Development Strategies in Medical Education

Introduction
paying attention to the factors that cause academic progress and prevent its decline is of particular importance. One of these factors is emotional intelligence (EI), which is a kind of social skill [1, 2]. Emotions play important role in life. Their dysregulation or delay in expressing them can have negative effects on humans [3]. Recent studies have shown that the lack of EI can create destructive effects in personal and social fields, and on the contrary, learning and strengthening it will be the basis for future success [3]. Motivation is one of the important concepts in educational psychology, which is known as the driving force and is the process that guides and maintains goal-oriented behaviors [4]. One of the life skills is self-awareness. It refers to a person's knowledge of own feelings, attitudes and behaviors in response to certain situations. Emotional self-awareness is a person's ability to accurately recognize his emotions and understand the appropriate ways to show a rational reaction in various situations [7]. Through emotional self-awareness training of, a person can acquire the knowledge of the causes of emotions and obtains information about why and how they are aroused in different situations. This ability leads to the ability to communicate better and develop efficient emotion regulation abilities [8]. Due to the fact that the success or prevention of academic failure in students is the concern of many professors, families and educational institutions [2], and limited studies have assessed the relationship between EI and academic motivation, this study aims to determine the effect of emotional self-awareness training on the academic motivation and EI of dental students.

Methods
This is a case-control study with a pre-test/post-test/ follow-up design. The study population consists of all students from the school of dentistry at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in 2021. Of these, 60 students were selected. The sample size was determined to be 30 per group by considering a test power of 0.80 and a 10% sample dropout. Participants were randomly divided into two groups of case and control by the block randomization method. Bradberry-Greaves' EI test was used to measure their EI and the academic motivation scale was used to measure their academic motivation. For the case group, one session of online emotional self-awareness training for three hours was provided, but no intervention was provided to the control group. The obtained data were analyzed in SPSS software, version 26 and the significance level was set at 0.05. Mean and standard deviation were used to describe quantitative data, and percentage and frequency were used to describe qualitative data. To compare the two groups in the three stages, paired t-test, independent t-test and analysis of variance were used.

Results
Participants in the intervention group (15 males and 15 females) had a mean age of 23±5.11 years those in the control group (15 males and 15 females) had a mean age of 23±4.63 years. The two groups were similar in terms of age, gender, marital status, type of admission to the university, academic semester, and grade point average, and there was no significant difference between them (P>0.05). The results showed that the overall academic motivation score at baseline did was not significantly different between the two groups. There was no significant difference in the overall academic motivation score among three stages (before, immediately and one month after the intervention), either. Also, there was no significant difference between the two trained groups regarding EI and academic motivation. There was no significant difference in the scores of intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation among three stages. Also, the scores of three components were not significantly different between the two groups. There was no significant difference in the EI score and its four domains at baseline between the two groups and no significant difference among three stages. Also, the scores of EI were not significantly different between the two groups.

Conclusion
According to the results, online emotional self-awareness training had no significant effect on the academic motivation and EI of dental students. It is recommended that, in future studies, the training should be conducted by the face-to-face method. 

Ethical Considerations
Compliance with ethical guidelines
This study was approved by the ethics committee of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences (Code: IR.MUI.RESEARCH.REC.1400.070). 

Funding
This study was extracted from a PhD thesis, funded by Isfahan University of Medical Sciences.

Authors' contributions
Conceptualization and supervision: Maryam Asgarani, Fahamieh Pakravan  and Athar Omid; Investigation, Writing original draft and resources: Maryam Asgarani; review & editing: Maryam Asgarani  and Fahimieh Pakravan; methodology: All authors.

Conflicts of interest
The authors declared no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Isfahan University of Medical Sciences for their financial support.

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