DentaLAV: A virtual platform for dental multidisciplinary learning

Abstract

The current deployment of information and communication technologies (ICTs), coupled with the growing development of mobile communications and miniaturized electronic devices, allows that more people access to a large amount of information. For this reason, a new social model known as the knowledge society is being developed. It is based on the capacity of each individual to transform the information they have into useful knowledge. Due this, the economy is based in technical qualities of each individual and him/her knowledge to develop several services. So, the education model must improve offering a better learning quality. With the develop of new virtual tools based in ICTs, such as virtual platforms, this goals will be achieved in any educational field. Dentistry is not indifferent to this reality, since several virtual platforms have been proposed that offer diverse multimedia resources to reinforce the contents reviewed in the classroom. However, they suggest individualized educational models that do not take into consideration the multidisciplinary work that needs to be developed in this field. For this reason, this paper proposes the development of DentaLAV, a virtual learning platform whose objective is to create multidisciplinary collaborative learning groups, giving higher education students the opportunity to train to face real dental cases.