Course IV timeline (Patient Assessment II)
It all started in 2015 with a comprehensive needs assessment and evaluation. From there it developed into what we call a ‘legacy journey’ which many people have been able to put their fingerprint on.
The idea of changing something that had been in place for many, many years was both daunting and exciting, but the rationale was clear and so away we went. Planning a new Doctor of Dentistry Surgery (DDS) curriculum was on the heels of a successful accreditation but it was our collective desire to improve dental education and the student experience that sealed the fate of this project. The focus of this curriculum renewal is on improving student learning experiences. It also strengthens the alignment of the curriculum with the Association of Canadian Faculties of Dentistry and the ADA+C competencies for general practitioners.
After years of rigorous reviews, planning, design and development, the first year of the newly designed DDS program is being implemented. The class of 2023 are the first cohort of students to experience the newly designed “curriculum for learners” and we can confidently say that we are on our way to reaping the fruits of our labour.
There are many aspects of the first year implementation that are going very well. Student feedback we have gathered through various forums such as focus groups and surveys indicate we are going in the right direction and are on a good path. They say having the option to do the biomedical content through combined classroom and online delivery has been good and that the newly developed integration and dental relevance sessions motivated them to actually learn the biomedical subject matter. They also mentioned that getting hands-on clinical experience early makes them feel more familiar with the core aspects of becoming a dental professional and feel like, “they are in dentistry.” Feedback from exit surveys in previous years, had an overwhelming response from students that said they didn’t feel like they were in dentistry during the first years of school because of the concentrated focus on biomedical content they received.
So… while there are pleasant surprises in how well this massive project is rolling out, there are lots of things we continue to learn from this process about how best to educate future dentists. But what’s most important, is that for the first year students, it’s been a virtually seamless rollout.
We continue to implement the new curriculum in stages (by year) because it’s the best way to feasibly undertake this work. Full implementation of all four years of the new curriculum will be completed in 2023.