Perceptions of dental undergraduates and their lecturers on graduates' attributes

Abstract

The study aims to explore the perceptions of students and lecturers on graduate attributes, to identify the possibility of existing link between the students' and lecturers' perceptions and also to summarise a list of desirable graduate attributes for dentistry course based on the findings. The subject were the third (n = 62), fourth (n = 67) and fifth (n = 63) year University of Malaya (UM) dental undergraduates and their lecturers (n = 31) from all departments. A purposive sampling was utilised to conduct this research. Data was gathered using a questionnaire which consist of five components namely skills, attitudes, life-long learning, teamwork and clinical competency. Findings indicated that there was no significant difference of perceptions between the students across the different clinical years but a significant difference was observed between lecturers' and students' perceptions in terms of skills, attitudes, lifelong learning and clinical competency (p < 0.05) except for teamwork (p > 0.05). A list of desirable graduate attributes has been compiled and suggested based on the findings of the current study.