ADEE-ADEA cooperation

Chairs

A collaborative Special Interest Group with the American Dental Education Association jointly chaired by representtaives of ADEA and ADEE leadership.  

Meeting and Activities Oslo 2018

The next meeting of the SIG is scheduled for Oslo 2018 where an update on the meetings in Brescia, Italy will be discussed along with an overview of presentation of the London meeting that took place at IADR.

Aims and Objectives

To explore and further expand all aspects of the ADEE-ADEA cooperation.

1. To formalise and promote the cooperation between the two organisations
2. To utilise the ADEE and ADEA networks through the SIG to promote debate and discussion on all matters of mutual interest, promote mutual understanding, exchange of knowledge and best practices
3. To explore ways of translating the cooperation in practical outcomes, such as organisation of joint conferences, workshops and position papers

Meeting and Activities Vilnius 2017

The SIG reviewed the delivery and outcomes of the Joint ADEA/ADEE meeting Shaping The Future of Dental Education. It was advised that a special edition of the European Journal of Dental Eductaion is planned for the Spring of 2018 which will summarise the meeting outcomes.  The SIG offered its appreciation to the staff of King's College Londono for hosting the venue.  Evaluation feedback has been very positive.  

Following discussion the SIG agreed a second meeting should be delivered in Spring 2019.  

Meeting and Activities Barcelona 2016

The meeting focussed on finalising plans for the Joint ADEA/ADEE meeting Shaping the Future of Dental Education London 2017.

A summary of the planned workshops was finalised and an initial discussion on possible future areas of mutual focus were discussed.  

Meeting and Activities Szeged 2015

The SIG began with Damien Walmsley (ADEE President) welcoming the participants and outlining the aims of this particular SIG. He emphasized that among the most important aims are

1. the advancement of the two organisations cooperation and
2. the organization of a joint meeting to address the interests of the international membership, as these are gradually derived through the SIG’s bi-annual meetings

Argyro Kavadella (ADEE Secretary General) provided a review of the past two ADEE/ADEA SIG meetings, the recent one held in March 2015 in Boston, MA at the ADEA Annual Session and the previous, first SIG meeting, held in Riga, Latvia during the ADEE 2014 annual meeting.

Bryan Cook (ADEA) gave an overview of plans for the ADEE/ ADEA meeting to be held at Kings College of London in May 8th and 9th of 2017.  Attendees were asked to provide any known major conferences or meetings that would conflict with that date. We then began a discussion on the general structure of the meeting.  Some of the ideas mentioned were:

• Working groups
• Roundtable discussions
• Speed Presentations (no more than 5 minutes)

While everyone felt there should be plenaries there was agreement that this meeting should feel somewhat different from a typical ADEE or ADEA meeting in both its content and format,  both ADEE and ADEA envision an innovative meeting, which will address current dental education issues and will provide the participants with useful outcomes and tools to bring back to their countries and institutions. As such incorporating more working groups and/or roundtables as well as introducing novel formats like speed presentations would give this meeting a different and unique feel.  The idea of posters was suggested because many faculty can only get funding to attend a meeting if they are presenting.  Posters provide a way for attendees to receive funding while sharing information about their school.  An overwhelming majority of SIG members felt an overarching concept for the structure of the meeting should be facilitating consistent and substantive interaction among meeting attendees.  SIG members believed the greatest benefit to attendees of this conference would be the opportunity to connect with and learn from their international colleagues. As such the structure of the meeting should offer as much active participation and interaction as possible.

The conversation then moved to a discussion of possible topics for the ADEE/ADEA meeting. Michael Escudier (King’s College of London) provided a proposed outline for a meeting around the topic of assessment, including work-based assessment, osce’s (pitfalls and advantages), peer-assessment (e.g. faculty), student traditional assessment (e.g. MCQs), assessment of professionalism and ethics.  SIG members were then asked to break into groups to discuss:

1. If assessment is the right topic,
2. If so what should be covered, and 
3. Are there other topics that should be discussed at the meeting?

The general feedback from the discussion groups was that assessment is a topic of interest and could be addressed as part of the programme of an international meeting .  Areas under assessment that were identified as potential subtopics were:

• Best practices from around the world
• A pre-conference assessment of what conference attendees are doing at their schools related to assessment
  • (This would be completed when attendees pre-register for the meeting. The results of the pre-assessment would be provided to conference attendees when they check in on-site allowing them to seek out individuals who were doing work of interest)
• Opportunities for research on assessment a global research that would look at different mechanisms of assessment
• Influence / interaction of assessment on policy (school and government) and curriculum
• What drives assessment in different countries (competencies?)
• Cultural competencies - exchanges between different cultures of assessment in different countries
• Essential competencies of dentists and their relation to assessment
• Evaluation of the changes
• Assessment for different levels (undergrad, postgrad, MSc, cpd, etc)
• Transition from pre-clinic to clinic
• How much assessment is taking place around the world
• Who is being assessed? Just students? What about faculty?
• How is technology being used in assessment? - e.g. a workshop on e-assessment

After the discussion on assessment, the SIG small groups were asked to discuss how the meeting could facilitate more interaction among conference attendees. The format and structure of the meeting must be appropriate to address the uniqueness of the meeting, in terms of its international aspect, the interactivity and the learning environment.Ideas that were offered were:

• Organize thematic small groups around a discussion paper
• Have “prescribed” lectures
• Thematic plenary sessions
• Have workshops, where pre-written position papers will be discussed by the attendees and conclude to specific outcomes/guidelines
• A combination of plenaries and workshops
• Workshop on “worst practices” and “best practices gone wrong”
• Have a global reaction panel for each plenary session
• Have posters in the small group breakout rooms organized around themes (the possibility of electronic posters was also raised)

Following this discussion there was a brief conversation with several of the Japanese SIG members. They raised the issue that the level of comfort with speaking English can be a barrier to participation in meetings such as this. They were quick to point out that they very much appreciate and look forward to the ADEE/ADEA meeting but wanted to raise awareness that their lack of vocalization in these meetings is more about their lack of comfort with English than a lack of desire to participate.  As such we should look for ways to engage attendees who may not be as comfortable speaking English.

Meeting and Activities Riga 2014

The Riga 2014 meeting provided a valuable opportunity to brainstorm areas of commonality between ADEE and ADEA.  Areas of note that were recorded included:

1. competencies for dental educators
2. assessment for educators and students
3. mobility
4. lifelong learning
5. leadership and management for educators and students
6. research into education
7. scholarship for high quality teaching and learning

More details of the Riga SIG meeting are available here.

Future Plans

The above proposed topics and structure of the joint ADEA-ADEE meeting will inform the next SIGs organized during the relevant ADEA and ADEE meetings in 2016, where these aspects will be further enriched and clarified, leading to a comprehensive meeting framework.

SIG Leader Announcements and Update

Updates from the SIG leaders will be provided here in due course.