University of Toronto's Dental School Shows “New Teeth”: Moving Towards Online Instruction

Abstract

This article presents the approach the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Toronto employed to modernize its methods of instruction by using online technologies. A small team of faculty, students, and content developers was assembled to work with individual faculty members to brainstorm and research ideas for innovative teaching practices in dental studies. The team was not content to simply post digital versions of the ubiquitous PowerPoint lectures in Blackboard, selected in 2006 by the University of Toronto as its sole platform for online course delivery, but rather set out to introduce interactivity with the course material. Consequently, a series of interactive applications was created, such as the virtual microscope in Oral Pathology, the 3D cavity preparations in Restorative Dentistry, and the Master Media Repository. During the summer of 2006, the Faculty of Dentistry made progress toward becoming one of the university's front-runners in online course innovation. The result of this collaboration between faculty members and the team was ten courses with interactive online presence, representing approximately 20 percent of the undergraduate curriculum. Since the summer of 2006, the Faculty of Dentistry has continued to pursue its goal of providing meaningful online instruction in all of its courses.Dr.

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“…One unexpected finding of the survey was that dental students made little use of the Dental Histology course website (http://histology.med.umich.edu/schedule/dental) (Table , Row 6). This finding is especially surprising as multiple studies report that students embrace Internet or web‐based instruction at the dental and the medical school level . The underutilisation of the dental histology course webpage may be an unintended consequence of the school's required attendance policy which might raise an expectation by the students that most learning takes place in the classroom or the laboratory.…”

The Use of Independent, Interactive Media for Education in Dental Morphology

“…The introduction of interactivity in dental education e‐learning platforms has been gaining momentum for increasing student engagement and motivation. Recently, Salajan and Mount 62 described the process of developing innovative courses that have online interactive applications, such as the Oral Pathology Virtual Microscope and Virtual Cavity Preparations, to engage online learners. Students’ desires for more interactive tools such as 3D graphics, audio, video lectures, and simulation were also reported in that study.…”

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