Self-paced Learning Environment Research Articles

Interactive Online Modules for Dental Education: A Practical Example of Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction

Effective and engaging learning experiences are crucial in dental education, especially in the field of dental materials science, as previous approaches were largely through didactic teaching. Interactive online modules have emerged as valuable supplemental tools to enhance dental education. It offers interactive elements, promotes active learning, and provides an immersive, self-paced learning environment. This article highlights the use of Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction as a practical framework to design and implement interactive online modules in the dental materials science curriculum. Gagne’s model provides a structured approach to instructional design, improving students’ engagement and their learning process. The development of interactive online modules follows Gagne’s model, including gaining attention, informing students of objectives, stimulating the recall of prior knowledge, presenting new material, providing guidance, eliciting performance, providing feedback, assessing performance, and enhancing retention and transfer. Students’ perceptions and feedback can be evaluated at the end of the online modules. In short, this article provides a systematic approach to the design and implementation of interactive online modules, ultimately improving the educational outcomes for dental and other health profession students.

Development of an online tooth morphology course in response to COVID-19 restrictions.

Tooth morphology, a foundation of clinical and laboratory dentistry, is traditionally taught using lectures supported by study using extracted teeth, plastic replica, wax or chalk carving, or drawing.1 The need to review this model has been highlighted recently by pressures that include the difficulty to obtain and retain good quality teaching specimens, and reduction in teaching hours.1 During academic year 2020–2021, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and in line with government restriction, our institution curtailed physical presence on campus for staff and students posing additional challenges to the delivery of our tooth morphology course. The delivery of lectures through recordings uploaded to a virtual learning environment (VLE) or remote lecturing using communication platforms cannot fully alleviate the problem. Learning with models (2D or 3D) is preferable to help integrate knowledge acquired in lectures with the 3D structure and appreciate differences in dental morphology. Flash cards offer a potential solution as they provide multiple views of the same tooth and highlight distinguishing features of the teeth. While some learners easily translate 2D information into 3D representations, others struggle with the process.2 In addition, assessment of knowledge in 2D is not aligned with its clinical application. dvantage of the Canvas VLE available at our institution to develop a self-directed tooth morphology learning environment proposing multiple entry points in 2D or 3D to students. We generated interactive FDI (Fédération Dentaire Internationale, FDI World Dental Federation) grids representing permanent or deciduous dentitions. Each button on the grid was linked to a Canvas VLE page containing either a 2D flashcard or a 3D interactive model for each tooth (Figure 1). The dental schools at the University of Dundee and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor both created a series of 3D dental morphology models for permanent or deciduous dentitions available from the SketchFab website. These models were embedded into Canvas pages, allowing students to access the model in situ without access to external sites. Staff-led interactive sessions were held through Microsoft Teams using unlabeled 3D models loaded to Microsoft PowerPoint. These were screen shared to discuss dental features and quiz students. Each week, lecture notes and recordings were made available (see Supporting Information for full description). Assessment was performed through Canvas quizzes using embedded 3D models that students had not previously seen. Each question required learners to correctly identify a 3D tooth model and answer a question regarding the developmental milestones of the tooth. In response to the problems described above, the solution developed has allowed the continuation of delivery of material for which 3D spatial representation is important. The models were labeled to highlight individual features, providing students with an integrated 3D learning tool that could potentially rival extracted teeth as it offers immediate feedback on feature identification. Examination results for the 2021 cohort (68.7 ± 1.8%) are in line with the average results of the cohorts from 2016 to 2019 (71.5 ± 1.2%, p = 0.237 Student's t-test). The use of 2D and 3D approaches combined with lecture recording, notes, and live sessions for discussions with instant feedback allowed us to cater to different learning modes, and diverse schedules, and gave control to learners, in line with the principles of the Universal Design for Learning.3 While more research will be needed to investigate if students can translate virtual 3D learning to the identification of extracted teeth and if this can be implemented as a replacement for in-person teaching, we believe that this approach offers a strong alternative for students that prefer a self-paced learning environment to directed education. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.

Development, Implementation, and Initial Participant Feedback of an Online Anatomy and Radiology Contouring Bootcamp in Radiation Oncology.

BACKGROUNDThe Anatomy and Radiology Contouring (ARC) Bootcamp was a face-to-face (F2F) course designed to ensure radiation oncology residents were equipped with the knowledge and skillset to use radiation therapy techniques properly. The ARC Bootcamp was proven to be a useful educational intervention for improving learners’ knowledge of anatomy and radiology and contouring ability. An online version of the course was created to increase accessibility to the ARC Bootcamp and provide a flexible, self-paced learning environment. This study aimed to describe the instructional design model used to create the online offering and report participants’ motivation to enroll in the course and the online ARC Bootcamp's strengths and improvement areas.METHODSThe creation of the online course followed the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation (ADDIE) framework. The course was structured in a linear progression of locked modules consisting of radiology and contouring lectures, anatomy labs, and integrated evaluations.RESULTSThe online course launched on the platform Teachable in November 2019, and by January 2021, 140 participants had enrolled in the course, with 27 participants completing all course components. The course had broad geographic participation with learners from 19 different countries. Of the participants enrolled, 34% were female, and most were radiation oncology residents (56%), followed by other programs (24%), such as medical physics residents or medical students. The primary motivator for participants to enroll was to improve their subject knowledge/skill (44%). The most common strength identified by participants was the course's quality (41%), and the most common improvement area was to incorporate more course content (41%).CONCLUSIONSThe creation of the online ARC Bootcamp using the ADDIE framework was feasible. The course is accessible to diverse geographic regions and programs and provides a flexible learning environment; however, the course completion rate was low. Participants’ feedback regarding their experiences will inform future offerings of the online course.

Self-Regulated Learning in Online Graduate Business Communication Courses: A Qualitative Inquiry

This qualitative study reviewed student application of self-regulated learning (SRL) processes in self-paced graduate business communication courses. It was preceded by a quantitative analysis of the same courses. In both studies, researchers sought to understand student experience in a self-paced learning environment, and how this experience demonstrated SRL and increased student performance. Neither study established a clear connection between a self-paced learning environment, SRL, and student performance. However, both studies confirmed the importance of student predisposition for the cyclical phases of preparation, performance, and appraisal and highlighted the critical role of support in readying students for learning strategy changes.

Enhancing interactive tutorial effectiveness through visual cueing

The present study investigated whether learning how to use a web service with an interactive tutorial can be enhanced by cueing. We expected the attentional guidance provided by visual cues to facilitate the selection of information in static screen displays that corresponded to spoken explanations. Unlike most previous studies in this area, we chose to implement a self-paced learning environment in this experiment. This would allow learners in the no-cueing condition to try and compensate for their visual search difficulties by reviewing the visual information during pauses between slides. They would not, however, be able to process auditory and visual information jointly in working memory (temporal contiguity effect), as learners would be able to do in the cueing condition. Results showed that, as predicted, the presence of cues (arrows pointing to each aurally evoked item in turn) (1) led to a reduction in the amount of time spent reviewing the visual information during pauses, (2) better learning of the verbal information (but without any effect on a subsequent procedural task, contrary to our hypothesis), and (3) greater perceived ease of learning. These results suggest that cueing can direct attention to the right area of the screen at the right time, thereby improving learning, even in self-regulated learning environments.

Selections from the SIGGRAPH 96 educator's program

We are developing a suite of interactive modules for teaching introductory computer graphics, using a library we have built to support such efforts.The modules provide explanations of fundamental concepts, tutorial demonstrations of basic techniques and interactive control or the parameters used in and execution of high level representations of elementary algorithms. The modules are used in laboratory sessions to supplement format lectures. Here, we present our philosophy in building the library and modules, discuss the lessons we have learned in our initial implementation and outline our fur,,re plans. Introduction Computer graphics is, by its very nature, highly visual.To supplement traditional teaching aids such as whiteboards and overhead projectors, 35ram slides and videotape segments can be used to illustrate relevant concepts. However, for students to appreciate fully both the algorithmic and visual aspects of the fundamental topics presented in an introductory computer graphics course, it is usually necessary for them to implemenr the various algorithms introduced. We are creating a suite of inrerective modules that both present the fundamental computer graphics concepts and algorithms and allow students to manipulate the principal variables involved. This approach not only obviates the need for students to reinvent the wheel w i~ a lot of tedious programmir~ but also allows them to explore many more of the basic concepts than is possible co cover in great detail in class presentations or programming assignments. Previous work has focused on using computer graphics to visualize algorithm execution [I, 5], assist the instructor in presenting in-class demonstrations [4] and provide hypermedia access to tutorials and demos [2, 3]. Our goal is to provide a self.contained, self-paced learning environment for students of computer graphics. Although our current use of the modules is supplementary to the material presented in formal lectures, we have built the modules with no assumption that the students have had any prior exposure co the concepts. In this way, a module is usable by those who have either missed or not understood the companion lecture, or are not even enrolled in the course. Around-theclock access in our laboratories allows the students to repeat the module unti l they understand the material and provides a useful source for review (e.g., before an exam). Because a module assumes no prior exposure to the topic presented, and because students may use the modules outside of scheduled lab times, progress through the module is deliberately sequential, ensuring that the concepts are presented in a logical order. A user can simply press the Cont(inue) button to step through the explanation and demonstration sections, until such rime as interaction is allowed or required. Modules We are implementing the modules using the C programming language and the Silicon Graphics GL library.The target machines for our use are SGI Indigo X524 workstations. To provide for ease of porting to other hardware and software platforms, we have isolated all of the GL code within our library routines, The following modules have been implemented and are currently being used in our courses: • Windows &Viewports (Figure I) • 2DTransformations (Figures 2 to 5) • Bresenham Line Drawing (Figure 6)