This is one of the courses offered by the Department of Oral Medicine and Oral Surgery for the final year undergraduate dental students. Throughout the course students learn the basic knowledge for preparing, conducting and reporting biomedical research and develop fundamental skills to conduct short systematic review research projects in biomedical/dental fields. In addition, the course prepares students to master the essentials of writing research proposals, ethics and grant applications, conducting literature appraisal, writing scientific papers and presenting at formal meetings.
For the practical part of the course, students work in groups to do the followings under supervision:
1. With the help of the supervisor, choose a research question for a mini project that is suitable for being conducted through both an experimental research project, and a brief systematic review project.
2. Assuming the project will be conducted as experimental (cross-sectional, longitudinal, case-control, randomized control trial, etc,), students are required to complete a research proposal, ethics and grant application. Students will complete this section on the JUST's Modified Research Proposal Form (to be provided) but are not required to submit the application to the JUST's Deanship of Scientific Research or the IRB. Completing this part will be just for the sake of meeting the course learning outcomes. The ethics part should address all potential risks and benefits and provide relevant justification for the chosen design. The grant section should be very simple, listing all needed equipment and materials with brief justification for provided approximate costs. One page for the grant section should be enough. Students will be assessed by the supervisor (rubric to be provided), and this part will be allocated 15% of the total in this course. The deadline to get this part done is the end of week 4.
3. Commence the brief systematic literature review project around the agreed-upon research question. Students will need to start working for the project in week 5 (2nd November 2025) assuming they have been granted the approval on the research proposal, ethics and grant application. However, as the course runs over one semester and seeking actual ethics approval may need weeks or months, the project will be conducted through brief systematic review rather than experimentally. Students will start looking for valid and reliable literature that suit their research project. Once the students gather the required literature, it will undergo refinement and filtering. The pre-evaluation final search outcome will undergo literature appraisal (literature critique) using subjective (form to be provided) and objective measures (using CASP review). Through literature appraisal, it is assumed that the pre-evaluation final search outcome be cut shorter and filtered to a post-evaluation outcome. The latter will be used as materials for the systematic review project. Students will be assessed by the allocated supervisor (rubric to be provided) on completing the literature appraisal and this part will be allocated 10% of the total in this course. The deadline to get this part done is the end of week 8.
4. Complete the systematic review project under supervision and prepare a systemic review research paper for assessment by the supervisor. The deadline for this part is the end of week 11. The paper should be prepared in accordance with submission guidelines of the JUST's Jordan Journal of Dentistry. Submitting the paper to the Journal is not necessary as part of this course's requirements, but students and supervisors are strongly encouraged to do so once the course has been completed. The paper will be assessed by a supervisor external to the group. This part is allocated 30% of the total mark in this course. The deadline to get this part done is the end of week 11.
5. Present their research findings orally to audience and receive feedback. The event will be organized toward the end of this semester and date and venue will be announced. Oral presentation will be assessed by a panel of assessors external to the group. This part is allocated 10% of the total mark in this course.