Home // International Journal On Advances in Life Sciences, volume 14, numbers 3 and 4, 2022 // View article
Authors:
Aurelie Mailloux
Jerome Dinet
Keywords: elearning; community of practice; psycho-ergonomic study; innovative device; orthodontics; continuing education.
Abstract:
The COVID-19 crisis has changed behaviors and needs of orthodontic practitioners related to (i) cancellation of all the continuing education events, which led to the disappearance of formal and informal exchanges on the practice (ii) emergence of numerous videoconferences, but without any prior identification of practitioners’ needs. The problem of interaction within a continuing education online environment is paramount: promoting interaction between peers within the system is essential to (i) reduce the feeling of loneliness (ii) promote users’ commitment. Most French orthodontic practitioners were already involved in a virtual active Community of Practice (CoP) with their own way of fostering identification, cohesion, and collaboration. The purpose of this user-centered research is to identify requirements for creating an innovative comprehensive distance continuing education environment that would meet expectations and needs in terms of interactions of most CoP members, according to their experience (novices to experts). After an extensive state-of-the-art, used to better understand the changes in training and education related to orthodontic domain, we conducted (a) a detailed examination of the discursive activities within a CoP (e.g., content, interactions, rhythm, objectives) (b) four focus group (c) a survey consisting of two questionnaires (online, and face-to-face) (d) an ergonomic inspection of the e-orthodontie.com website. The collected data confirmed that an innovative complete distance continuing education environment could meet many CoP members’ needs, such as: anonymous, scientifically validated content, extensive or limited discussion forums, clinical case sharing, videoconferences instant translation, ease of access and cost and time saving. From a theoretical point of view, this study highlighted the crucial role of the community of practice in producing requirements for creating a useful, usable, and acceptable digital education environment for orthodontic practitioners.
Pages: 78 to 88
Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2022. Used with permission.
Publication date: December 31, 2022
Published in: journal
ISSN: 1942-2660