As artificial intelligence (AI) spreads across the globe like wildfire, its applications are endless. It is becoming a popular tool within Dentistry, particularly in analysing clinical data and as a diagnostic aid1. It is also becoming a popular tool in education2 where it could create a different path for fulfilling the educational requirements of an institution3. Many students use it as an aid to accomplish daily reviewing tasks. This raises an intriguing question: What if AI language models like ChatGPT could assist the dental tutors and examiners in reviewing papers, tests, dissertations, case studies, thesis, literature reviews and so on? Would it truly enhance efficiency and ensure consistency? Or will the review be questionable, and raise flags?
Keeping that in mind, let us explore the present issues in dental education and learn how AI-based tools can help.
The Challenges in the Review Process of Dental Education
The complex assessments or the grading system in dental graduate and post graduate programs often include multiple choice answers (MCQs), short answer/essay questions (SAQs/SEQs), clinical tests, lengthy literature reviews, cross-referencing, clinical data compilations and viva voce.
The grading process, however, is not 100% perfect.
Grading can be challenging for examiners, especially when managing a large batch of students with frequent written/oral assignments and adhering to strict no-bias review protocols of the university.4 It often gets quite difficult due to subjectivity and bias coming into play and the strict timelines5.
Human intelligence can be unreliable and with time experience fatigue, oversight and presumptions.5
The examiners may also need another second round of experts to verify the grading. This process of recruiting a reviewing panel needs training, orientation programs, budget and time from the university/council. On the other hand, if they outsource reviews, every new hire will need time to reach the expected standards. This is particularly problematic in institutions with a high turnover rates of faculty members. It decreases the overall quality of the staff. Eventually, the review panel may get replaced by inexperienced members negatively impacting the students.
AI-models as a Reviewers’s Assistant
AI tools like ChatGPT are based on Large Language Model (LLM) that can produce smooth and cohesive texts, responding to inquiries, providing translation to languages, and executing diverse language-oriented tasks. They offer ease and availability with its different versions revolutionizing the neural network.
AI has become a promising solution for automating the grading process in education, potentially removing subjectivity from human errors and saving time. 4,6
It works best when you provide a proper, detailed prompt, clearly explaining the task. The best part is that you can ask it to ask you questions too so that all ambiguities are cleared.
Here are several ways it could contribute:
Evaluating answers and projects
The program can be trained to compare students’ answers with the question and key provided by the educator. By doing so, the program can provide scores, identify unvalidated gross errors, and highlight the highest-scores.
Validating references and research
AI models can be leveraged to streamline the validation of references and research in academic papers, theses, literature reviews, etc. by quickly cross-checking sources, ensuring accuracy, and identifying potential discrepancies. This is crucial in boosting the reliability and integrity of scholarly work.
Providing detailed feedback
One of the significant advantages of using AI-models is its ability to offer detailed feedback. Specifically, it can analyse what the student missed in their answer and how many marks were allotted.
Here is a Dental Examiner’s Perspective
As an experiment, a faculty member shares her experience using ChatGPT for grading. “It seems like a game-changer for educators, as it can easily compare answers with the key and identify points that the student might have missed initially. With a few clicks, the answer is evaluated within seconds, whereas it would take an individual much longer. However, it seems that a professional examiner would still be required to review the markings to ensure cohesion.”
Takeaway- AI Addressing the Concerns and Challenges of Dental Education
Although similar technology has been around for a few decades, concerns persist about its impact on students.
Some worry that students might focus on writing formulaic essays that align with the algorithm designed to achieve the highest score7.
Ensuring the accuracy and reliability of AI modes like ChatGPT, its paid and unpaid versions, the recent upgrades, etc. require ongoing monitoring and awareness. Therefore, faculty members must consistently review the AI’s performance and adjust the training data and algorithms as needed.
The use of AI in grading brings up ethical issues related to fairness and transparency. It’s essential to maintain a balance between AI assistance and human oversight to prevent biases and ensure fair student evaluations.
Implementing AI-models in an academic setting demands sufficient technical infrastructure and support. Institutions must invest in training faculty members and providing the necessary resources to seamlessly integrate AI into their systems.
How can the Global Dentists’ Pool Can Help AI-models Adapt to Dental Education?
The Global Dentist’s PoolTM, is a platform to bridge the gap between clinical needs and innovative Tech ideas by helping dentists and scientists/engineers collaborate more efficiently.
For AI manufacturers:
With a 100+ dentists spread across 21 countries; this Pool supports dental companies by helping them
(1) validate their design ideas by running surveys in a large global cohort of practitioners and/or
(2) hire premium dental advisors to support various clinical, regulatory, marketing and sales projects.
The Global Dentists’ Pool Members are all dentists specialized in MedTech in different domains. The core focus is to avoid hiring multiple ‘non-dental trained’ freelancers and consultants and hire a premium dental advisor instead – a single substitute for multiple human resources – in the form of one highly specialized advisor.
For dentists :
The Global Dentists’ Pool provides general dentists, specialists, and dental tutors, with opportunities to participate in dental projects without disrupting their clinical practice. The number of hours of engagement is flexible and dentists can upskill themselves by taking the “premium dental advisor program” which teaches how tech tools are made, by learning the medical device industry fundamentals.
If you would like to engage with us to support your project or advance your dental career, then reach out to us at contactus@namnrpro.org.
Acknowledgments
To my esteemed Sir and my dedicated colleague, without whom this project would have remained a mere idea.
References
- 1.Khanagar SB, Al-Ehaideb A, Maganur PC, Vishwanathaiah S, Patil S, Baeshen HA, et al. Developments, application, and performance of artificial intelligence in dentistry – A systematic review. J Dent Sci [Internet]. 2021;16(1):508–22. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jds.2020.06.019
- Hassan Khosravi, Simon Buckingham Shum, Guanliang Chen, Cristina Conati, Yi-Shan Tsai, Judy Kay, Simon Knight, Roberto Martinez-Maldonado, Shazia Sadiq, Dragan Gašević, Explainable Artificial Intelligence in education, Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, Volume 3, 2022, 100074, ISSN 2666-920X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2022.100074.
- Tuomi, Ilkka. (2018). The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Learning, Teaching, and Education: Policies for the Future. 10.2760/12297.
- Toranj, Somaye & Ansari, Dariush. (2012). Automated Versus Human Essay Scoring: A Comparative Study. Theory and Practice in Language Studies. 2. 10.4304/tpls.2.4.719-725.
- Huang, Shih-Jen. “Automated versus Human Scoring: A Case Study in an EFL Context.” (2014).
- Eggmann F, Weiger R, Zitzmann NU, Blatz MB. Implications of large language models such as ChatGPT for dental medicine. J Esthet Restor Dent [Internet]. 2023; Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jerd.13046
- Wang, Jinhao & Brown, Michelle. (2007). Automated Essay Scoring Versus Human Scoring: A Comparative Study. Journal of Technology, Learning, and Assessment. 6.
Author information
Name: Aminah Ikram Ullah
Dr Aminah Ikram Ullah is a general dentist, dental tutor, with a special interest in oral surgery and teaching, Dr. Aminah has hands-on experience on experimenting with AI models. She likes to research on new ways to make dental education a painless process. . On a mission to show that even the most traditional fields can benefit from a touch of modern innovation.
Disclaimers
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and are not necessarily shared by NamNR Pro.
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