Continuing dental education on the World Wide Web

Area of Science:

• Dental Education
• Online Learning Technologies

Background:

• Continuing dental education (CDE) offers advantages via the World Wide Web (Web CDE).
• Key challenges include locating suitable courses and ensuring course quality.
• Current search engines and web directories lack standardized metadata for effective course matching.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the challenges of finding and evaluating Web CDE courses.
• To discuss current search engine and web directory capabilities and limitations.
• To review proposed national standards for Web CDE course quality.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of existing search engines and web directories for Web CDE.
• Discussion of emerging Web CDE technologies.
• Review and summary of proposed national quality standards for Web CDE.

Main Results:

• Difficulty in locating high-quality Web CDE courses stems from a lack of standardized metadata.
• Web directories show promise but require further development.
• A national initiative is developing proposed quality standards for Web CDE courses.

Conclusions:

• Improvements in search engines and web directories are needed for better Web CDE accessibility.
• Establishing national quality standards is crucial for the advancement of Web CDE.
• Emerging technologies and future developments will shape the landscape of online dental education.