This article describes the decision making and implementation process used at Indiana University School of Dentistry to incorporate a CAD/CAM system into the predoctoral curriculum and presents data regarding the opinions of students and faculty members after one year. Using a non-validated survey instrument, D1 students rated their experience fabricating a CAD/ CAM-generated crown. Eighty-eight of the 105 D1 students (84 percent response rate) responded to the four multiple-choice questions, and a varying number provided written responses. Eighty percent of the responding students rated the overall learning experience as good or excellent, and 43 percent judged that they were prepared to fabricate a crown independently. Students' comments about the experience were generally positive. The twelve supervising faculty members were also surveyed after the irst year. When asked to evaluate the initial quality of the crowns at placement, they rated 89 to 98 percent of them good or excellent on the measures of marginal it, axial contours, proximal contacts, and occlusal contacts. In their judgment, CAD/CAMgenerated crowns were as good as or better than those received from commercial labs. After one year, the school's experience has been that the performance of these crowns is consistent with the literature and that they are a viable option. Also, the students are enthusiastic about this addition to the curriculum.

At Indiana University School of Dentistry, a New Clinical Faculty Training (NCFT) program was created with the primary goals of informing new part-time faculty members of clinical policies and assessment guidelines and thus developing qualified and satisfied faculty members. The aim of this study was to determine if participation in the training program improved the participants' satisfaction and competence in comparison to their colleagues who did not participate in the program. Two cohorts were compared: a control group of part-time faculty members who did not receive formal training when they were hired (n=21; response rate 58.3%); and the intervention group, who had participated in the NCFT program (n=12; response rate 80%). A survey of faculty members in the control group gathered information on their experiences when initially hired, and a pretest was administered to measure their knowledge of clinical policies. After the control group was given an overview of the program, their feedback was collected through post surveys, and a posttest identical to the pretest was given that found statistically significant increases on questions one (p=0.003) and four (p=0.025). In February 2014, 15 new faculty members participated in the pilot implementation of the NCFT program. Of those 15, 12 (the intervention group) completed follow-up surveys identical to the pre survey used with the control group. Statistically significant differences were found for the factors clinical teaching (p=0.005) and assessment training (p=0.008) with better responses for the NCFT group. These results suggest that participation in the program was associated with improved clinical teaching knowledge and job satisfaction.

Dental educators should consider alternative modalities of instruction when experiencing difficulties conveying feedback to students. The aim of this study was to determine if integrating iPad technology as a visual learning tool would enhance the exchange of assessment information and improve academic performance in Indiana University School of Dentistry's preclinical curriculum. In 2016, the first‐year Tooth Morphology (TM) and second‐year Fixed Prosthodontics (Fixed) courses implemented a project using iPad images that allowed instructors to annotate acceptable and deficient areas of students' tooth wax‐ups and preparations. In the two courses, all students (TM n=106 and Fixed n=105) and instructors (TM n=21 and Fixed n=17) were given pre‐intervention surveys to report their perceived effectiveness of verbal feedback and were given post‐intervention surveys to rate their experiences with iPad image feedback. Response rates for students in the two courses on the pre surveys were TM 87.7% and Fixed 85.7% and on the post surveys were TM 26.4% and Fixed 76.2%. Response rates for instructors on the pre surveys were TM 52.4% and Fixed 82.4% and on the post surveys were TM 76.2% and Fixed 76.5%. The results showed that a majority of both groups preferred the combination of verbal and iPad image feedback: 53% of responding students in TM and 51% in Fixed, and 75% of instructors in TM and 77% in Fixed. In the TM course, responding instructors had a statistically significantly higher agreement than students that feedback with iPad images was superior to verbal feedback alone (p=0.008). Furthermore, a multi‐year analysis of TM practical examination grades found statistically significant lower change scores for the first and second exams in 2014 and 2015 compared to the 2016 scores when the iPad intervention occurred. These results suggest that verbal feedback combined with iPad images resulted in an enhanced exchange of information and increased student grades, particularly in the first‐year dental curriculum.

Objective: To develop two automated computer algorithms to extract information from clinical notes, and to generate three cohorts of patients (disease improvement, disease progression, and no disease change) to track periodontal disease (PD) change over time using longitudinal electronic dental records (EDR). Methods: We conducted a retrospective study of 28,908 patients who received a comprehensive oral evaluation between 1 January 2009, and 31 December 2014, at Indiana University School of Dentistry (IUSD) clinics. We utilized various Python libraries, such as Pandas, TensorFlow, and PyTorch, and a natural language tool kit to develop and test computer algorithms. We tested the performance through a manual review process by generating a confusion matrix. We calculated precision, recall, sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy to evaluate the performances of the algorithms. Finally, we evaluated the density of longitudinal EDR data for the following follow-up times: (1) None; (2) Up to 5 years; (3) > 5 and ≤ 10 years; and (4) >10 and ≤ 15 years. Results: Thirty-four percent (n = 9954) of the study cohort had up to five years of follow-up visits, with an average of 2.78 visits with periodontal charting information. For clinician-documented diagnoses from clinical notes, 42% of patients (n = 5562) had at least two PD diagnoses to determine their disease change. In this cohort, with clinician-documented diagnoses, 72% percent of patients (n = 3919) did not have a disease status change between their first and last visits, 669 (13%) patients’ disease status progressed, and 589 (11%) patients’ disease improved. Conclusions: This study demonstrated the feasibility of utilizing longitudinal EDR data to track disease changes over 15 years during the observation study period. We provided detailed steps and computer algorithms to clean and preprocess the EDR data and generated three cohorts of patients. This information can now be utilized for studying clinical courses using artificial intelligence and machine learning methods.