With funding through Temple University's Online Learning Project, Temple University School of Dentistry developed a set of 10 World Wide Web (WWW)-based continuing education courses in "Computer Applications in Dentistry." The first of these courses will be delivered in October 1996. The courses integrate a variety of media and instructional methods and include an online testing component. The presentation describes the development process, challenges and pitfalls, and demonstrates the product to participants.

Temple University School of Dentistry has also begun to use these courses in the predoctoral curriculum and started to develop a WWW Courseware Developer's Kit for faculty. In the long term, we envision a completely digital curriculum that is enriched by students' real experiences at the school. This presentation is useful for all healthcare educators and decision makers who are pursuing the implementation of WWW-based teaching materials.

Development of the WWW-based Continuing Education Program In the summer of 1995, Temple University funded a pilot project for online learning, which was designed to stimulate the use of various distance learning technologies in the university's offerings. Five faculty received awards ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 for development of courses in a variety of disciplines and audiences. The School of Dentistry received an award for the development of a continuing education course on "Computer Applications in Dentistry." Continuing education of dentists through the Internet was a good pilot project for several reasons. Dentists are relatively busy professionals for whom spending too much time away from the office for continuing education is difficult. Most states have continuing education requirements which dentists have to fulfill. Many areas in dentistry are developing rapidly, creating the need for continuous updating of skills and knowledge.

The project first surveyed 1,200 dentists to determine the level of interest in WWW-based continuing education courses. Of the 200 respondents, 95% indicated that they would be interested in participating in WWW-based continuing education. The survey also solicited topics of interest from which the course curriculum was developed. A second, focused survey of twenty "Internet-savvy" dentists (dentists on a dental discussion list) served as a basis of detailed design of the course. All fourteen respondents indicated that they would consider taking courses through the World Wide Web if the material were relevant and well-presented. Most respondents preferred to pick from a pool of online modules, rather than to complete a series of modules in a lock-step fashion. Two-thirds of the respondents indicated that they would like to take course modules at the same time as other participants in order to be able to discuss the material with them. Relevance of material was the most highly rated criterion in deciding on whether to take a course, followed by the ability to have access to the material after the course. Reputation of the lecturer/preceptor, as well as the possibility to access the material at any time, were also important factors.

The development team consisted of three faculty at three different universities (Temple University, University of Berlin/Germany, and University of Michigan), supported by a graduate student. The team first focused on the development of user interfaces and presentation of the material. Several World Wide Web authoring style guides, such as the Web style manual from the Yale Center for Advanced Media, were reviewed before designing the course template. A set of guidelines for online authors specified look and feel, as well as internal structure, of teaching resources. The figure below shows a sample prototype page with navigation buttons at the top of the page and some sample content.

!Here please insert the image!: The design of resources attempted to fulfill four requirements: easy, user-friendly design and navigation; simulation of selected features of printed education resources to ease the transition to the electronic medium; the integration of an online testing and evaluation component; and the ability to search the material. A customized set of navigation and function buttons replaces the browser toolbar for the course. Buttons allow easy navigation from one page to the next and to other main parts of the course page. The instructor, newsgroup, and chatroom buttons put often-used communication functions within easy reach. The content was divided into small chunks of 2-3 screens each. This avoids the classic "getting lost" problem that occurs when material of varying length is presented on the computer. Participants have the sense of paging through a book when using the resource. Various chapters within the resource contain tests which are scored online by a customized CGI script. The script allows authors to develop multiple-choice, self scoring tests relatively easily. A scoresheet informs the user about his/her progress at any time during the test. A further enhancement will be to allow the participant to e-mail the scoresheet to the course faculty. Lastly, the pages were connected to an Excite search engine on the server to enable participants to search the material.

Implementation: The course was pilot-tested in the course "Introduction to Computing" that is taught to Temple Dental School's sophomores. Supervised online course sessions served as usability tests for the software. Based on observations and feedback from students, the user interface and the content were fine tuned. Student reaction to the modules was highly positive. A major attraction was the ability to progress through the material at each individual's pace, while having faculty available for questions. Course faculty also had a better opportunity to concentrate on weaker students.

The course is currently being prepared for release as a continuing education course to practicing dentists. The first module will be released October 15, 1996. Twenty dentists from the tri-state area will participate. Results of this course will be presented at the conference.

Development of WWW Courseware Developer's Kit The results of this pilot project encouraged Temple University School of Dentistry to begin the development of a fully electronic curriculum. An initial objective was to enable faculty to develop similar course resources on their own. For this purpose, the school developed a three-part course on authoring electronic teaching resources which, combined with the WWW Courseware Developer's Kit, helps faculty get started quickly. The instructional design course consists of three parts. "Basics of Instructional Design" introduces faculty members to concepts and principles of instructional design which are important in developing any teaching resource, whether electronic or non-electronic. Participants apply theses principles in the second part of the course using desktop presentation programs. The last part of the course, "Authoring World Wide Web Teaching Resources," teaches participants how to use Adobe PageMill and templates to develop World Wide Web teaching resources.

The fully developed WWW Courseware Developer's Kit will further automate the process of authoring World Wide Web resources. Faculty are usually busy, non-technical people for whom the authoring process has to be as easy as simple word processing. The WWW Courseware Developer's Kit will be comprised of a set of templates accompanied by wizards which make building teaching resources accessible to non-technical individuals. The kit will also include an online scoring module which will enable faculty to integrate tests into their resources. The CGI script that is necessary to score tests will be available through a central server.

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