Whether due to personal development aspirations or state dental boardrequirements, all orthodontists must continue their dental educationevery year. Continuing education (CE) has traditionally come fromlectures, interactive courses, hands-on participation, and in-officecourses. More recently, CE has become available via Internet-basedindividual learning or Webinar-based group learning.
Robert P. Scholz, DDS (pictured), sat down with Gerald S. Samson, DDS, and JasonB. Cope, DDS, PhD, to discuss their live interactive courses and theirrecent move into online delivery of CE, including the stories behindtheir development. Some questions were directed to Samson, some to Cope,and some to both.
Scholz: When I started practice many years ago, I had three opportunities tocontinue learning: reading, meetings, and a study club or two. Today,there are so many additional resources it is difficult to choose whichones to use. What would you recommend?
Samson: The individual person knows their best learning environment. Someprefer the classroom or study group with live feedback and camaraderie.Others are more solitary, preferring journals and textbooks. I’vediscovered that the online consumer of education prefers face-to-facecontact with the presenter. Of less appeal is the "fly on the wall"Internet experience, where the person logging in feels more like justanother face amid the great unwashed. The gnathosCE.com Web site, therefore, offers a more engaging, personalized format where I’m speaking one-on-one to the viewer.
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