Bruce Elson

Advanced Networks in Dental Rich Online MEDiA (ANDROMEDA)

There is growing demand for dental education and training not only in terms of knowledge but also skills. This demand is driven by continuing professional development requirements in the more developed economies, personnel shortages and skills differences across the European Union (EU) accession states and more generally in the developing world. There is an excellent opportunity for the EU to meet this demand by developing an innovative online flexible learning platform (FLP). Current clinical online systems are restricted to the delivery of general, knowledge-based training with no easy method of personalization or delivery of skill-based training. The PHANTOM project, headed by Kings College London is developing haptic-based virtual reality training systems for clinical dental training. ANDROMEDA seeks to build on this and establish a Flexible Learning Platform that can integrate the haptic and sensor based training with rich media knowledge transfer, whilst using sophisticated technologies such as including service-orientated architecture (SOA), Semantic Web technologies, knowledge-based engineering, business intelligence (BI) and virtual worlds for personalization.

Design and Development of Virtual Learning Environment Using Open Source Virtual World Technology

Today’s digital era, dynamic teaching and learning in higher education has moved from traditional class room, face-to face learning environments to more interactive and collaborative environments, due to a demand for online-distance learning from students, and the desire from academic institutes to promote and deliver courses across the globe. Advancement in open source virtual learning platforms technology, enables the development of flexible online learning environments to exist that can be accessed anywhere, anytime and in anyplace by students, hence enabling academics and academic institutes to teach and increase their market across the globe. Authors of this paper had the opportunity to work on the design and development of a flexible virtual learning environment within the dentistry sector part of the IVIDENT (virtual dental school) UK Higher Education Funding Council project at Kings College London. This paper will focus on the design and the development of virtual learning environment for the IVIDENT project, using advanced technological open source virtual world platforms.