Doctor of Clinical Dentistry

I was challenged to re/design the Melbourne Dental School's Doctor of Clinical Dentistry (DCD) program for Canvas.

Previously the online Canvas offerring had been neglected, and students were offered minimal or no LMS guidance about assessments in their subjects.

Working as a micro learning design team of one - focussed exclusively on the DCD, I developed strong professional relationships with senior stakeholders and clinical specialisation academics to develop:

• 8 DCD specialisations
• 22 DCD subjects
• 151 Assessments

In just six months, he has built 22 Doctor of Clinical Dentistry subjects and aligned and corrected 151 assessments within the program. This achievement is nothing short of remarkable, especially considering the scale of the task—it was initially deemed impossible.

MDS Redesign Manager
10 December 2024

Leigh is making excellent progress in the DCD space for 2025.
He is documenting current processes, organising materials, and creating learner-friendly course shells that ensure a consistent user experience.
This includes refining and creating assessment descriptors, instructions, and rubrics to enhance clarity and alignment.

MDS Redesign Manager
20 August 2024

A huge thank you on the exceptional work you have accomplished in the DCD space throughout 2024.

Your dedication and innovative approach to redesigning the course shells and streamlining the associated processes have set a remarkable standard for learner-centric design and scalability.

It’s truly inspiring to see the work you have done in a space that had very little to work with.

MDS Redesign Manager
10 December 2024

Leigh, your efforts are making a tangible difference in the DCD space and beyond. You’ve demonstrated resilience, creativity, and an unwavering commitment to excellence, even in the face of challenging tasks. Congratulations on these incredible achievements.

MDS Redesign Manager
10 December 2024

DCD assessment redesign

I have engaged in assessment design processes for all 151 DCD assessment items to improve upon the minimal 2024 design and ensure that all assessments have descriptors, instructions, rubrics

By getting collaborative engagement with the DCD academic team to document current assessment processes, I was able to refine and create assessment descriptors, instructions, and rubrics to enhance clarity and alignment.

• 151 DCD assessment items
• 232 Canvas assessment pages
• 82 hurdle tasks

Your engagement with the DCD team in refining all 151 assessment items is another impressive milestone.

By documenting processes, organising materials, and enhancing assessment descriptors, instructions, and rubrics, you have significantly elevated the alignment of assessments.

This is no small feat and reflects your ability to manage complex tasks with precision and purpose.

MDS Redesign Manager
10 December 2024

2024 DCD assessment design

2025 DCD assessment re-design

Canvas content reproduced with permission from Melbourne Dental School

DCD Course-shell redesign

I updated the 2025 redesigned DCD course-shell for all 22 DCD subjects, ensuring that all DCD subjects are designed with best-practice UX to make our students' learning experience more engaging.

Beginning with minimally designed 2024 shell, I employed best-practice University of Melbourne styling and interactivity to make a consistent, learner-friendly design based upon the Dental School's design strategy.

Other Dental School programs have borrowed elements of my DCD redesign to better align their course-shells for consistency across the school.

Your redesign of all 22 DCD course shells for 2025 is a huge achievement (considering the very little input you have received from the academic team).

The consistent, learner-friendly experience you’ve created not only aligns perfectly with the goals of the MDS redesign strategy but also ensures a cohesive design for students.

We have leveraged many quick wins from your design to the DDS and BOH programs.

MDS Redesign Manager
10 December 2024

2024 DCD Course-shell design

2025 DCD Course-shell re-design

Canvas content reproduced with permission from Melbourne Dental School

DCD Periodontics Specialisation

In the absence of Periodontics specialisation academics, I collaborated closely with the Senior Learning & Teaching Team to develop the Canvas offerring for the Periodontics specialisation for the Melbourne Dental School's Doctor of Clinical Dentistry (DCD) program.

• 3 Periodontics subjects;
• First year (DENT90099)
• Second year (DENT90100)
• Third year (DENT90101)


• 19 Assessments of various types, including: 
• Essay on assigned topic in journal article format
• Clinical competency exams:
  • Scaling & root planing
  • Periodontal surgery
  • Implant placement
• Written exams, 
• Case-based examination of an unseen patient
• Oral examinations
• Clinical Demonstrator Feedback

Innovations

Assessment type analysis: In the absence of a Periodontics academic SME to consult through 2024, I adopted an approach to assessment development that drew heavily on my experience elsewhere in DCD assessment.

I adapted similar assessment types from other DCD subjects to fit the required assessment types in Periodontics.

The approach also resulted in the additional enefit of greater consistency between the assessment expectations in unrelated DCD disciplines.

AMAZING!!! Thank you [for suplying assessment rubric for Periodontics essay developed for 2025 for use in 2024 emergency marking]

MDS Director of Students and Education
14 November 2024

Canvas content reproduced with permission from Melbourne Dental School

DCD Special Needs Dentistry specialisation

I collaborated closely with Special Needs Dentistry specialisation academics and the Senior Learning & Teaching Team to develop the Canvas offerring for the Special Needs Dentistry specialisation for the Melbourne Dental School's Doctor of Clinical Dentistry (DCD) program.

• 1 Special Needs Dentistry subject;
• First year (DENT90105)


• 15 Assessments of various types, including: 
• Essay assignments
• Written exams, 
• Oral examinations (Viva voces)
• Portfolio

You are doing great work Leigh getting engagement with the DCD team – we know how incredibly hard this can be.

MDS Academic Lead for Assessment and Evaluation
19 September 2024

Innovations

Programmatic assessment - This specialisation proposed a new assessment type which consolidated several former assessments into one new Portfolio assessment. I worked with the academic on developing the best portfolio format sourcing examples from across the dental school.

I developed a detailed assessment rubric for how the programmatic assessment should be marked.

I'll have a look through these [Portfolio] suggestions. Thanks for sharing them. Thanks again for your help.

Senior Lecturer, Special Needs Dentistry
18 November 2024

These assignment look great. I think these are probably where they need to be.

Senior Lecturer, Special Needs Dentistry
29 October 2024

Canvas content reproduced with permission from Melbourne Dental School

DCD Endodontics Specialisation

I collaborated closely with Endodontics specialisation academics and the Senior Learning & Teaching Team to develop the Canvas offerring for the Endodontics specialisation for the Melbourne Dental School's Doctor of Clinical Dentistry (DCD) program.

• 3 Endodontics dentistry subjects;
• First year (DENT90087)
• Second year (DENT90088)
• Third year (DENT90089)


• 24 Assessments of various types, including: 
• Viva voce exams
• Logbok of patient cases
• Written exams, 
• Seminar participation
• Clinical Demonstrator Feedback
• Clinic and seminar attendance requirements
• Emergency service provision

Innovations

School staffing meant that for several DCD specialisations, no academic SME was available to collaborate on developing the assessment components of Canvas subjects.

To make the task easier for incoming and backfilling SMEs, I developed assessments using generative AI tools. By inputting assessment details and learning outcomes from the university handbook, I was able to guide the AI to produce step by step instructions advising students how to complete each assessment.

In a similar way, I developed marking rubrics which align each assessment criteria to the learning outcomes to ensure compliance with university procedures.

A big shout out to Leigh. I just got your approach officially endorsed by leadership. They were thankful for the effort, follow up, and documentation (evidence trail).
This is 100% supported and endorsed. Go for it!

MDS Redesign Manager
28 October 2024

your use of ChatGPT for drafting assessment designs, accompanied by thorough documentation and an evidence trail, highlights your ability to work with ambiguous material and push through when not supplied with what is required to get the job done.

MDS Redesign Manager
10 December 2024

Canvas content reproduced with permission from Melbourne Dental School

DCD subject Canvas guide

I developed the DCD subject Canvas guide to 'future-proof' the design of DCD Canvas subjects.

Future year's offerings can more easily roll-over the previous year's Canvas site - offering consistency across the years.

The DCD subject Canvas guide Canvas module contained instructions about how DCD subject convenors may manage their subject into the future, inclding instructional resources and videos explaining how to:

• Import Content
• Adjust due dates
• Managing DCD Exams
• Creating Question Banks
• Adding Question Bank questions
• Adding Question Bank questions to a Quiz
• Import Question Banks

I used the University of Melbourne Canvas Commons platform's 'Update' functionality to push updates to the module to each of the 22 DCD subjects.

The Melbourne Dental School now has plans to redevelop this Doctor of Clinical Dentistry innovation for inclusion into Doctor of Dental Surgery and Bachelor of Oral Health programs.

Try the facsimilie of the DCD subject Canvas guide in Canvas.

the DCD roll-over procedures you implemented demonstrate your forward-thinking approach and collaborative mindset. The Canvas guide module you imported across all 22 subjects has been described as a "real Christmas miracle," underscoring the value and necessity of your work.

MDS Redesign Manager
10 December 2024

I think we can create a revised version of this for DDS and BOH programs as well ... Your support in this space is needed.

MDS Redesign Manager
15 October 2024

Canvas content reproduced with permission from Melbourne Dental School

DCD Prosthodontics specialisation

I collaborated closely with Prosthodontics specialisation academics and the Senior Learning & Teaching Team to develop the Canvas offerring for the Prosthodontics specialisation for the Melbourne Dental School's Doctor of Clinical Dentistry (DCD) program.

• 3 Prosthodontics subjects;
• First year (DENT90102)
• Second year (DENT90103)
• Third year (DENT90104)


• 15 Assessments of various types, including: 
• Seminar Presentations
• At home practice exams
• Case based examinations
• Written exams, 
• Clinical demonstrator feedback forms
• Attendance

Leigh has been a huge game changer for DCD and we are so grateful for his efforts.

MDS Academic Lead for Assessment and Evaluation
21 August 2024

Innovations

To manage and display the Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) for the various DCD subjects, I innovated with Data Blaze. This database feature of TextBlaze allowed me to keep track of the many ILOs of the various subjects.

I developed an engaging HTML design for displaying the ILO lists, and coded a TestBlaze 'repeat' feature to activate the insertion of the data-filled code into Canvas.

Canvas content reproduced with permission from Melbourne Dental School

DCD Research core subjects

I collaborated closely with dental research academics and the Senior Learning & Teaching Team to develop the Canvas offerring for the dental research specialisation for the Melbourne Dental School's Doctor of Clinical Dentistry (DCD) program.

• 3 dental research subjects;
• Research Proposal (DENT90108)
• Research Project A (DENT90109)
• Research Project B (DENT90110)


• 15 Assessments of various types, including: 
• Essay: Research problem
• Critical appraisal of literature (related to the research problem)
• Completion of RIOT training module
• Oral presentation: Research question
• Research methodology
• Data Analysis plan
• Oral presentation: Research proposal
• Literature review
• Oral presentation: Research project A
• Research report
• Oral presentation: Research project B

Innovations

Because the DCD research subjects are completed by all DCD students regardless of specialisation, the design of these subjects was the first that I tackled. It was here that I began templating a consistent design approach to use throughout the DCD. 

Drawing upon the Canvas HTML design elements developed by University of Melbourne, I developed HTML that would be versatile enough and engaging enough to roll out through the rest of the DCD.

My robust HTML designs have also been adopted by other Redesign Team learning designers for their MDS programs.

I wanted to follow up after our recent catch-up to acknowledge the great progress you've made. The team is really impressed with your work in the DCD space.

MDS Redesign Team Manager
2 October 2024

Canvas content reproduced with permission from Melbourne Dental School

DCD Oral Medicine Specialisation

I collaborated closely with Oral Medicine specialisation academics and the Senior Learning & Teaching Team to develop the Canvas offerring for the Oral Medicine specialisation for the Melbourne Dental School's Doctor of Clinical Dentistry (DCD) program.

• 3 Oral Medicine subjects;
• First year (DENT90087)
• Second year (DENT90088)
• Third year (DENT90089)


• 15 Assessments of various types, including: 
• Essays
• Written exams, 
• Oral examinations
• Exam on case presentations
• Oral exams
• Attendance

This [Academic Skills resource about Writing a Paper for Publication] looks like an excellent resource. Thank you for pointing it out and it would be excellent to provide this guidance to the students.

Professor, Oral Medicine 22/08
22 August 2024

Innovations

Exam instructions: I introduced DCD to the Exam-instructions page approach. Inspired by exam and quiz aproaches I have encountered elsewhere, the approach, invoves publishing visible instructions and an restricted quiz containing exam questions.

The exam instructions assessment page contains all the ILOs, marking guides and exam format instructions students will need to understand the requirements and is available throughout the semester.

The Canvas quiz containing the actual exam questions is assigned to particular exam dates, and is available to students only during the exam window.

Thank you for all your work, the subjects look fantastic. I have gone over the material and think it is excellent and have now published these three subjects.

Professor, Oral Medicine 22/08
January 22 2025

Canvas content reproduced with permission from Melbourne Dental School

DCD Paeditric Dentistry specialisation

I collaborated closely with specialisation academics and the Senior Learning & Teaching Team to develop the Canvas offerring for the Paediatric Dentistry specialisation for the Melbourne Dental School's Doctor of Clinical Dentistry (DCD) program.

• 3 Paediatric dentistry subjects;
• First year (DENT90096)
• Second year (DENT90097)
• Third year (DENT90098)


• 24 Assessments of various types, including: 
• Clinical Feedback, 
• Case presentations, 
• Written exams, 
• Viva Voce, 
• Clinical Log book
• Cinic and seminar attendance requirements

Innovations

Stakeholder management: I developed a very good relationship with a very engaged academic subject matter expert.

The iterative process, where I learned how the DCD subjects work and assessment processes became an example of how I would work with dental school stakeholder henceforth.

You are doing a great job Leigh!

MDS Paediatric Dentistry DCD convenor
30 August 2024

Glad to hear you and Leigh are getting stuck in, we're pretty lucky to have his expertise on board.

MDS Academic Programs Manager
12 June 2024

Canvas content reproduced with permission from Melbourne Dental School