Enabling Training in Orthodontics Through Mobile Augmented Reality: A Novel Perspective

Introduction

Clinical education using computer-based simulation training has served as an adjunct approach in health profession education (Katoue, Iblagh, Somerville, & Ker, 2015). The advances in technology combined with enhanced applicability have yielded various learning elements, including real-life clinical training in a variety of disciplines (Harder, 2018). Factors such as deliberate practice, student-centred learning, safe and ethical learning, and the learning happening at the student’s desired pace make simulation-based training promising. Simulation-based training, with its variations in presentation, can be either human-based or computer-based. Computer-based simulation, specifically mobile augmented reality (MAR), is the scope of this chapter.

MAR research shows that its development and usage will increase greatly with the education and healthcare sectors becoming the huge benefactors of this progression. The education sector is estimated to have around 7 million users of AR and MAR by 2020 (Statista, The Statistics Portal, 2018). The same trend is predicted for MAR technology, which is currently one of the most explosive of AR applications. MAR is predicted to transform educational practices by opening new pathways that involve interactive and intelligent systems. MAR can function ubiquitously as the hardware required to implement an application is available in the form of either a smartphone or a tablet computer. The ability to experience MAR is becoming more common, as the sensors, processing, and display features necessary for AR applications are already widely available and form the core of mobile devices. These gains in power and features enable learning to become cost-effective. MAR applications already have been integrated into the fields of engineering (Bazarov, Kholodilin, Nesterov, & Sokhina, 2017), tourism (Tussyadiah, Jung, & tom Dieck, 2018), marketing and advertising (Scholz & Smith, 2016), navigation (Houser, 2019), medicine (Hamza-Lup, Rolland, & Hughes, 2018; Jung, Lee, Biocca & Kim, 2019), and dentistry (Kwon, Park, & Han, 2018; Llena, Folguera, Forner, & Rodríguez‐Lozano, 2018; Milovanovic, Moreau, Siret, & Miguet, 2017).

In education, MAR has been found to have several advantages over conventional methods of training. It supports millennial students’ needs for knowledge assimilation, dissemination, and retention through three dimensional (3D) real-world visualisation and haptic sensing. MAR also provides a suitable platform for building enhanced learning systems for orthodontic training. The platform helps educators create a scenario for any learning task by providing a learning mechanism for excellent visualisation and psychomotor skill acquisition. In addition, MAR’s ability to deliver learning content in an effective and easy-to-use format overcomes the challenges of ineffective visual cognition, the dissonance phase in learning transition, lack of assessment of student engagement and motivation, ineffective feedback, lack of an effective technology-supported learning environment, and lack of personalisation, all of which affect both knowledge and skill acquisition in orthodontic education.

The creation of mobile learning has thus opened new pathways for delivering content in a multitude of ways. The applications of MAR in orthodontics are opening a pathway for other dental specialities to incorporate similar ways to train students and improve skill acquisition. Thus, the applications of MAR in orthodontics provide scope and an impetus for detailed deliberation. The goal of this chapter is to explore and address the implications of MAR in orthodontic training.