Dr Christopher Stokes

Christopher Stokes is a Senior Teacher and University Director of Digital Learning at the University of Sheffield. Chris is known for developing engaging and innovative teaching approaches to teaching dental technology (making false teeth) and digital literacy skills, and now, as a Director of Digital Learning, is helping others to successfully integrate technology into their teaching across the University. Chris' expertise in dental technology has seen him co-author an innovative 'cook-book' style textbook to support students coming to the subject for the first time, and the creation of popular video-based learning content that he has contributed to open-education repositories. Impact of work Chris is dedicated to widening participation in dentistry and for the last decade has worked to support students from under-represented groups in higher education to succeed in the fiercely competitive applications for courses in dentistry. He believes that this is not just for the benefit of the students he works with, but for all communities, as "if you need a dentist in every community, it would be best if those dentists could be from those communities". The ADOPT Scheme, which he founded in 2006 and which supports students in FE as they prepare to apply for dental courses, has been widely praised as a 'flagship' approach to reducing inequalities of access to HE. Combining his skills in online learning design with his commitment to widening participation Chris led on the development of one of the first dental MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), the first to specifically be designed to support prospective students. Discover Dentistry was a new approach to allow aspiring dentists, dental patients and dental professions to engage in online discussions around instructional and inspiring content of dental history, practice, challenges and research. It has now reached over 16,000 learners in 85 countries. Plans for the future Chris is currently working to develop and support digital learning innovation across the University of Sheffield in a leadership role. He has approached this by building a Digital Commons community, with team-based curriculum development support 'retreats' for academics, provocative seminars and leadership on large technology-projects. He still gets stuck in with teaching about false teeth.