This module focuses on how the dental hygienist can ensure the quality of their own professional practice through an analytical and meta-reflective approach to components in the clinical reasoning and the theoretical basis of dental hygiene. This is founded in patient situations and cases. The module also focuses on the role of the dental hygienist in the odontology team and cooperation with other professional groups within the team.
Previously, reflections considering internships were described in a subsequent internship report, but there was a wish for the reflection to be simultaneous, and to make it possible for the internship in progress to be affected by the reflections. The students should be offered better feedback in the shape of feedforward, encouraging them to engage in further reflection or seek new knowledge. There was a wish to maintain contact with the students during internships and to prevent undesirable internship processes
Blackboard’s journal was chosen as a tool, as this provided the opportunity to write personal entries, structure entries and add comments.
Students wrote journal entries every day. The teachers commented once a week. An agreement was made with the students that all entries were read, but not all entries were commented on.
The teacher found that it was possible to influence internships and encourage reflection rather than description.
The journal activity began in 2013 and continued as described until 2017. The activity was then revised to relieve the workload of both teachers and students and to incorporate peer feedback.
The intention of the journal was good, but it resulted in a large reading and feedback workload for individual teachers. During the first years, the students wrote in their journal on a daily basis, which was a “heavy” job for both students and teachers. In the following years, this happened on a weekly basis, which relieved the pressure for everyone. However, the meta-reflection stipulated in the module objectives was not achieved, and at the same time, the students were asking for more sparring with each other.
The course has therefore adopted group blogs, in which the students take turns in groups of five to six to write journal entries, and the other students raise objections to/comment on these. A teacher is affiliated to each group as a “fly on the wall”, but the teacher also adds comments and acts as a sparring partner. However, blogs require very explicit control; therefore a deadline may be given for the entries to be posted, as well as a time span in which other group members should add comments.
Faculty: Health
Degree Programme: Professional Bachelor's degree programme in Dental Hygiene
Course: Dental hygiene – quality assurance, clinical reasoning and treatment
Study level: BSc
Course size: Approx. 75 students
Teaching method: Internship
Extent: Whole course
Applied technology: Blackboard (ATT: we now use Brightspace)
How the case was conducted: Online teaching
