Historically, the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Dentistry offered a Bachelor of Dental Hygiene (BDSc) Completion Program using a traditional face-to-face delivery, only one of two universities in Canada to offer such advanced dental hygiene education. Yet, the students in the program had been indicating interest in part-time, distance learning for some time. In 1999, over 95% of the students enrolled in the BDSc program were women who indicated study was only part of their overall responsibilities. Many worked full-time, were raising families and were active in their communities, in addition to part-time study. To complete the program, students from British Columbia and Canada had to relocate or commute to take the core classes, and many chose to complete their electives using distance courses available to them from other faculties and universities.

In the mid-1990s, the Faculty of Dentistry moved its traditionally classroom-based curriculum to a problem-based model, eliminating the format of many former courses. The BDSc students shared classes with the full-time dental students. When the shift was made, ending the option for BDSc students to attend their core courses with others in the Faculty of Dentistry, the BDSc Completion Program and the Distance Education and Technology unit of UBC saw an opportunity to collaborate and form a partnership.

In 1997 work began on the creation of a new concept in the delivery of the core courses in the BDSc completion program. Using a project management model, with a classical instructional development model, the partnership (with members from both Distance Education and Dentistry) created OBMS 435 Oral Pathology by distance. This project, the first of three phases, uses the latest technologies of Web and CD-ROM to deliver integrated biological, dental and clinical sciences content and problem-based learning to the primarily part-time, distance dental hygiene students. It also will act as a template for future core course conversion in the UBC BDSc program.

In the fall of 1999 Oral Pathology by distance, phase 1, was launched and preliminary data is available. Phase 2, OBMS 405 Oral Microbiology and Immunology is under development, while phase 3 is in the process of applying for funding.

The field of health science, is considered one of the explosive fields for online learning and distance education. Yet, the team and partnership approaches used by many DE units are not a common approach in the health sciences. This session is an examination of one of the first dentistry - distance education partnerships in Canada and as such, brings to the arena of distance education, experiences in combining DE with dentistry.

This presentation will look at the history of the BDSc completion program, the needs of its students and faculty, and the reasons for choosing this path. It will examine the instructional design of the web-based, CD ROM format, the model of delivery and the management of the project. An overview of the course work to date, preliminary data gathered and a description of the future work to be completed will end the presentation.