Continuing Education

 

UNC EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS

Professor Bill Proffit from the University of North Carolina has produced a comprehensive set of online educational videos for post-graduate orthodontic students and the ASOFRE has purchased these postgraduate videos for all five ASO accredited orthodontic programs within Australia. In addition, the ASOFRE has negotiated access to these new UNC Educational Videos, for Continuing Education for ASO members, at a 20% discounted rate.

These videos are tutorial style productions and samples are available at no cost on the UNC website www.watchseminars.com 
Once you have subscribed you can watch these at home or from any location, and at any time.  For Continuing Education purposes you should record the details of the videos and the time spent, as you view them, in the usual manner you record the details of meetings attended and journals read.

For details of how to access these videos ASO members should refer to emails sent to them regarding these videos or log in to the members section of the ASO website.

UNC ORTHODONTIC TEACHING MODULES FOR DENTAL STUDENTS

With the shortage of teaching staff in all Australian Dental Schools a decision was made by the ASOFRE , in 2011, to provide funding to support orthodontic education.  It was decided to purchase for all 9 dental schools in Australia access to the University of North Carolina’s comprehensive series of online orthodontic teaching modules.  These teaching modules were developed under the guidance of Professor Bill Proffit, the most respected orthodontic teacher and author of the last 40 years. His text book ‘Contemporary Orthodontics’ is still the most widely used and respected orthodontic text around the world. The online modules were developed to teach dental students both theoretical and practical skills and provide a solid grounding in orthodontic diagnosis and treatment planning and basic orthodontic therapy.

These teaching modules are used in many dental schools in North America as well as in other parts of the world. A great advantage of these modules is that they take a lot of pressure off teaching staff to prepare and present lectures and tutorials. It is like having an extra staff member in the department. In addition it is very comforting to know that dental students all around Australia are being taught world standard material and there is a degree of teaching uniformity throughout Australia. These orthodontic teaching modules were made available to all nine dental schools at the beginning of the 2012 academic year. A number of dental schools now rely on these modules to form the basis of their orthodontic teaching of dental students while others use the modules to supplement material already in place. Following a 2016 survey of dental schools all 9 schools indicated they intended to continue to use the modules either as a basis of their orthodontic teaching or increasingly as a major part of their curriculum.

Since 2012 the ASO Foundation for Research and Education has paid over $150,000 for all 9 dental schools to retain access to these UNC teaching modules. The Foundation is committed to supporting and promoting orthodontic research and education and has secured access to the UNC MODULES until the end of 2021.

Professor Mithran Goonewardene with Orthodontic Postgraduate students at the University of Adelaide

HEADS OF DEPARTMENT TEACHING ROTATION PROGRAM

The ASOFRE supports teaching staff at all Australian and New Zealand dental schools to visit other postgraduate programs in Australia and New Zealand to share their knowledge and expertise and contribute in a collaborative and collegiate manner.  This has been a very successful ASO funded endeavour that has given post graduate students the opportunity to liaise and learn with other Orthodontic Heads of Department, as well as facilitating the Heads of Department to observe how other orthodontic programs function.

Read the 2021 ASOFRE report here