Supporting the learner and teacher online.

Whether on or off campus, all students need support if they are to successfully complete their studies. Although 'good teachers' should be 'good teachers' in any medium, their support is especially important when technology is involved. Previous articles in the series have shown that the advent of ICT has added to the complexity of the type and provision of this help and advice, not least because it now involves technical as well as pedagogical and pastoral elements.

Remember the days in the old school yard: from lectures to online learning.

Claims have been made that the traditional classroom/lecture-room mode of teaching is under threat with the future being purely online-based. There is no doubt that the impact of ICT systems and services have and will continue to transform teaching practice. From PowerPoint slides introduced to enliven lectures to virtual reality models accessed remotely, technology is bringing about new educational paradigms.

Better informed in clinical practice - a brief overview of dental informatics.

Uptake of dental informatics has been hampered by technical and user issues. Innovative systems have been developed, but usability issues have affected many. Advances in technology and artificial intelligence are now producing clinically useful systems, although issues still remain with adapting computer interfaces to the dental practice working environment.

Better informed: an overview of health informatics.

Healthcare informatics is increasing in importance both for healthcare administrators and medical and dental practitioners. Governments across the developed world are initiating major national health IT programmes. At the same time, future best medical and dental practice will increasingly depend on computer-based support tools, although disagreement remains about the effectiveness of current support tools.

Webcasting: casting the web more widely.

In the search for a cost-effective method of delivering teaching to dispersed groups of students, webcasting is proving successful. By taking video streams and transmitting them over the Internet it allows events such as lectures, seminars, webinars and tuition sessions to be made accessible to participants in many different, remote locations. Moreover, the webcasts can be stored on a normal PC to give, those unable to see the original broadcast, the opportunity to watch it at a later, more convenient time; similarly it can be used by students for revision purposes.

Seeing is believing: dental education benefits from developments in videoconferencing.

Videoconferencing has been widely used to provide distant advice in many healthcare specialties across the world. However, videoconferencing has been further extended to support distance learning and has been evaluated through a number of educational projects. The use of the technology has been integrated as a core method of delivering training and education at all levels in dentistry.

Online learning in dentistry: the changes in undergraduate perceptions and attitudes over a four year period.

Objective: To assess the changing perceptions and attitudes of undergraduate dental students towards e-learning between 2001-2004. DESIGN, SAMPLE AND SETTING: This was a retrospective analysis of online questionnaire data, collected from four successive cohorts of final year students undertaking an online therapeutics course in a large teaching hospital.

Methods: Students were required to complete a structured and open questionnaire relating to their perceived ICT skills, the course itself, and their perceptions of e-learning.

Portable digital assistants (PDAs) in dentistry: part II--pilot study of PDA use in the dental clinic.

Aim: To describe a simple technical evaluation of the access, security issues and uses of wireless networked PDAs in a dental clinic and report a pilot study investigating students' educational use of PDAs to access a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in a dental clinic.

Objectives: To undertake a technical evaluation of wireless networking to PDAs focusing on security issues, robustness of the system and accessibility particularly to educational resources. To evaluate the impact of using a PDA on undergraduate students in the dental clinic and at home.

Portable digital assistants (PDAs) in dentistry: part I.

Aim: To provide a basic understanding of the features of a portable digital assistant (PDA) and how it may be useful for the general dental practitioner.

Objectives: To outline the various types, functions and applications of a PDA and suggest its use for the dental professional now and in the future. To enable appreciation of the technology and educational evaluation carried out in the pilot study reported in Part II.