Shandong School of Stomatology introduces the ‘Cloud Classroom’

China: The Shandong School of Stomatology turned to the virtual platform known as ‘Cloud Classroom’ to provide its undergraduate students access to online teaching and clinical practice.

Towards the end of March, the omicron wave of the pandemic had resulted in the school’s temporary closure. This in turn halted the clinical practice of undergraduate students, as they were not able to enter and leave the campus for clinical practice.

The resourceful department quickly established a Cloud-based educational platform and formulated the 2022 Undergraduate Clinical Practice Teaching Online Teaching Schedule.

The large-scale online platform involved several institutions including: Qilu Hospital of Shandong University; Second Hospital of Shandong University; Shandong Provincial Hospital; Qianfoshan Hospital of Shandong Province; Jinan Central Hospital; and the hospital-based team of 960 teachers.

In addition to the heavy clinical work, teachers carefully prepared lessons to keep apace with the times and to integrate new elements and forms, with high standards and strict standards.

From the carefully designed courseware to interactive questions, the teaching team took pains to ensure that the course content achieves the same quality and effect as the offline practice teaching, says the Department.

A lecture series featured a host of well-known and experienced professors – including Liu Shaohua of Qilu Hospital; Zhang Shaojun of Qianfoshan Hospital;  Lai Qingguo of the Second Hospital; Ma Li of the Provincial Hospital; Ma Feng of Jinan Central Hospital; and Fu Chongjian of the Nine Sixty Hospital.

According to the school, the “Cloud Classroom” model has been well received by the students, achieving high percentage rate of attendance (up to 100 per cent) and lively after-class question-and-answer sessions.

Flipped classroom

To promote the new cloud-learning environment, the school encouraged fresh ways of conducting lessons, including what is known as a ‘flipped classroom’, in which the roles of teachers and students were swapped to encourage greater rapport and interaction.

Students were divided into practice groups, each supervised by a member from the teaching team to guide and facilitate the role reversal. The students were tasked to collect data, consult the literature, conduct in-depth discussions, and work together to produce the courseware. Each group would then assign 2-4 students to represent the group to teach online.

Subjects covered include oral and maxillofacial surgery, prosthodontics, endodontics, periodontology and other majors.

According to the school, the ‘Flipped Classroom’ was designed to turns students from passive acceptance to active inquiry, fully mobilizing their enthusiasm for learning.