College Highlights & News
ISU Dental Hygiene Online Masters Students Get a Chance to Get Real
Participants from throughout the United States who are enrolled in Idaho State University’s online dental-hygiene master’s program have had a chance to meet in person this week at ISU’s Pocatello campus during a week-long clinical educational course.
Of the 11 students participating in the class, two are from Pocatello. The rest are from out of state, including two from Utah and Oregon, and one each from New York, Arkansas, Texas, Oregon and Washington. Prior to arriving in Pocatello on Sunday, the non-resident students had never met their instructors or any of their fellow students in person.
“I always thought Ellen Rogo (one of ISU’s online dental hygiene professors) was tall,” noged Salt Lake City’s Tiana Williams. “I just had this teacher image of her. You get a certain image of people when you’re interacting with them online.”
ISU started its online dental hygiene master’s program last fall. For the most part, students and faculty have been communicating via the Internet through posts to the site, and e-mail. There is also a “chat-room” function to the site that allows participants to arrange a time to log on and chat back-and-forth to one another. Some communication has also been accomplished via phone conversations.
“It’s funny. We’ve sat in the classroom and discussed things like we’re old friends even thought we’ve only met in person for the last four days,” said Dr. Linda Boyd, ISU associate professor and graduate-studies director in dental hygiene, who, along with the ISU graduate dental hygiene faculty, have been the architects of the nation’s first predominantly online master’s –degree program in dental hygiene. “It has been wonderful meeting the students in person.”
The 36-credit master’s program is taught entirely online, except for this one-week clinical course and meetings to discuss their theses.
“I feel like meeting the students face-to-face has been, as one of the students put it, a humanizing experience,” Rogo said. “Even if you’re using new computer technology, learning is still an emotional process and it helps to connect in person. This is one way as faculty we can help develop a more complete learning community that supports all of its members. We’ll have a stronger learning community because we’ve spent this time together.
The student who was honored with the unofficial prize for traveling the farthest to ISU this week was Lydia Brion Silva, from Westchester County, New York, located about one-hour north of New York City. Brion Silva works in a private practice and has a seven-year-old son. She, as did many of the other students, stressed the convenience of taking an online course.
“The program has been very convenient. You save on all the travel time and time sitting in the classroom. You can fit your coursework into your own schedule,” Brion Silva said. “You also have near 24-hour accessibility to your instructors, which is something you don’t have in a regular course.”
Honey night, a student from Portland, Ore., who teaches related coursework at Clark College in Vancouver, Wash., works in a private practice and has a 14-year-old daughter at home, also touted the convenience of ISU’s program, “I’m loving it,” Knight said. “It allows me to be in another part of the country and get the benefit of this great program. I chose this program because it is online and I knew the high caliber of the program, and the reputation of Dr. Boyd and ISU’s dental hygiene program.”
The pros of the program have greatly outweighed the cons for Utah’s Williams. “I was nervous about taking the program because I’m not all that computer literate,” Williams said. “But the computer use hasn’t been an obstacle. It has gone really smooth. The downside of the program is that you’re not communicating in person, but the benefit is that I get to complete it on my own time. I teach and I have a 3-year-old, so there is no way I could get a master’s if this program wasn’t offered online.”
ISU dental hygiene department chair Kathleen Hodges called ISU’s inaugural class of students “pioneers” because they will be the first in the nation to graduate from an online dental hygiene program.
“This first group is unique and they’re helping us with feedback to enhance the program,” Hodges said. “Their input has been invaluable in improving the program.”
Boyd said designing the program has been a challenge: There are only 10 graduate-level dental hygiene programs in the country and ISU’s was the first offered primarily online. There weren’t a lot of models for teaching the class. Despite this, the ISU program represents 39 percent of all the first-year dental hygiene masters students in the country, and it will be the nation’s largest dental hygiene masters program when its next batch of students begins this fall.