NYU adVANCE Software

The NYU adVANCE platform is designed to facilitate and encourage integration across curricular topics taught at different stages of the curriculum. An example in dental education would be integration of basic science content from the first year of the curriculum with clinical and other concepts from subsequent years. However curricular integration is applicable to any institution where students must consolidate knowledge from different courses in order to achieve mastery, e.g. health sciences, engineering, law, and other professional schools.

To support students in achieving content mastery, a spaced-repetition approach is provided to students through weekly low-stakes quizzes. The integrated quiz questions are created in the adVANCE platform which facilitates collaboration among course instructors teaching at all years within the curriculum. Course instructors can search existing quiz questions related to a specific case (for example a patient scenario), and add additional questions (including answer explanations and targeted review material) pertaining to their respective course within the overall curriculum. For each question, data regarding the course and other relevant parameters are captured to assist with curricular mapping and alignment. For a single case, students may be required to recall information from more than one course in their curriculum in order to successfully answer all associated questions. If, upon search, a course instructor does not find a case on a topic related to their course content, they can also create new cases and invite one or more colleagues from different departments to collaborate on a case.

Focusing specifically on the integration of dental education curriculum, the adVANCE platform was designed and developed by a team of course instructors and technologists at the NYU College of Dentistry. The platform was designed as a place to create and store a database of questions that is used to help students practice and integrate curriculum content and prepare them for the dental board examination they take in their fourth year. Within the application, course instructors can create multiple questions associated with a single patient scenario (patient box questions) or stand-alone questions. The application facilitates collaboration among course instructors and, because meta-data is collected for each question, the generation of reports regarding such variables as the systems area addressed in each question (e.g., cardiovascular), or the foundational knowledge category it addresses. 

Questions from the database can be easily exported from the platform for use in assessments in a Learning Management System (LMS). The platform does not offer any assessment and/or grading functionality.