a specific and unique dental education system in Taiwan. Student’s behavioral science was not well-known. The study was designed to investigate the learning behaviors and attitudes among military dental students and non-military dental students in Taiwan. Therefore, this might help us  better thinking of class design and development with teaching ethics.

Method: Anonymous questionnaires collected demographic data composed of 20 statement relating to learning behaviors and attitudes included 9 open questions allowed free text comment on reasons for answers were sent to 580 dental students. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze their behaviors and frequencies. Student's t-test was used to compare means between genders and schools. Analysis of varianece was used to compare the differences between each variables.

Result: The response rate was 63.8% Passive learning styles were significantly found in this survey. Due to the high costs of textbook, students do not buy textbook as their main reference book. Teacher's lecture power point slides were their main learning subjects. Although students usually felt they did not have enough time to  prepare lectures, they spent average 2.41 hour/day in study. Students seldom review lectures after school. Female students showed more effective and active learning than male. Military dental students spent more money to buy textbook and other reference book recommend by teachers than non-military dental students. They showed more respect and obey the raw to the intellectual property rights and they dislike to photocopy textbook.

Conclusion: Active learning should be intervened and encouraged to our students. Due to learning behaviors may be related with teaching methods and grading systems, more interactive teaching  such as PBL or EBM, with multi-dimensional comments quantity should be intervened. Military dental students showed higher economic strength than non-military dental students. Concepts of respect and obey the law to the intellectual property rights should be intervened.