Developing and Pretesting Case Studies in Dental and Dental Hygiene Education: Using the Diffusion of Innovations Model

Case-based learning offers exposure to clinical situations that health professions students may not encounter in their training. The purposes of this study were to apply the Diffusion of Innovations conceptual framework to 1) identify characteristics of case studies that would increase their adoption among dental and dental hygiene faculty members and 2) develop and pretest interactive web-based case studies on sensitive oral-systemic health issues. The formative study spanned two phases using mixed methods (Phase 1: eight focus groups and four interviews; Phase 2: ten interviews and satisfaction surveys). Triangulation of quantitative and qualitative data revealed the following positive attributes of the developed case studies: relative advantage of active learning and modeling; compatibility with a variety of courses; observability of case-related knowledge and skills; independent learning; and modifiability for use with other oral-systemic health issues. These positive attributes are expected to increase the likelihood that dental and dental hygiene faculty members will adopt the developed case study once it is available for use. The themes identified in this study could be applied to the development of future case studies and may provide broader insight that might prove useful for exploring differences in case study use across dental and dental hygiene curricula.