Jonathan San Diego

Design and development of a haptic dental training system: hapTEL

This paper presents a novel design of a virtual dental training system (hapTEL) using haptic technology. The system allows dental students to learn and practice procedures such as dental drilling, caries removal and cavity preparation for tooth restoration. This paper focuses on the hardware design, development and evaluation aspects in relation to the dental training and educational requirements. Detailed discussions on how the system offers dental students a natural operational position are documented. An innovative design of measuring and connecting the dental tools to the haptic device is also shown. Evaluation of the impact on teaching and learning is discussed.

Researching haptics in higher education: The complexity of developing haptics virtual learning systems and evaluating its impact on students' learning

hapTEL, an interdisciplinary project funded by two UK research councils from 2007 to 2011, involves a large interdisciplinary team (with undergraduate and post-graduate student participants) which has been developing and evaluating a virtual learning system within an HE healthcare education setting, working on three overlapping strands. Strand 1 involves the technical development and evaluation of the hapTEL workstation which simulates clinical conditions for dental training including haptics (sense of touch). Strand 2 involves examining the traditional undergraduate curriculum and how this could benefit from the use of haptics. Strand 3 is concerned with the educational evaluation of the impact of the work carried out within Strands 1 and 2. Two theoretical frameworks (Entwistle, (1987) and Webb and Cox (2004)) have been used to identify as many factors as possible which could affect the impact of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) on the quality of the learning achieved. These frameworks have formed a foundation for measuring the impact of TEL on curriculum change, teachers pedagogical practices, students learning and on institutional practices. A range of quantitative and qualitative methods were designed, piloted and evaluated in order to measure the impact of TEL on teaching and learning; and to have a rich and robust data set which also addresses the variables in the frameworks. The results from using these frameworks show that institutional and departmental factors should be considered when evaluating the impact of TEL in higher education and that these had a major influence on the design and curriculum integration of the hapTEL systems. We have also shown that by involving the end users from the beginning enabled not only an enhancement of the students learning experiences but also a modification to the traditional curriculum itself and the successful integration of TEL within a very traditional undergraduate higher education dental curriculum. The conclusions from this paper confirm earlier reviews of researching TEL that technology integration is extremely complex and the related research requires a comprehensive approach of both quantitative and qualitative methods if one is to take account of the range of variables identified by theoretical frameworks. Finally, repeating the range of empirical investigations for a second year enables researchers to validate the effectiveness of the methods used in the initial year and thereby maximise the reliability and generalisability of the research outcomes.

The feasibility of capturing learner interactions based on logs informed by eye-tracking and remote observation studies

Two small studies, one an eye-tracking study and the other a remote observation study, have been conducted to investigate ways to identify two kinds of online learner interactions: users flicking through the web pages in browsing action, and users engaging with the content of a page in learning action. The video data from four participants of the two small studies using the OpenLearn open educational resource materials offers some evidence for differentiating between browsing and learning. Further analysis of the data has considered possible ways of identifying similar browsing and learning actions based on automatic user logs. This research provides a specification for researching the pedagogical value of capturing and transforming logs of user interactions into external forms of representations. The paper examines the feasibility and challenge of capturing learner interactions giving examples of external representations such as sequence flow charts, timelines, and table of logs. The objective users information these represent offer potential for understanding user interactions both to aid design and improve feedback means that they should be given greater consideration alongside other more subjective ways to research user experience. Editors: Doug Clow and Alexandra Okada (Open University, UK). Reviewers: Ann Jones (Open University, UK) and Alexandra Okada (Open University, UK). Interactive Demonstration: Readers are encouraged to go through some of the learning units available at OpenLearn. The website may require some computer applications (e.g. pdf viewer, video player, Flash player, etc.) in order to go through some of the materials within OpenLearn such as documents, files, videos, audio, etc.

PHANTOM prototype: exploring the potential for learning with multimodal features in dentistry

In this paper, we will demonstrate how force feedback, motion-parallax, and stereoscopic vision can enhance the opportunities for learning in the context of dentistry. A dental training workstation prototype has been developed intended for use by dental students in their introductory course to preparing a tooth cavity. The multimodal feedback from haptics, motion tracking cameras, computer generated sound and graphics are being exploited to provide near-realistic learning experiences. Whilst the empirical evidence provided is preliminary, we describe the potential of multimodal interaction via these technologies for enhancing dental-clinical skills.

A Scoring System for Assessing Learning Progression of Dental Students’ Clinical Skills Using Haptic Virtual Workstations

The aim of this study was to develop and test a scoring system to assess the learning progression of novice dental students using haptic virtual workstations. For the study, 101 first-year dental students at a UK dental school conducted one practice task (task 1) and four simulated cavity removal tasks (tasks 2-5) of increasing difficulty over two laboratory sessions in 2015. Performance data on the students attempts were recorded as haptic technology-enhanced learning (hapTEL) log-files showing the percentage of caries, healthy tissue, and pulp removed. On-screen results were photographed and submitted by the students to the tutors. A scoring system named the Accuracy of Caries Excavation (ACE) score was devised to score these results and achieve an even distribution of scores and a calculated combined score. A total of 127 individual logged attempts by 80% of the students over sessions 1 and 2 were recorded and submitted to the tutors. The mean ACE scores for both sessions for tasks 2 through 5 were 9.2, 11.6, 6.4, and 4.9, respectively; for Session 2 (tasks 3-5), scores were 12.4, 6.7, and 5.0, respectively (p<0.001). The average performance on task 3, which was attempted in similar numbers during both sessions, improved from the first to the second session (8.14 vs. 12.38; p=0.009). Using the HapTEL system in a first-year BDS curriculum improved the students performance of simulated cavity preparation after practicing over two sessions. Use of the ACE scoring system enabled tutors to make consistent assessments across a large student cohort and provided an objective method of formative assessment.

Assessment for Blended Learning Scenarios: A Decision Support Tool.

This paper examines the process of designing assessment and how teachers in higher education, who are developing blended learning materials, can be supported to consider their approach to assessment and to select from the range of assessment opportunities that are becoming available. The paper presents the design and evaluation of an online decision support tool for assessment design, which was developed on a collaborative project across Indian and European universities. The tool was designed based on a shared framework of design and assessment principles which took account of the purpose of the assessment, knowledge and skills to be assessed and how and by whom the assessment was to be conducted. The tool was not intended to provide definitive advice but rather to support the decision-making process and professional development of teachers. This support would be provided during the use of the tool and as a summary at the end of the teacher’s consultation with the tool. Overall, users were satisfied with the tool, as the data show, and were positive about using it in designing assessment. Recommendations that were made during the evaluation, for redeveloping the tool to make it more suitable for a wider audience are discussed.

Innovations in Teaching and Learning Strategies to Improve the Effectiveness of Using Haptic Simulators in Higher Education for Dental Students and Other Health Care Disciplines

This paper briefly reviews the teaching and assessment strategies developed over ten years of trials with over 1200 undergraduate students to make effective use of virtual haptic simulators in higher education disciplines such as dentistry and nursing. In the last five years (2012–17) these strategies have evolved to include a range of technology enhanced learning resources (TEL) in a blended learning setting to assess the performance progression of students’ learning cavity preparation skills. Every students’ performance outcomes were retrieved from the hapTEL simulator log files for each task including the percentage of caries, healthy tissue and pulp removed. The use of a blend of video recorded short lectures followed by face to face teaching, pair working, haptic, visual images and sound feedback, and individual student assessment record keeping showed an improved reliability in performance of the work-stations and a consistently higher rate of student’s log files records compared with previous years. Records of students’ performance collected over two years showed that the HapTEL system enabled students to perform better at cavity preparation after practising over two sessions.

Self localization using a 9DOF IMU sensor with a directional cosine matrix

In the field of robotics, the most essential requirement for successful navigation is an accurate and numerically inexpensive method for self-localization. This paper presents a method that exploits the principles of directional cosines to setup a rotation matrix to deal with a closed loop PI feedback based model. The system uses a 9 degree of freedom (9DOF) sensor and exploits the benefits of the accuracy of a 3-axis gyroscope by leveraging the measurement of a 3-axis accelerometer and 3-axis magnetometer, which compensates and corrects the accumulative drift generated by integrating the gyroscope velocity measurements. The results show that the method is relatively accurate with a small level of error when compared to vision based glyph recognition and tracking methods for self-localization and is a sustainable method for removing accumulative drift.Copyright

Technology enhanced diagrams research workshop

It is an understatement to say that technology has enabled methodological innovations in diagram and spatial reasoning research. New technologies offer opportunities for recording data through video screen recordings; spatial navigation in real and virtual realities, visual attention monitoring, diagram activity on graphics tablets, and recording body position and gestures via position sensors and accelerometers.Whilst the rich data that these techniques yield offer exciting potential for research innovation, researchers face new methodological challenges due to its sheer volume and the challenge of triangulating data from multi-sources.