If you took someone from 100 years ago and you brought them into modern day society, nearly everything they saw would completely astonish and flummox them—until you brought them to a university.
Just as in the early 20th century, or even in the 19th century, they would see a lecture hall with people in seats, absorbing information, while someone significantly older stands in the front, delivering that information.
As we prepare to graduate another class at the UCSF School of Dentistry, I have to wonder: Has that system stayed the same so long because it works so well? Or have we just not thought enough about how we need to change?
Or is change just too difficult? Too painful? Too disruptive?
The New Generation of Students: Tech-Savvy, Ready for Change
Clearly, today’s students are different, and they have different expectations. They are digital natives. They’ve grown up with technology that radically altered our society. They also have a new way of looking at the world, refusing to accept the racism, sexism and other forms of bigotry that often accompanied the old ways of life. They are demanding a more urgent response to the problems of the day, including climate change.
It's not only new students’ mindsets that are forcing changes in education. If we had any doubt about our ability to change higher education, the pandemic erased them all.
When the pandemic hit in spring 2020, it proved itself the great accelerator. We had two weeks to put all of our courses online! We learned about Zoom, about working from home. Health practitioners began using telehealth as never before.
That taught me two things.
One, we can change. We have the ability. We can deal with disruption.
Two, we need to change. We need to take the momentum that the pandemic provided, and use it to move forward to new models of education.
We need to do it for all the reasons our students are telling us: To jumpstart a new era where diversity, equity and inclusion are emphasized and celebrated. To heal the world from its changing climate. To make sure the new generation of dental professionals have the best possible preparation for their careers, so they can do the most good for the most people.
Paving the Way for Innovative Learning Environments
Against that backdrop, I’m happy to say we have one more important driver of change here at the UCSF School of Dentistry: The Comprehensive Parnassus Heights Plan. As UCSF reimagines and rebuilds its longtime Parnassus campus, including with a new hospital and a new research and academic building, it’s giving us all the opportunity to think about what we want our educational spaces to look like.
We’ve already started the process of envisioning what dental education, and the practice of dentistry, will look like in the years ahead. That process continues and we are making strides towards a totally reimagined curriculum by 2026. We know it will change. We see a trend that dentistry is getting increasing recognition as a vital part of people’s health, and we’re working more closely with our colleagues in the Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy, as well as our colleagues in UCSF Health.
And we are continuing to reflect on the changes we see in the students who are coming through our doors today.
We’ve been moving toward teaching students as part of a team, since so much modern work happens in a collaborative environment. Yet some of today’s students are telling us they want individualized instruction. They learn differently from their peers, so they’d like to be taught differently.
If we’re moving into an era of precision medicine—in which health providers know a patient’s genome, as well as their habits, social history, environment and other factors that could impact health, to develop a personally tailored program of treatment—why not precision education?
There’s always been a range of learners, and educators probably didn’t pay too much attention. We had a curriculum and it was one-size-fits-all, learning in lockstep. We do need to pay more attention to learning differences—like looking at a portfolio of work, rather than a standardized test.
Today’s learners do have some commonalities. Many of them are visual and auditory learners. A lifetime of access to digital tools has empowered them to seek information when they want to know something.
So how do we teach this group? Do we do away with the lecture? Scrap the textbooks? Do we give them a 10-minute video to watch on their own, as many times as they need to, so they can incorporate the information and be prepared to discuss it?
Almost all of them, before they do a procedure, will watch a video of some sort. The problem is, seeking out a video of a medical procedure is not the same as watching a YouTube video to learn how to bake bread during the pandemic. There's no peer review of what they're watching. How are they picking the quality? Who is assessing what they learn from those videos?
We already do teach some of those skills. We teach them to critically examine even peer-reviewed journal articles. Were the methods accurate? Would you change something in your practice based on it?
We have other big challenges in adapting education to this ever-changing era. How do we use augmented decision-making programs? How do we use artificial intelligence? How do those programs keep from incorporating the bias of yesteryear into their decision-making?
Like it or not, universities are changing. We welcome the change. We welcome the difficult decisions. We’re thinking, and we’re talking, and we’re taking action.
Michael S. Reddy, DMD, DMSc
Dean, UCSF School of Dentistry
Associate Vice Chancellor, Oral Health Affairs
