COVID-19 adaptations for biomedical teaching and assessment within the undergraduate dental curriculum

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected the provision of teaching and assessment on the undergraduate dental programme in many institutions worldwide, and for a prolonged period resulted in the cessation of face-to-face teaching. This resulted in significant changes in the way that didactic and preclinical skills have been taught and required novel thinking to overcome the issues that COVID-19 restrictions presented. Dentistry is a very practical subject and at this institution, the University of Glasgow Dental Hospital and School, we had to quickly develop new ways of teaching that allowed us to cover teaching and assessment of the required Intended Learning Outcomes. This chapter highlights some specific case studies of how adaptations were made to the undergraduate dental teaching program within our institution utilising technology and visualisation to promote this during this turbulent time. These included teaching of head and neck anatomy, teaching of pre-clinical skills in placement of local anaesthetic and dental extraction forceps, communication skills as well as describing a raft of modifications to our assessment programme. Many of these innovations, utilising blended learning methodologies with the use of visualisation, have been transferred into other areas of teaching within the curriculum and will replace older material as we transition out of the pandemic, undoubtedly significantly improving the student experience.

Rights

This content is not covered by the Open Government Licence. Please see source record or item for information on rights and permissions.

Cite as

Downloadable citations

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17135-2_3

Repository URI

https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/288124/