A Comparison of Cognitive Presence in Asynchronous and Synchronous Discussions in an Online Dental Hygiene Course.

Many dental hygiene degree completion (34) and graduate (14) programs offer the majority or all of their course offerings online. While the concept of real-time video web-conferencing has been realized through advances in technology, only 5% of dental hygiene programs report utilizing real-time technologies. The purpose of this study was to use the Community of Inquiry Framework to observe and compare the development of cognitive presence and critical thinking between two different methods of online discussion; asynchronous discussion boards and synchronous video web-conferences.

Examination of social networking professionalism among dental and dental hygiene students.

Becoming a dental professional requires one to apply ethical decision making skills and demonstrate high standards of professionalism in practice, including the way professionals present themselves to the public. With social media as an evergrowing part of personal and professional communications, this study aimed to determine the accessibility, amount, and type of unprofessional content on Facebook profiles of dental hygiene and dental students in a college of dentistry. The authors evaluated the online profiles of all 499 dental and dental hygiene students at The Ohio State University using objective measures that included existence of a profile, current privacy settings, and access to personally identifiable information.