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During this course I found that learning about different education techniques was most valuable to me. It opened me up to different ways to do things and unique ways on how to educate students. Writing a blog was something I had never done before. I think it could be used a good way to get creative with students and use it as an outlet for them to show what their interests and passions are. This could help to see what type of dental hygiene career the students wants to have. I think I will utilize Pecha Kucha to help introduce topics to students prior to meeting to class. I think I will use it for the class social media platform and use it as a way to engage with students in between class meetings. I think I will also use Prezi more often for use in lecture. I forgot about this platform until our last assignment about finding presentation platforms other than PowerPoint. That assignment opened me up other presentation platforms that I did not realize existed and I think that schools should educate people on. I also thought that the use of having students lead discussion board assignments helped to learn how to set up discussion boards. I would have never known how to do that until that assignment, Teaching others about classroom topics is a good way to learn the material yourself. I think this is a unique way of doing it other than having people do presentations. I have done the presentation style in previous classes, but having it as a discussion board helps to force other people to engage and to actually pay attention to what is being discussed. Overall I think I will take a lot that I learned in this class and utilize it in my future classroom. Education has never been my first career choice, so I have used this course to focus on different means of running a classroom and how to best engage with students.

The technology that I feel I will use in the future is social media. Most likely I will lean toward facebook. Many people are on some sort of social media platform especially the younger generations. As the years continue, people will continue to become dependent on technology, so it only makes sense to utilize it in the class room. I would like to use facebook to post recorded lectures, post discussions, and use it as a means of communication with the students. Several studies have been done to determine the usefulness of social media in the classroom. One study found that, using the learning community theory, high school students are learning to create that sense of community with their classmates. This mirrors the results  achieved by previous researchers that have used sense of community theory when discussing how students can work with others to increase their collective knowledge  while creating a learning community amongst themselves (Bielaczyc and Collins, 1999). This utilization of social media can go hand in hand with a flipped classroom style of learning. The teacher can post content that needs to be read prior to meeting in class. Discussion boards could also be posted in order to increase student communication among each other. This aids in increasing students critical thinking and communication skills. There is some reluctance from educators wanting to use social media in the classroom. Some feel that social media is distracting. In normal, everyday life, social media is distracting, but from what I have read, using social media in the proper way helps students to become more active in the classroom. A study tested students to see what their response was to using facebook in the classroom and they found that, based on the responses of those who ‘liked’ the page, there was significant data to demonstrate the effectiveness of the page in keeping students interested in the class. The fact that the vast majority of those who ‘liked’ the page wanted more teachers to create a Facebook page for their class should be evidence enough that there were positive aspects to the social network to validate more uses of it in education (Hull, 2014). I have found that using social media in a proper and professional way can help to improve student learning and interaction between each other and the educator. 

I feel that the best types of assessment for entry level dental hygiene students are quizzes/tests. Hygiene school is about preparing you to be the best dental hygienist you can be, but also, it prepares you to take the national board at the end of your program. Personally, for me I feel like if i were to take a huge test like that with only doing other means of assessment through college, then I do not feel I would have been prepared for that big test. Quiz assessments are best for the non-clinical classes though. Hands-on competency assessments work best for clinical requirements. You can’t determine a students ability to scale calculus from taking a quiz. I feel the way my dental hygiene classes were ran, was the best way to test us on what we had learned. Based on CODA’s requirements, there is not really one way that dental hygiene should be taught. Depending on the topic at hand, and what needs to be measured, determines what assessment needs to be done. Dental hygiene classes do require a big focus in preparing for a large test, but clinical requirements, require a different means of assessment. To assess a student’s ability to diagnose and be good at observing pathological abnormalities, case studies are best for this assessment. This combines clinical observation with quizzes and gives the best assessment to determine competence.

However, I do believe that the Clinical Board is a poor way to determine a students ability to clean teeth. Through the two years of clinical education, I feel that the amount of patients that are seen, and the requirements that are required by students, should be enough to determine clinical competence. This is a topic not for dental hygiene instructors, but rather for CODA and the dental board. Many students fail the clinical board because their patients do not qualify, not because of their inability to clean the patient’s teeth.

I have only had a few online classes, but I am starting to become more familiar and comfortable with them. Some similarities that I see between online learning and traditional learning is that students have to work hard to learn at home and to comprehend what they have learned. Both learning styles require feedback and grades to help students feel like they are doing a good job in class and shows what they can improve on. Some differences are that online learning requires more self-direction from the student and requires them to be more motivated to spend time teaching themselves the material. Response times can be on the slower side between teacher and student due to having to email as a means of communication rather than being able to discuss questions face-to-face. When looking at the differences, a benefit to face-to-face learning for teachers is that they are better able to read their students face to see if they need to explain information more. Also, with online learning, if synchronous sessions occur, these meetings are more difficult since most people doing online learning work full time, so student-teacher interaction becomes more difficult.

The benefits to online learning is that students are able to do their assignments on their own time while being able to work. Also, people who have families are able to do their studies after children have gone to bed or while they are at school. Online learning can also be more affordable for some since it does not require to be on campus. Studies have also shown that students learn just as well, if not better, through online learning because there is more self-teaching allowing the student to be more involved.  The challenges of online learning are for students who are auditory learners or need to be shown how to do something before they do it, tend to struggle comprehending material with online learning. Students who have poor time management skills can struggle with online learning since the student has to be self motivated and disciplined to check their classes everyday. Students in online classes or programs need to be tech savvy so they can learn how to use the software in a timely manner. Another difficulty with online learning are for the programs who need clinical check-offs and observation. These observations are not obtainable through online classrooms.

Online learning has had it positives and negatives for me. The biggest positive for me is that because this  program is online, I am able to go back to school. Without this online program, a master’s degree would most likely not be obtainable for me since I have to work full time to help support my husband and I. Another positive is that I am able to take my schooling wherever I go. If I have to go out of town, I can still get work completed by just logging onto my computer. The biggest struggle I have with online learning is that I find I struggle with information in some classes more. I have always been a pretty quick learner and pick things up well, but I struggle with several things in this program since I do not have someone there to show me how to do it first. The synchronous sessions help, but its not like a normal class that meets weekly for face to face instruction. I’m usually really good at math based classes, but with statistics I am struggling to comprehend the information. I think this is mostly because I am a visual and auditory learner. I benefit and learn best when I hear and am physically shown how to do things a few times. This helps me to understand what needs to be done and what is expected of me. I find myself questioning myself frequently if I am doing assignments correctly. I have really had to spend a lot of time on educating myself and reading over material multiple times. Asking for help from classmates has been beneficial as well. Online learning is great, but I think for some people it is not the best option depending on how they learn best.

The best lecture I ever had was a continuing education course I attended on the Smiles at Sea continuing education cruise. The presentation was given by Dr. Chris Kammer. It is hard for me to choose just one of his lectures I enjoyed, but my top two would have to be his presentation on a No Drill Dental Office and the connection of oral bacteria and heart disease. He focused a lot on nutrition and how to prevent decay and other diseases. He discussed different products he uses to help heal small lesions and the nutrition education he gives his patients. He also discussed a lot about saliva testing and the strands of bacteria that show how likely you are to possibly have a heart attack in the future. He had his saliva tester set up to test if you were getting the proper nutrition and found ways to engage his audience. His continuing education courses were probably the only ones I have never been bored out of my mind at. He was also a comedian in a way, so he knew how to make you laugh and make his lectures engaging. Usually I find lectures pretty boring since all you do is sit there, but he knew how to keep your attention. I cam agree with the points that are being made in the article “Physicist seeks to Lose the Lecture as a Learning Tool.” While I don’t feel that lecturing needs to be completely thrown out the window, I think we need to find more innovative ways to go about it. The article says that many students who get good grades from lecturing type teaching styles, are doing more of the teaching themselves, which I think is totally true. I remember very little of what is told to me, but in a lecture, writing it down helps so that I can go home and educate myself on it. Now with Dr. Kammer’s presentation, there was a lot I remembered from the class. He told stories and came up with catch phrases to help with memorizing the information. Finding ways to engage with the class helps to keep their attention on the information that they are learning. The Physicist also discussed a professor who did group learning with his students. I think this is great to do on occasion, but I would not want to fully rely on that because there are people who do not excel at working with groups. These are the introverts of the class and the people who would rather do work and analyze information on their own.  This problem based learning technique would also be difficult to instill with some dental hygiene classes. Dental hygiene is a lot of fact based information. I think problem based learning would work well in a class such as oral pathology where case studies could be given to students and they would have to come up with a diagnoses. I think it is important to maybe stick with a few teaching styles to keep the class from getting bored and give people opportunities to excel at what they are good at. In general, some of the teaching styles discussed in the reading like problem based learning and debates are more difficult to use in majors like dental hygiene. Debates could work in some classes, but overall I think lecture style technique would work best for most dental hygiene classes. This would leave it up to the teacher to find creative ways to engage the class.

During my undergrad, most of my classes were lecture based. Lecture based teaching worked well for me in hygiene school, I think mostly because I was passionate about what was being taught, but when it came to other general education classes, I found myself doing work for other classes or zoning out. One thing my hygiene instructors did that made it easier to follow along with for lectures is that they gave us printed lecture notes that gave an outline of the information and then we would fill out the information from the slides. This saved a lot of writing time and gave us more time to discuss and ask questions. I feel like this helped to better engage us. The following week we would have a quiz over that section we just learned. When I think about an innovative classroom, I think it’s hard for me to picture other ways to teach dental hygiene and test the knowledge. Even though weekly quizzes were stressful, it was preparing us for the national board since it is one big multiple choice test.

Classroom innovation is important in order to change with the diversity of students and the changing times of the world, but I think there is a lot we should still continue to do and use. Lecture based teaching always worked well for me, but I think educators need to find ways to better engage their students. Educators need to find ways to get students to be interactive with the lecture and stop periodically to have students reflect on what they’ve learned. When it comes to dental hygiene, I think engaging students during lecture would include tying the information into a clinical aspect. When students see how they could use the information they are being taught in real life, it makes it easier to remember and want to memorize it. Instead of just learning the information for a test, find ways that the students can apply the knowledge to their career so that they are better prepared for the clinical aspect of dental hygiene.

When thinking of an innovative classrooms, technology can be your best friend. I think innovative classrooms involve utilizing new technology such as laptops and websites for students and teachers to connect. Having the lectures posted online for students to refer back to can be a great innovative way to help students if they have any questions while doing assignments.  Innovative classrooms should also include ways in which students become involved with their learning. In my nutrition class, I remember we were assigned a topic and asked to educate the rest of the class about it using powerpoint. This helped to change up the class room dynamic and kept up discussion in the classroom. It gave us something to look forward to instead of the same lectures every week.

In this course I would like to utilize what I learned last semester and put it towards learning how to use those tools to teach. Teaching was not my first thought when I thought about what I wanted to do for my career when I was graduating high school. Now that I have been in practice for five years I have learned that I enjoy being a leader and helping to educate people, but I do not know the first thing about executing lectures and course content. Through this course I would like to become confident in knowing how to stand in front of a class and educate them to the best of my abilities. In the future I would like to teach at Shawnee State and I hope that this class helps me to learn new techniques that I can take to the classroom and help better the students at Shawnee State’s dental hygiene program.

I would like to further explore teaching techniques and seeing them in action. Last semester I feel that I reviewed teaching theories and methods, but I would like to see those theories put to use so that I can determine what I think will work best for me in the future. Through my dental hygiene career at Shawnee State, most of our classes were strictly lecture and quizzes. I do not have a lot of experience with online courses, blog posting, online synchronous sessions, and the other modalities that Ohio State has brought to me thus far. Getting used to the new technology has been my greatest challenge. This is my biggest concern coming into this semester, is learning how to quickly become comfortable with the technology without having someone over my shoulder helping me learn how to use it. Teaching is a new aspect to me so learning how to do that while learning the new technology is going to be my biggest battle through the semesters to come.