Contextualizing Clinical Experiences in Dental Hygiene

Yvette Reibel is an assistant professor in the Division of Dental Hygiene, School of Dentistry. In the undergraduate program, Yvette teaches pharmacology, research methods, and the capstone course. In this spotlight, Yvette shares and discusses a capstone project with a written and oral component that has evolved over the years. 

Check out Yvette’s assignment.

Tell us about your assignment.

My assignment is from a capstone course in Dental Hygiene. This course is the last clinical course, where students select a patient from their clinical experiences and discuss their medical and dental conditions, treatment plans, and outcomes. The goals of this assignment are to have students reflect on clinical experiences, identify areas that need improvement, and identify conditions that might impact dental hygiene care or patient outcomes. We expect senior students will make connections between patient medical conditions and socioeconomic factors and their clinical outcomes of care.

Students create a presentation with the needed information for an audience. They present their capstone with professional presentation guidelines from conference sessions. Additionally, students write a case report for this selected capstone presentation.

Students receive an outline of needed content and examples of published case report examples from peer-reviewed journals in dental hygiene.

What learning does the assignment support?

This assignment is scaffolded. Students draft a presentation and complete a peer review activity for each other's presentations and case reports. I provide structured areas that the students should be focusing on in their peer review for both the presentation and written portion of the assignment. This peer review fosters critical thinking skills, encourages self-reflection of a student's own work, and helps students understand the relationship between their clinical practice and the program's curriculum.

How has the assignment changed over time?

I have developed more detailed scaffolding of the assignment. In past versions, there were limited instructions given and provided students the flexibility to translate the instructions to their preferences. Unfortunately this led to less than ideal outcomes and quality of presentations and case reports. I have clarified the expectations and provide professionally acceptable examples to help students understand the scope of this assignment. 

What advice would you give to other instructors who would like to develop a similar assignment?

I think an assignment that has many layers of detail, critical thinking, and application of knowledge will more than likely require several iterations of the assignment to understand the level of guidance and scaffolding that students will require.

If students are expected to mirror professional publications, then offering published works from other professionals in the field helps students understand the skills required for this level of work.

What do students say about the assignment?

They have commented on the importance of feedback from their peers and course instructor. They mentioned that past assignments prepared them for furthering their writing abilities to be featured on a nation-wide platform. The frequent opportunities to write and hone their skills in small pieces made writing doable and not an overwhelming challenge.

Student Artifact

One student worked with Yvette and other faculty to develop their assignment into a published case report: DIY Orthodontic Relapse Correction Gone Wrong: A case study. Yvette notes that the student was able to make connections between the patient's medical conditions and oral findings and identified an area of improvement needed as clinicians. They were able to use their confidence in writing to further develop a Continuing Education session for a national audience at the American Dental Hygienists Association.

Why We Like Yvette’s Assignment

• Effective capstone: The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) defines "capstone" assignments as culminating experiences that require students to integrate and apply knowledge and skills from their field of study. Because capstone projects provide significant educational benefits for students, they are identified by the AAC&U as a High-Impact Practice (HIP). Yvette's assignment underscores this value by providing students with a clear purpose statement for the capstone. This statement also sets the stage for the procedures and scaffolded steps that follow. You can read more about the value of capstone projects and HIPs on the AAC&U's website.
• Forward-thinking, real-world application: Forward-thinking activities and assignments ask students to apply their learning rather than simply repeat it. Such assignments often utilize real-world and scenario-based problems. Yvette's assignment is forward-thinking and grounded in a real-world scenario. Read more about forward-thinking assignments from Teaching with Writing.
• Specific rhetorical situation: Making clear the purpose, the audience and the specific genre (e.g. lab report, grant proposals, literature review, etc.) for the assignment will help students produce more focused and authentic work. Yvette’s assignment stresses key features of the intended audience.
• Clear genre expectations: Yvette provides students with a template (Abstract, Introduction, Patient Case Report, Discussion, and References) for the capstone report. Used judiciously, templates can help writers develop a better understanding of the assignment genre.

Check out Yvette’s assignment.