Evaluating Student's Perceptions of the Learning Environment in an Indian Dental School

Objective: To evaluate students perception of the learning environment in a private dental institute in India based on DREEM inventory. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study included students in all four years of the undergraduate dental course of Panineeya Institute of Dental Sciences and Hospital, Hyderabad, India. Self-administered Dundee Ready Education environment Measure (DREEM) inventory consisting of 50-items on a five-point Likert scale was utilized to assess the students perceptions regarding learning environment in this academic dental school. Comparison for the total and domain DREEM score means was carried out via independent t-test for dichotomous variables (gender) and ANOVA for more than two variables (year of study). Significant difference was noted for p < 0.05. Results: The response rate for this study was 86.8%. Mean age of the study participants was 19.61 +/- 1.50 y. The overall DREEM score for this population was 125.24 +/- 21.10 reflecting a more of positive than negative education environment in this institution. When individual domain scores were accounted, except for the domain SAS, females had a higher mean scores for all domains which was however statistically significant only for the domains SPL (p = 0.03) and SPT (p = 0.01). Likewise, significant differences were also noted for SPL and SPT based on the year of study, wherein for both the domains, third year students had significantly higher mean scores and least was recorded for fourth year students. Correlation of the various domains demonstrated significant positive correlation among the domains. Conclusion: Overall this sample of dental students rated the learning environment in this dental institute as positive.