Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
The British Dental Journal values dental education as shown by publishing this supplement. The articles are written by committed educators who value the dissemination of educational research and wish to share their knowledge of new method to communicate teaching and learning skills.
What is e-learning? Diana Laurillard, Head of the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) e-learning Strategy Group, defined e-learning as 'learning in a way that uses information and communication technologies (ICT).1 When instructor and student are physically separated the term 'distance learning' has been applied.
An inevitable part of any educational process with an end point that involves handling people must at some time require the student to prove that he or she is capable of dealing with the real thing; the living, breathing (however irregularly) very-present specimen of humanity. And so it is with dentistry too. We end up with that quaint shuffling, rather awkward game variously called a patient viva or a history taking exercise or a plethora of other terms, which actually provides a thin adjective of a veil over what is a slightly dubious form of parlour charades.