Executive Summary of Results

Service-learning and civic engagement are key components of the Indiana University School of Dentistry (IUSD) pre-doctoral curriculum.  The breadth and scope of these programs has led to ongoing development and implementation of information-delivery systems that can serve multiple goals, based on a primary need to allow students, practitioners, and researchers in the field to quickly obtain up-to-date data revolving around their current on-location assignment, general dental-related information or a combination of both.  The technologies utilized are allowing for interaction by the general user to 1) help facilitate a new level of communication between the patient and health care provider; 2) enhance the level of interaction between faculty, staff and students within IUSD and 3) increase the communication between IUSD personnel, alumni, and local, state, national and world communities. 

Need for the Project

Given that many problems in service-learning and civic engagement programs require a combination of traditional scientific knowledge and an understanding of various socio-economic factors, these conceptual solutions can offer engaging insights into problems that would otherwise be “compartmentalized” (that is, strictly relegated to either a traditional “scientific” solution, or one based exclusively on socio-economic issues).  Development of technologies to address these needs will compliment the pedagogical focus of the Dental School’s problem-based learning (PBL) initiative, which is utilized in the pre-doctoral curriculum.  Since PBL requires participants to draw on their existing knowledge base in order to understand and ultimately help solve a given problem, this tool -- and how it is used outside the traditional classroom -- will further the student’s ability to develop “real world” solutions via this conceptual discovery process.

Use of Technology

It is also critically important in our service-learning and civic engagement programs, where practitioners, students and researchers are often asked to address a variety of socio-economic concerns, in addition to their traditional scientific/dental-specific knowledge to develop – often quickly – the best solution to complex problems.  To help facilitate this need, the development of an informative Web site was a primary goal we were able to accomplish (http://www.sealindiana.org). In addition to a well-designed, accessible, information-packed site, participants (both students and faculty) in service-learning and civic engagement programs must have a mechanism from which to record and review their reflections on their learning experiences.  To facilitate this requirement, we have integrated the afore-mentioned Web site with both our school intranet, as well as the university’s Web-based course management system (“Oncourse”), of which more detail is provided in “Instructional Design Plan” section below.

Instructional Design Plan

A specific example of how our work was best implemented with the curriculum is the use of the Web site and associated Oncourse component with the service-learning component of the fourth-year predoctoral curriculum, specifically the “Seal Indiana” rotation.
Seal Indiana (http://www.sealindiana.org)is a state-wide mobile dental program that will provide preventive oral health services for children who do not have adequate access to dental care. Indiana State Department of Health and Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis provided start-up funding for this program.  Seal Indiana includes a 40’ mobile dental unit, two stationary and four portable dental chairs and units, and passenger van to carry staff and equipment.  Since the program's inception in March 2003 Seal Indiana has provided dental care for 6,500 children at 327 sites including Title I (lowest income) schools, Head Start Programs, Community Health Centers and other agencies that provide services for children from low-income families.  More than 11,000 dental sealants have been provided for Indiana children ensuring that they will be protected from the pain and suffering that plagues many children who do not have access to dental care.
Through direct access to the Seal Indiana site, and integration with the Oncourse course management system, measurable student reactions (both pre, point of and post-Seal Mobile experience) are now more accurately recorded and analyzed.  These reactions are in the form of traditional survey and short-narrative responses, asking students to comment on their experiences.  The data being collected is already providing a rich foundation for analysis, and will be used as the primary data store of which the conceptual search tool will be based. 

While the technology initially identified to build the conceptual search tool has proven significantly complex to implement (see “Final Comments” section) work continues to be done on integrating the afore-mentioned data collection with this technology, to allow the information to be searchable by students, faculty and other tertiary and quaternary groups.  It is our continued belief that by developing an information-search tool that utilizes a visual interface design, “navigation” through the data store will be more effective; moreover, the conceptual design aspects behind such a tool has strong pedagogical similarities with the PBL curriculum utilized within the school’s predoctoral curriculum.  Our continuing goal is the development and refinement of a tool that encourages users to draw on their existing knowledge base to make new discoveries and connections between the stored information and the problem they are attempting to solve via access to said information.

Potential to Impact Student Learning

We continue to focus on a comprehensive range of learners, including our own dental students, as well as faculty, staff, practicing dental professionals and K-12 and secondary education students.  The successful development and implementation of the Seal Indiana Web site, as well as the integration of the site with our intranet and the Oncourse system allow for rich pedagogical associations to be made between specific teaching and learning objectives, and how technology can facilitate those objectives.  To reiterate our impact (both current future) on student learning, four groups of learners continue to be targeted:

Primary focus group: 200 third and fourth-year predoctoral Dental students who attend Indiana University School of Dentistry, Indianapolis.  As the students actively engage in the various service-learning and civic-engagement programs (again, many of which are in remote locations away from the Dental school proper), they will need to have quick access to an intuitive, powerful information-delivery system that can help them best address situations and problems requiring dental-specific knowledge as well as access to socio-economic issues and concerns. 

Secondary focus group: IUSD faculty and staff who also participate in the service-learning and civic engagement programs.  These individuals, as they assist the primary focus group participants, will also need direct access to the Web-based system in order to best facilitate the learning opportunities offered by the programs.

Tertiary focus group: Any Indiana-based dental/medical professional who, in accordance with his or her own research and practice requirements, need direct access to an intuitive information synthesis tool.  Related to this, it is anticipated that this tool could bring exciting new opportunities to the life-long learning goals of the dental school’s Division of Continuing Education.

Quaternary focus group: K-12 and secondary education students and instructors who seek a system that will allow them to further their own interest and ability to explore health-care related issues via a system that has a PBL design methodology.

Assessment Plan

Standard use surveys, feedback and self-assessment forms were developed and implemented via Web-based forms and facilitated/accessed through the university’s online course management system (“Oncourse”). Many courses at IUSD (including DDS Dental Assisting and Dental Hygiene programs) are facilitated via the Oncourse system. 

1. The integration with Oncourse allows  for self and instructor assessment: as users interact with the system to best solve a problem in the service-learning and civic engagement programs, they are able to objectively report the effectiveness of  their particular “knowledge synthesis”, as they merge their own questions with the system’s information store in order to achieve a unique, personalized solution.

• The integration with Oncourse allows for process assessment: as both students and instructors interact with the system to develop custom solutions, the system records both the end solution as well as the discovery path/interaction steps of the users to achieve the solution.  These records can be made available for review across a wide range of metrics to determine level of efficacy in the service-learning and civic engagement programs.

Plan for Colleague Development

The introduction and implementation of all our developed tools (and teaching and learning processes enhanced by these tools) are continuing to be introduced to faculty during the development stages so as to build on the faculty’s sense of “ownership” in the process.  This process has been implemented via “lunch-box” type seminars and open “workshops.”  Additionally, colleague development in the information presented is an inherent function of the technologies developed: this process is expected to continue as the developed technologies are accessed for informational purposes.  Future plans include the ongoing presentation and discussion of the technologies and the underlying pedagogy at local IUPUI Scholarship of Teaching and Learning sessions and national audiences (conferences, etc.).

Final Comments on Project Results

The development and implementation of technologies that specifically focus on the dental school’s service-learning and civic engagement programs has been very useful in not only highlighting the relevance of these programs, but – critically – illustrating how these programs (and issues they address) are directly related to the larger predoctoral curriculum.  By developing Web-based tools to facilitate these programs, relevant information was not only more easily accessible, but – as indicated above via the integration with the Oncourse system – is allowing students and faculty to more easily work with and access the information, which in turn is facilitating the discovery of how service-learning and civic engagement issues impact (and are impacted by) other oral health care issues.  The integration with the Oncourse system was an early and especially relevant benefit, as we are able to leverage existing university technology to further support the specific goals of this project; moreover, the use of the Oncourse system allows for, as noted, more efficient integration with other aspects of the predoctoral curriculum.  While the technology initially identified to build a visual-interface search tool has proven more difficult to implement than first anticipated, work continues to be done with this tool, and the data that will be serve as the essential knowledge store for this tool is continuing to be collected and analyzed. 

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