Discover Dentistry: 5 years from inception
As I write this, it will be 5 years from when the idea of a social online course to help aspiring dental students prepare for university applications (and hopefully interviews) went from being an idea being thrown about informally to a project with deadlines looming.
The idea came about from experience with another course that supported applicants to dentistry: the Access to Dental Occupations: Practice and Tutoring (ADOPT) scheme. The two-year programme, designed especially for A-level students interested in a dental career, supported the students through a range of aspiration and attainment raising activities designed to help them build up a profile for a dental application and interview. This turned out to be very popular, and now in each new student intake to the Dental School at Sheffield we have a not inconsiderable number of new undergraduates that have ‘graduated’ from the scheme (and more going off to study dental subjects at other universities). ADOPT has proven popular and is over subscribed, and as it is a scheme that requires regular visits to the campus it is also not flexible and so it is not possible for everyone who would like to take part to do so.
In order to take the ADOPT programme experience to more people, consideration was given to creating a website that would contain the most important pieces of information that someone applying to study dentistry in the UK might need. During the writing of this website, thought was given to how people reading it could ask questions and seek advice, with the possibility of the site being the origin for an online community of like-minded people. Around this time, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) started attracting interest, with several high profile successes of courses in the USA attracting thousands of students and several more attracting attention for failing to deliver. As we were developing the idea of Discover Dentistry into a MOOC-style course, our colleagues at Sheffield in the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) were planning 3 new courses that would run on the Coursesites platform.
Discover Dentistry started out as a series of webpages, but as the idea developed it became clear that to build a community it would need to be on a proper ‘MOOC’ platform, have a means of quality control for the curriculum (as it sat outside of university normal policies and procedures) and would need to stand up to the expectations people had of the University of Sheffield brand. In short, this needed a platform, it needed senior leadership support, and it was going to cost money!
It turns out that getting funding for a MOOC 5 years ago was very difficult, mostly as we could not guarantee the audience for it (most funders wanted their resources to be directed at very specific groups), but salvation came just at the right time as in very short order Sheffield became a partner of the Open University venture FutureLearn and Discover Dentistry was going to be in the first wave of courses launched in early 2014. This meant we had a platform (and a great one as it turned out), support from the university and suddenly support from a new team to make the idea real, all in a few months.
At the time of the official launch of FutureLearn in December 2013, Discover Dentistry’s six weeks worth of learning had been mapped out but not yet completed. There wasn’t even a trailer at this point and in retrospect this is probably the reason for so much befuddlement from within HE and the public over what we were trying to do. An article in the Times Higher called the choice of topic “bizarre” and there was amusement as the “free dental course” was posted by someone onto a popular shopping deals site. But some of the press did get what we were trying to do, with articles appearing in over 80 newspapers and websites and mentions on national radio - most had plenty of fun with dentally-related puns for the headlines: “a course to get your teeth into” etc.
Discover Dentistry’s curriculum was written over a few sessions with a large whiteboard, and was a very creative and constructive process. The method was inspired by Gilly Salmon’s Carpe Diem model, in particular including the ‘reality checker’ role into the writing team. This is a subject non-expert that has the power to question the whole design, and acts as a surrogate for the learner. Through this role we managed to design a curriculum that introduced terms, concepts and activities that scaffolded the learning and made it as accessible as possible. We made a few design decisions that turned out to be critical later on:
The curriculum has stood up to the test of thousands of students without too many alterations needed. We did end up reshooting a video to make it a little shorter and to tighten up the instructions a little, we added another video outlining new 3D printing techniques, and the odd typo and clarification. We have also tightened up the editing on some videos, and shot a new trailer to include more course materials (as we had to shoot the original trailer before we started production). Overall though, no major changes have been needed and course satisfaction has been very high.
A welcome addition has been little extra tidbits that have come from learners as we have run the course, adding their own knowledge to the information we put up. One of my favourites is that the Mandarin for tooth decay, 蛀牙, is made up of the character 蛀 (zhù) which means ‘insects that eat books, clothes’ and the character for tooth or ivory 牙 (yá). We now have that learner’s comment quoted in the course. (in Week 1, Step 5).
We have also been lucky in that we get to meet some of our learners. Using data obtained from applicants’ UCAS personal statements, it has been possible to look at the impact that Discover Dentistry has had in preparing students for a dental interview. This has mostly been in showing them the breadth of the dental profession, and has encouraged them to seek work experience prior to application beyond their own dentist (particularly raising awareness of dental technology it seems). In addition, an analysis of POLAR3 and IMD scores showed a wider participation than the typical university intake for dental programmes. We published our initial findings of this in the British Dental Journal in 2015.
Shooting the clinical scenes for Discover Dentistry
The idea came about from experience with another course that supported applicants to dentistry: the Access to Dental Occupations: Practice and Tutoring (ADOPT) scheme. The two-year programme, designed especially for A-level students interested in a dental career, supported the students through a range of aspiration and attainment raising activities designed to help them build up a profile for a dental application and interview. This turned out to be very popular, and now in each new student intake to the Dental School at Sheffield we have a not inconsiderable number of new undergraduates that have ‘graduated’ from the scheme (and more going off to study dental subjects at other universities). ADOPT has proven popular and is over subscribed, and as it is a scheme that requires regular visits to the campus it is also not flexible and so it is not possible for everyone who would like to take part to do so.
In order to take the ADOPT programme experience to more people, consideration was given to creating a website that would contain the most important pieces of information that someone applying to study dentistry in the UK might need. During the writing of this website, thought was given to how people reading it could ask questions and seek advice, with the possibility of the site being the origin for an online community of like-minded people. Around this time, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) started attracting interest, with several high profile successes of courses in the USA attracting thousands of students and several more attracting attention for failing to deliver. As we were developing the idea of Discover Dentistry into a MOOC-style course, our colleagues at Sheffield in the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) were planning 3 new courses that would run on the Coursesites platform.
Discover Dentistry started out as a series of webpages, but as the idea developed it became clear that to build a community it would need to be on a proper ‘MOOC’ platform, have a means of quality control for the curriculum (as it sat outside of university normal policies and procedures) and would need to stand up to the expectations people had of the University of Sheffield brand. In short, this needed a platform, it needed senior leadership support, and it was going to cost money!
It turns out that getting funding for a MOOC 5 years ago was very difficult, mostly as we could not guarantee the audience for it (most funders wanted their resources to be directed at very specific groups), but salvation came just at the right time as in very short order Sheffield became a partner of the Open University venture FutureLearn and Discover Dentistry was going to be in the first wave of courses launched in early 2014. This meant we had a platform (and a great one as it turned out), support from the university and suddenly support from a new team to make the idea real, all in a few months.
At the time of the official launch of FutureLearn in December 2013, Discover Dentistry’s six weeks worth of learning had been mapped out but not yet completed. There wasn’t even a trailer at this point and in retrospect this is probably the reason for so much befuddlement from within HE and the public over what we were trying to do. An article in the Times Higher called the choice of topic “bizarre” and there was amusement as the “free dental course” was posted by someone onto a popular shopping deals site. But some of the press did get what we were trying to do, with articles appearing in over 80 newspapers and websites and mentions on national radio - most had plenty of fun with dentally-related puns for the headlines: “a course to get your teeth into” etc.
Discover Dentistry’s curriculum was written over a few sessions with a large whiteboard, and was a very creative and constructive process. The method was inspired by Gilly Salmon’s Carpe Diem model, in particular including the ‘reality checker’ role into the writing team. This is a subject non-expert that has the power to question the whole design, and acts as a surrogate for the learner. Through this role we managed to design a curriculum that introduced terms, concepts and activities that scaffolded the learning and made it as accessible as possible. We made a few design decisions that turned out to be critical later on:
- The course never said it was specifically for a widening participation audience, or for aspiring dentists - just those interested in the subject
- We did not show explicitly how to do anything clinical, to avoid any concerns that learners may try and ‘do this at home’
- Internationalisation of the curriculum was built into the design, encouraging the sharing of terminology and experiences from all learners
- The curriculum had a weekly ‘hook’ to increase retention - something to mention in weekly summaries and a target for learners to look forward to
- We tried to tell a story with the course, so that even if you did not understand the detail you could at least comprehend the purpose
- The course was designed to challenge, using differentiation techniques to provide stimulus for those learners who wanted more
The curriculum has stood up to the test of thousands of students without too many alterations needed. We did end up reshooting a video to make it a little shorter and to tighten up the instructions a little, we added another video outlining new 3D printing techniques, and the odd typo and clarification. We have also tightened up the editing on some videos, and shot a new trailer to include more course materials (as we had to shoot the original trailer before we started production). Overall though, no major changes have been needed and course satisfaction has been very high.
Highlights from early runs of Discover Dentistry (2014)
A welcome addition has been little extra tidbits that have come from learners as we have run the course, adding their own knowledge to the information we put up. One of my favourites is that the Mandarin for tooth decay, 蛀牙, is made up of the character 蛀 (zhù) which means ‘insects that eat books, clothes’ and the character for tooth or ivory 牙 (yá). We now have that learner’s comment quoted in the course. (in Week 1, Step 5).
We have also been lucky in that we get to meet some of our learners. Using data obtained from applicants’ UCAS personal statements, it has been possible to look at the impact that Discover Dentistry has had in preparing students for a dental interview. This has mostly been in showing them the breadth of the dental profession, and has encouraged them to seek work experience prior to application beyond their own dentist (particularly raising awareness of dental technology it seems). In addition, an analysis of POLAR3 and IMD scores showed a wider participation than the typical university intake for dental programmes. We published our initial findings of this in the British Dental Journal in 2015.
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