NSU CDM Impressions Fall/Winter 2019

10 | COLLEGE OF DENTAL MEDICINE BY MICHELLE F. SOLOMON In a surgery room at NSU’s College of Dental Medicine (CDM), one camera peers down on the procedure area, while a secondary camera is set up through a microscope. The instructor-surgeon wears a lavalier microphone to explain each surgery phase. A few feet away, in the Dental Simulation Laboratory, 35 dental professionals watch the implant procedure being broadcast in real time on their own 22-inch monitor. The participants in the sim lab can interact with the surgery room through two-way microphones. On any given day, two to four such sessions are held simultaneously as part of the CDM’s Continuing Education (CE) Program. “Rather than watching a PowerPoint or a video on a screen, they watch a proce- dure live. They are not sitting in a lecture hall staring at one giant screen,” explained Joel B. Slingbaum, D.M.D., director of informational and instructional technology and of continuing education for the CDM. “The whole room is wired for sound. There is no delay. It is a live demonstration being broadcast, so when the learners ask questions, it is about what is happening in real time,” he added. The livestream, already successful in a few course offerings, is just the beginning for expanding the CE Program. “We’re looking to expand more of these live demo courses. We can bring up to 130 people into the lab to watch and learn from a procedure as it is happening,” Slingbaum said. The simultaneous-time broadcast has become one of the modules in the Continuing Education Depart- ment’s American Academy of Implant Dentistry (AAID) MaxiCourse: Practical Implant Education. The 300-hour course is overseen by Jack Piermatti, D.M.D., director of the Dental Implant MaxiCourse at both the CDM and Rutgers University School of Dental Medicine. He also directs dental implant surgery for the CDM’s postgraduate prosthodontics residency program. Thomas J. Balshi, D.D.S., Ph.D., a CDM professor, serves as coinstructor/codirector. “The real-time surgery has two components,” Piermatti said. “If I am in the surgery room, Dr. Balshi can be in the sim lab talking participants through what they are watching, and then we trade off.” 10-MONTH COURSE The AAID MaxiCourse®: Practical Implant Educa- tion, now in its third year, is the CDM’s most ambi- tious CE program. “The course is a commitment for those who participate,” said Piermatti, explaining that the 10-month course meets each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. CONTINUING EDUCATION WIRED FOR LEARNING (continued on page 13) “It is a live demonstration being broadcast, so when the learners ask questions, it is about what is happening in real time.” —JOEL B. SLINGBAUM