To investigate the association between a plasticine modeling-assisted teaching method and undergraduate dental students’ premolar morphology identification performance and self-reported learning experience. A controlled study was conducted involving 228 s-year undergraduate students majoring in stomatology at West China School of Stomatology, Sichuan University. Participants were divided into an experimental group (n = 112, receiving traditional teaching supplemented with plasticine modeling) and a control group (n = 116, receiving traditional teaching only). All sessions were delivered by the same instructor. Subjective experience was assessed by a 5-dimensional Likert scale questionnaire. Objective learning was evaluated using a 10-point tooth anatomy identification quiz. Intergroup differences were analyzed using independent-samples t-tests. The 10-point structure identification quiz was prespecified as the primary outcome, whereas Bonferroni correction was applied to the nine exploratory Likert-scale questionnaire items. The experimental group achieved slightly higher scores on the 10-point morphology identification quiz than the control group (3.90 ± 0.97 vs. 3.56 ± 1.23; raw p = 0.013; Cohen’s d = 0.31). However, the absolute between-group difference was small. Several questionnaire items showed higher mean scores in the experimental group before correction, including crown morphology, root morphology, overall architecture, classroom engagement, and confidence in subsequent courses. After Bonferroni correction for the nine questionnaire items, none of these secondary subjective outcomes remained statistically significant. Plasticine modeling was associated with a statistically significant but very small improvement in premolar structure-identification scores. Subjective learning-experience outcomes showed favorable numerical trends but did not remain statistically significant after Bonferroni correction. These exploratory findings suggest that plasticine modeling may be a feasible low-cost adjunct to dental anatomy teaching, although its practical educational significance remains uncertain.
Huang et al. (Sat,) studied this question.