The American Dental Education Association (ADEA) is the voice of dental education. ADEA members are more than 19,000 students, faculty, staff, and administrators from all of the U.S. and Canadian dental schools, many allied and advanced dental education programs, and numerous corporations working in oral health education.
Dental Hygiene director, Dr. Sharon Compton, and faculty members, Professors Alexandra Sheppard and Joan Leakey, presented posters at the 2013 ADEA Annual Session and Exhibition on March 16-19, 2013. This year's theme was 'Landscape of Learning'.
Detailed information on the poster presentations follows.
Alexandra Sheppard
Evaluation of Evening Student Clinics in a Dental Hygiene Program
The objectives of the study were to provide more accessible dental hygiene treatment to populations who cannot attend during daytime clinic hours and to determine the client demographics and levels of satisfaction with evening clinics as reported by clients, students, clinical instructors and staff. The questionnaire contained seven items using a 5-point Likert scale. Items were designed to measure levels of satisfaction with evening clinic appointments. Basic demographic information was collected. The second component was a student survey delivered online using Survey Monkey. The survey was designed to assess student experience after participation in evening clinics. Survey items used a 5-point Likert scale and it was sent to all 42 students. The third component included two focus groups, one with clinical instructors (N=3) and the other with support staff (N=3). Data from the client questionnaires and student survey was entered into epi-info for analysis. Younger clients attended the evening clinic which further diversified the dental hygiene student clinical learning experience. There was resistance by students for the evening clinic and it is believed this was partially due to the change to the clinical course in the middle of their program. 42.8% of clients indicated they would like to have the opportunity to attend evening dentistry student clinics. Clients and Dental Hygiene Instructors supported the evening clinic, however, students and support staff generally did not. We considered the evening clinic to be successful as client satisfaction was high and we increased accessibility to dental hygiene care for clients. In the second year of the evening clinic, modifications were made to the scheduling to address students' concerns. The researchers involved were Alexandra Sheppard (principle investigator, Sandy Cobban (deceased), Sharon Compton and Lisa Kline).
Joan Leakey
Determining defensible cutoff scores in a dental hygiene pre-clinical course
The Angoff process is one established method for determining credible pass scores for multiple-choice examinations and is adaptable for use with performance assessment exams. The purpose of this study was to determine defensible cutoff scores for pre-clinical student performance evaluation using the Angoff process and to assess clinical instructors' perceptions of the overall process. Two, 3-hour workshops were conducted with 10 experienced dental hygiene instructors. The process was guided by the Director of Psychometrics from the Department of Studies in Medical Education. Thirty-four characteristics of the MCB student were categorized into the six themes, providing a succinct profile of the MCB student: 1) Professionalism/Work Ethic; 2) Knowledge/Education; 3) Critical Thinking; 4) Physical/Mental; 5) Interpersonal Relations; and 6) Self Awareness/Self Perception/Confidence. Upon completion of this task, the clinical instructors examined existing preclinical instrumentation criteria and clarified each preclinical instrumentation skill as either a "critical" or "non-critical" task to be performed by the student. The instructors completed two questionnaires, one immediately following the first workshop and the second at the end of the first academic term after implementing the evaluation process using the Angoff to set cutoff scores. Predominantly, the instructors felt more confident with the passing score for each performance examination and believed it was defendable for identifying the minimally competent borderline student. Joan Leakey, presenter. Dr Louanne Keenan second author and Sharon Compton as third author.