dherendra

uwc dental faculty

dept, of oral medicine and periodontology

online resources

DHERENDRA DHAYA 2014

BACKGROUND

• University of the Western Cape’s Dental Faculty.• Dental (4th year of study - 88 students) and 2nd year oral hygiene

students (26) with a diverse range of personalities and learning skills makes teaching and learning on a 1 to 1 basis by the same lecturer / supervisor / teacher more challenging.

• A few students have difficulty with various aspects of the course from theory content to clinical competency and the integration thereof.

• For the majority, the content workload is still too demanding. The 4th year dental students have 11 disciplines. Clinical supervision with emphasis on teaching during the rendering of dental treatment to their patients is performed once a week during a 90 minute clinical session.

INTENDED OUTCOMES

• Enhancement of student learning outcomes

• Enhance learning and critical thinking and reading via Ikamva blog and later google blogger

• Facilitate engagement, interactivity, communication and collaboration between tutor and peers

THE CHALLENGE

Teaching in the 21st century

means providing learners with content being available anywhere and anytime

also to develop skills which will facilitate a blended learning approach

tapping into multiple sources of information

ESTABLISHED PRACTICE

• Powerpoint format which initially consisted of text and subsequently clinical images inserted to make it more visual and to get a better understanding by linking and associating the two. A short reference list is usually added at the end of the presentation.

• These lectures are placed on Ikamva and recently on google drive for them to access. Some students find google drive more accessible.

• The class representatives also place the necessary documents and announcements on facebook. They have linked dropbox to facebook as well. This allows for maximum accessibility catering for the learners.

AFFORDANCES

Accessibility will be improved to those who have difficulty accessing the Ikamva site for downloading their course material especially the powerpoint lectures, course documents etc.

The embedding of video clips into the powerpoint presentations has been shown that student learning outcomes is enhanced.

The features of Ikamva such as quizzes, blogging in addition has just been introduced and incorporated to enhance learning and critical thinking and reading.

Two critical questions can be answered viz. 1. What is the most significant thing which the learner has learned. 2. What remains unclear?

Lastly, the LMS is also available on many mobile and android devices.

INTERVENTION

More mcq,s to be loaded per topic in the LMS.

Links to journal articles provided.

And the introduction of google blogger to groups of students relating to certain topics or themes.

Then making it accessible to all in the class.

Polling for feedback and reflection if the modified practice is valuable and should be continued for the benefit of the learner.

Exploration of google sites

EFFECTIVE PRACTICE

• The LMS affordance of some measure of control over the “in house” online environment has and advantage to both tutor and learner.

• In addition, Google docs and its use creates the opportunity of sharing and commenting on their peers contribution.

• This can add value and leverage the intended outcome of engaging students out of the classroom.

• Linking PDF’s may be an advantage as it does not have to downloaded, but opened with Google’s quick view.

CONCLUSION

• Linking in class work with out of class work closes the divide provided by limited contact time for didactic delivery of key concepts relating to theory content.

• Engaging the 21st century learner with etools with which they may be or become comfortable with, making learning more fun and interactive in an environment where they can voice their experiences and thoughts and reflect on them critically.

Example of youtube video clip download embedded into powerpoint presentation

The Effects of Smoking on Oral Health.wmv

Another example

VID 20140312 WA000 how can you with a face loke that[1].mp3

Van_der_Velden_Classification.pdf

link to journal article

Sample of blog created. Interactivity needed

Example of google sites to be developed for bchd iv

REFERENCES

• Hershock C and La vague-Manty M (2012). Teaching in the cloud: Leveraging online collaboration tools to enhance student engagement. University of Michigan. CRLT occasional papers. No. 31.

•King S. (2012). Blogging and reflection in higher education. Aug.

•Masud M, Said SM and Hassan MIA (2013). Validating e-teaching and learning innovation in dental education. european international journal of science and technology. July vol 2 No. 6 page 198.

•Mohamed N and Peerbhay F (2012). Introducing dental students to e-learning at a South African university. AJHPE ;4(2):123-127.

•Rowe M et al. (2013). Beyond knowledge and skills: The use of a technology mediated teaching strategy. BMC Medical education. 13 : 51.

• Rowe M et al. (2013). Using Google drive to facilitate a blended approach to authentic learning. British journal of educational technology. vol 44. no. 4. 594-606.