Facilitation of student-staff partnership in development of digital learning tools through a special study module

A student-staff partnership was formed as part of a final year special study module to provide dental students the opportunity to work closely with faculty to produce high-quality e-learning resources in areas of the curriculum identified by the students as particularly difficult. The student-staff team identified the following themes as major influences on the success of the project: student-staff interaction, ownership, managing expectations, time pressures, and co-creation partnership benefits. This partnership resulted in a valuable learning experience for both the students and staff involved. The resource developed was evaluated by junior dental students in second and third year of the five year Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) degree programme at Glasgow Dental School and showed a high degree of acceptability by those in both groups. The quality assurance built into the process has resulted in an e-learning resource that has been incorporated directly into our flipped classroom model for pre-clinical skills teaching.