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The Office of Academic Affairs  at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine (TUSDM) is responsible for developing and delivering comprehensive professional development workshops on a variety of topics including:

  • Dental profession, disciplines and clinical techniques
  • Technology tools (CANVAS, ExamSoft, Zoom, Kaltura, Echo360, WebEx, and others)
  • Educational research (qualitative and quantitative methods)
  • Educational pedagogy
  • Student learning

The office supports a wide range of educational activities, from managing examinations for predoctoral and postgraduate dental students, to more advanced technical training opportunities for both students and faculty. The Office is responsible for managing the online course content (at this point in time using CANVAS system). Keeping on top of trends in online education is a fast-moving, highly technical, and interesting exercise, one that challenges user intuitiveness and, on some level, adds a whole separate learning curriculum to the existing one.

Support of clinical activities is very specific: working closely with the Associate and Assistant Deans of Academic Affairs and the Tufts IT Departments, our team members maintain the electronic grading system in axiUm and clinical reports. The office is a resource for tracking and generating reports and key metrics for senior administration to monitor and track student progression through their years here.

One-on-one training, curriculum consulting and the use of different pedagogies for teaching and assessment to faculty members, support faculty with the use of technology in the preclinical and classroom areas is available.

Resources

Please see below the CANVAS page for faculty education with resources:  https://canvas.tufts.edu/courses/4603/modules

Below is the university page with resources; a current focus is remote/virtual teaching in the COVID Pandemic era but also, as a normal time resource (example) some Clinical Case Work Discussion resources:  https://sites.tufts.edu/teaching/

More information on the integration of artificial intelligence into the assessment process can be found on the ExamSoft website: https://examsoft.com/exam-monitor.

Resources available for beginner and advanced Canvas users:

Tufts Educational Technology Services

Canvas is Tufts’ learning management system (LMS). Course web sites are automatically created in Canvas for most courses listed in SIS. Use Canvas to post announcements; give assignments and collect student submissions; host online asynchronous discussions; deliver timed quizzes and exams; and distribute course materials. Canvas can also be used for live 1:1 and group video conferencing using WebEx. Below please find highlights of what's available on the Educational Technology Services website:

  1. Canvas basics
  2. Canvas video guides for instructors
  3. Canvas on demand training library
  4. Calendar overview
  5. Course home page customization
  6. Discussions overview
  7. Quizzes overview