Problem‐based Learning in Undergraduate Dental Education: Faculty Development at the University of Southern California School of Dentistry

Abstract

The University of Southern California School of Dentistry (USCSD) seeks to educate oral health professionals with a balanced curriculum covering health promotion, risk assessment and disease prevention, diagnostics, treatments, and therapeutics. Based on critical analyses of a 5-year educational demonstration project, the USCSD proposed to use problem-based learning (PBL) to achieve its goals. Among the many changes required to convert a traditional dental educational curriculum to PBL, none is more important than that of faculty development. To achieve this, the USCSD Curriculum Subcommittee on Faculty Development, Mentoring, and Evaluation has designed and implemented a series of workshops to train its faculty as facilitators. There are four Core Skills Workshops: PBL Process Workshop, Facilitation of Learning Workshop, Student Assessment and Feedback Workshop, and PBL in the Clinical Environment.