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Progress Report

June 2008

As mentioned in the December report, the Curriculum Plan was presented to staff and interested stakeholders at the Second Curriculum Conference held in January. While this meeting was supportive of the proposed changes it became apparent that more time for discussion of the details was essential to ensure that these were fully understood and supported before implementation was commenced. The need for new curriculum changes to be approved by the Faculty and the University’s Programs Approval Committee early in the year meant that there would not be time to allow for this period of debate. The importance of this activity was such that a decision was taken to delay implementation of the revised curriculum until 2010.

The School has established a Curriculum Implementation Committee (CIC) which has taken over the leadership role for the Review from the Curriculum Task Force. It is chaired by Dr Paul Sambrook. In association with the Academic Advisory Committee, the CIC is arranging a series of meetings to discuss the various components of the proposed Curriculum Plan.

Work has almost been completed on the School’s on-line Core Curriculum Data Base. This will provide specific information on the expected student outcomes in both the clinical and underpinning scientific areas of study. There has been very strong School support for the data-base to be given an aboriginal name  In consultation with elders of the local Kaurna people it has been decided to call the data base ‘Ngutto’, which is the word for ‘knowledge’.  An eye catching logo has also been designed incorporating traditional aboriginal images.

December 2007

Considerable progress has been made over the last 2 months and the Task Force is now ready to table a draft of the Curriculum Plan to staff, students and other interested stakeholders. This will be presented at the Second Curriculum Conference to be held on January 24th from 4-6pm (details of location to follow).

The Core Curriculum Data Base is close to completion and will soon be available to staff for their comments and suggestions for modifications. This will be a vital task as the data base will be the repository of the assessable content of the curriculum. Work on the IT system to house the data base is underway with a prototype having been designed in association with CLPD (anyone interested in have a look at this should contact Adam Townsend or David Newble). Meetings are underway with ITS to find the most effective way of operationalising this to make it compatible with MyUni.

The Assessment Strategy document is in the final stages of approval by the Executive Committee and the central university assessment review committee. Once ratified it will provide the blueprint for a set of policies to be applied across all phases of the new curriculum (and hopefully also within the current curriculum). It is expected that a number of staff development activities on various aspects of assessment will be provided in 2008.

A briefing document on ILAs is now available on this website. Comments and suggestions are sought from staff and students.

The Dental School is in the process of making significant changes to its organisational and administrative structure which will play an important part in the successful implementation of the new curriculum. Two key appointments have been made specifically in regard to the new curriculum – Paul Sambrook  has accepted the position of Theme Director for Dental Sciences and Peter Cathro has accepted to position of Theme Director for Clinical Competences. Both are working closely with the School’s educational adviser David Newble and with the Chair of the Curriculum Committee, Tracey Winning.

September 2007

Several concurrent activities are now underway.

The first is the development of an Assessment Strategy (pdf 44kB). The content and format of assessment procedures are an integral part of any curriculum and strongly influence what and how students learn. The Curriculum Review Task Force advocates a strategy to be applied to all years and components of the curriculum using approaches and evidence-based methods that reflect international best practice. The Assessment Strategy proposal has been debated by the Task Force and has been circulated to staff and student representatives. Feedback has been supportive and the document received no adverse comments at a meeting of the Academic Advisory Committee. The document will be passed to the Executive Committee for final approval.

The second is a series of workshops involving academic staff, dentist in private practice and students in developing the core content of the curriculum. This is being structured around a set of Dental Presentations (pdf 9kB). These are the ways that patients present to a general dentist (eg. toothache, bleeding gums). Blueprints have been produced by teams of specialists, general dentists and teachers of the dental sciences. These identify what the students need to know or be able to do at the time of graduation in order to practice as a general dental practitioner. A similar set of blueprints will be produced for the medical and other health related problems that are part of dental clinical practice. Comments on these lists are being encouraged. Once on a computer data base the blueprints will be available for review and modification.

The third activity relates to the construction of a curriculum plan. This is still under development and discussion by the Task Force. The first draft should be available in the next few weeks.

August 2007

The first Curriculum Conference was held on the evening of July 5th 2007 in the South Australian Art Gallery. At this meeting 120 stakeholders (academic staff, students, private and community dentists, health service providers and members of the general community) generated a set of Curriculum Vision Statements. These identified the main principles and key features of the revised curriculum, and will form the framework for the more detail curriculum development activities over the coming months. In essence they provide a map showing the main pathways of the journey including some interesting and alternative routes for both staff and students! The next step will be the construction of a Curriculum Plan designed to encompass the Vision Statements.