Since 1995, Liaison International has been involved in providing comprehensive IT services to Boston University School of Dental Medicine. Liaison International has been tasked to support and advance the mission of the School of Dental Medicine. The mission of the Dental School is to provide excellent education to dental professional throughout their careers; to shape the future of dental medicine and dental education through research; to offer excellent health care services to the community; to participate in community activities; and to foster a respectful and supportive environment.

Liaison International designates professional individuals to direct and manage the Office of Information Technology and Educational Resources (OITER) at the school. OITER responsibility includes the following:

1) Strengthening the capacity of the School to effectively engage in interdisciplinary research through development and/or evaluation of information systems and applications that enable the integration and sharing of data in different areas of research, patient care delivery, and management.

To improve patient care delivery, interdisciplinary research and teaching, the School decided to shift to a paperless clinical information system (CIS). Liaison International was tasked to lead the effort in designing the Response for Proposal (RFP), the bidding process and the implementation of the new system.

Moving the School into a paperless system is a complex and delicate process that requires great resources (financial and human). To maximize and ensure successful implementation, the School opted for phased implementations of the new system. Please see table below for more information.

In collaboration with the Dean's office and the offices of the Clinical Dean, General Dentistry, all Post-doctoral Programs and the Business Office, Liaison, successfully implemented the first two phases of the CIS. Liaison is now working with stakeholders in the final phases of implementation.

2) Strengthening the capacity of SDM to be successful in its local and global initiatives using distance education technology.

As the School advances with its focus on global health and establishing international partnerships, the role of educational technology that supports eLearning is needed. In line with the schools' vision, Liaison has been involved in evaluating systems that will build upon the School experience with eLearning. The systems being evaluated should address effective knowledge and education transfer from the teachers to the students/residents. They should allow faculty to integrate their content and deliver them in a more effective and programmatic way. The system should provide faculty the options and functionality to effectively store and share their content should they choose to in a "Content Repository". Sharing content allows faculty to rapidly develop and deploy courses, modules and other types of instructions on the Internet, Intranet, DVD/CD and other types of medium.

3) Engaging faculty in critical thinking about the effective use of educational technology.

There are four important questions to examine:

• How can technology be used to increase access to our institution?
• How can technology be used to increase diversity in the school?
• How can technology be used to improve the quality of student learning and performance?
• How can technology be used to address the rising cost of dental education?

It is essential that the school shifts from viewing technology as adding tools to what they already do. Liaison is engaging faculty to be designers of interactive/collaborative learning experiences that increase student motivation and performance. It is important for faculty to think and plan more "strategically" about the current use of technology (e.g. CourseInfo, digital slides)-where to best use technology intelligently to make a real difference in the School by answering these four key questions.

4) Assisting faculty members with integrating technology into instruction for online and in classroom teaching, where most appropriate.

Liaison assists faculty in the creation and management of their online sites. Designated support staff from Liaison provides instructors with support on the design and implementation of web-based courses using. Instructions and educational related materials are developed, placed under CourseInfo sites for students to download or print prior to or during class sessions. Within the sites, Instructors place course materials (slides, videos, syllabi, and advanced lecture notes), course updates, quizzes and links to additional sites that enable students to gain material about related-subjects.

To enhance learning through instruction that capitalizes on the attributes of computer technology, using "Case Builder" software, liaison staff work with instructors to produce a CD with clinical cases. These cases are distributed to students for self-learning and for more effective classroom teaching.

5) Providing excellent technology support for faculty, students and staff

Liaison provides in-house training programs aimed at increasing the productivity of faculty and staff; educational applications to enhance students' educational experience; and technical support for 23 servers and more than 452 Desktops, 721 laptops and 1,231 users with various IT needs.

6) Enhancing student portal services through the development and integration of multiple sources of data under the Web-based Student Performance System

Liaison developed a web-based system to help students access and continuously track their performance. This web-based system integrated existing AADSAS (American Association of Dental Schools Application Service), Registrar (Final Grades) and Apex student databases within BUSDM. It also includes the development of Summative evaluation system, Competency tracking (Signout), Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, students' performance on national and regional Boards. Several class and individual based analysis reports were developed based on criteria provided by the Office of Educational Research and Evaluation. Institutional reports on individual and class performances on National Boards Part I and Part II are now easily available by simply entering individual students' grade. The objective of this system is:

• To provide administrators the tools to easily analyze, monitor and detect students' learning patterns based on their undergraduate academic, didactics, and Pre-clinical and clinical performance.
• To allow faculty to access and print their class rosters, course list, grade sheet and grade remediation form.
• To allow students to access their final grade and monitor the progress of their Summative tests and signing-out process.

It also included the integration with the clinical information system so students can access their appointments and patient list online. In addition to integrating these in-house components and further leveraging existing resources, the system was also integrated with components already created by the University Information Systems (UIS) and used by BUSDM administration. School-wide Kerberos authentication was also integrated with the system to provide students, faculty and staff with single login access to various resources.

In addition, Liaison also developed a web-based system to assist faculty and residents in specialty programs (Pediatric, Periodontic, Prosthodontic and AEGD) to facilitate the clinical evaluation process. The system provides a significant cost savings of an equivalent of at least two staff members' time who otherwise have to spend hours collecting paper evaluation forms from residents and faculty for later scanning. Once all forms are collected and scanned, additional work is spent on analyzing the data to produce relevant reports for distribution to the Director, faculty and residents. By using this system, the evaluation process is now completed within a one-week period instead of two months. Once residents and faculty complete the evaluation, the data is instantly available on-line to the directors and his/her staff for viewing and releasing the result upon e-signing it. Reports are always available to residents and faculty for viewing and monitoring the progress of their clinical work.

7) Developing and facilitating web-based admissions applications.

Liaison has developed two web-based applications for Post-doctoral and Pre-doctoral admissions: BUSDM Subscribes to the Postdoctoral Application Support Service (PASS) for some of the programs. Upon successful implementation of two online applications for Post-doctoral and Advanced Standing programs, Liaison staff continues to apply changes and enhancements to different functionality of these applications. One of the enhancements is the integration of these applications with Charles River cyber-cash services for faster and more efficient fee collection from applicants.

Pre-doctoral admissions: BUSDM Subscribes to the American Association of Dental Schools Application Service (AADSAS) for the Pre-doctoral applications. The admissions office supports Aclient – admissions management application software that is distributed by the American Association of Dental Education (ADEA). Aclient integrates with AADSAS and capable of downloading the applicants data received, allowing the admissions office to manage and communicate with the current and prospective applicants, as well upload the status of these applicants to AADSAS Portal for real time access.