Dentistry students make guest appearance at American Dental Competition

Posted October 08, 1998


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - October 7, 1998
98-10-04-DE


Dentistry students make guest appearance at American Dental Competition

Two fifth year dentistry students have recently been invited to be the
Canadian representatives at the Student Competition of the American Dental
Association to be held in San Francisco later in October.

James Stephenson and Rosaleen Shavron received the 1998 first place award at
both the U of S Table Clinic Competition and the Canadian Dental
Association/Dentsply International Student Clinician Program in Toronto on
May 7, 1998 for their research topic, "Computer Assisted Learning in
Mandibular Nerve Anesthesia."

Through an anatomical study, the students formed the basis for computer
software which demonstrates four mandibular nerve anesthetic techniques
using animation, text and review questions. It is designed to aid learning
of both the anesthetic technique and the relevant anatomy.

The Mandibular Nerve Anesthesia software is a unit of the University of
Saskatchewan Computer Aided Learning Environment (U-SCALE) project in
clinical gross anatomy.

"Although the Mandibular Nerve Anesthesia software will benefit dental
students in particular, the greater program will bring benefits to both
medical and dental students," says Geoff Guttmann, Department of Anatomy and
Cell Biology, College of Medicine and faculty advisor for the project.
"U-SCALE hopes to give students a greater understanding of the human body
through computer assisted learning."

The student's software will also soon be published in the Journal of British
Society for Computer Assisted Learning in Dentistry. The software will be
distributed as shareware.

Stephenson and Shavron's project was part of their course work for a fourth
year research class.

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For more information, please contact:

Geoff Guttmann
Anatomy and Cell Biology
University of Saskatchewan
Phone: (306) 966-4079