Clinical Grading Specific for Dental Hygiene Programs
Reports for Exhibits to Accreditation Standards.
TalEval now has two separate systems to provide more grading options in a user-friendly manner.
The methodology of the grading was designed by Cynthia (Cindy) Biron after years of testing ways to apply statistics to findings of all faculty members in clinic evaluating all students in a class for a truly objective, corroborative grade to meet the standards of the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA). At that time, she discovered ways to collect findings for outcomes assessment reports for CODA self-study documents. All of the mathematics of the system were performed manually from 1993 until 2003. At that time, it was named “Dental Hygiene Process of Care Daily Evaluation”.
In 2003, Connie Harper, president of America’s Software, contacted Cindy and offered to computerize the system. Connie did an excellent job with the enormous task of programming the grading materials. Together Connie & Cindy named the software system “TalEval”. The name was from Tallahassee Community College (now named Tallahassee State College). Since the faculty at this school all worked with the program Chair (Cindy) and helped beta test the software for three years, we decided to have the name represent the college. There has now been twenty-one years of testing TalEval with over one third of all dental hygiene programs in the USA using it.
The true test took place during the CODA site visit of the TSC DH Program in 2008. One of the site-vistors was none other than, Gwen Welling, the manager of DH Accreditation at CODA! She and the other site team members were so impressed with TalEval it took all their attention when they visited our clinic. The site visit resulted in no recommendations, suggestions or any findings other than five verbal commendations, three of which were about TalEval.
Word spread quickly at CODA on how great TalEval was for conducting a corroborative error grade and generating excellent outcomes assessment reports. TalEval is known and understood by CODA. It has served many schools well in meeting CODA standards.
And now we have TalEval Plus!
Since TalEval is for evaluating the process of care on live patients, it did not serve as a tool for evaluating in Preclinic Lab as students practiced on manikins. With the help of Jill Gehrig, author of the textbook, “Fundamentals of Periodontal Instrumentation & Advanced Root Instrumentation”, we were able to take the skill evaluations from her book and program them into another grading section of TalEval. We were also able to use the format(template) from Jill’s book for individual Technique Evaluations (Competencies).
Other computerized grading systems are out there now and they take what you are doing and program it into the software. Unfortunately, what you are doing may not be objective or corroborative or meeting CODA standards. Here are the links to TalEval & TalEval Plus links:
Links for TalEval Information:
Here are the links to the forms and guides for TalEval & TalEval Plus
1 https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/TalEval-Grading-Method.pdf
2. https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/How-to-Grade-in-TalEval.pdf
3. https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Debridement-Skill-Levels.pdf
4. https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Point-Value-Set-Up.pdf
5. https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Calculus-Grading.pdf
6. https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/DH-Program-Screening-Form.pdf
7. https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/TalEval-Presentation-for-Students.ppt2017.pdf
8. https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/TalEval-Report-As-CODA-Exhibits.pdf
9. https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/TalEval-Plus-Quick-Start.pdf
<b>T</b><b>he TalEval Grading is an Objective Format</b>With this grading method students do not get a grade for the clinic session or individual patient treatments. <i>TalEval Grading</i> is a more comprehensive, objective grading format since it gathers data about the student’s performance on specific procedures and items over a span of time on a variety of patients of various levels of difficulty. That is how you and the student know which particular skills they performed at a level of competency and which are in need of improvement. Students do not fail for the day for making errors since that skill performance is compared to all the times they performed the skill on all patients treated. They may lose points for critical errors, but they don’t fail for the day. TalEval measures all the items of patient care over each half of the semester and generates a grade based on the mean and the standard deviation. Students and instructors are less stressed in clinic with this grading system since it is not about “a grade for the day”, it is about patient care and individual skill development.
<li>An Objective Grading Format (Standard 2-15 through 2-17)</li><li>Calculates Individual Student Grades (Standard 2-15 through 2-17)</li><li>Tracks Patient Appointments (Standard 2-15 through 2-17)</li><li>Collects and Displays Data for Outcomes Assessments in the form of a chart for Exhibits for the Accreditation Self-Study Document (Standard 1-1)</li><li>Collects Data for the Dental Hygiene Process of Care (Standard 2-17)</li>
<li>Student login for Self-Assessment (Standard 2-17)</li><li>Track Student Enrollment Requirements such as CPR, HEP (Standard 2-21)</li><li>Provides Data on Instructor Performance & Calibration (Standard 3-9)</li><li>Component for Quality Assurance (Standard 6-2)</li><li>Customizable to Meet each Schools’ Needs</li>
<span style=”color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;”><span style=”text-decoration: underline;” data-mce-style=”text-decoration: underline;”><b><i><a style=”color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;” href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TalEval-Setup.pdf” data-mce-href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TalEval-Setup.pdf” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;”>TalEval Setup</a></i></b></span></span><strong><em><span style=”color: #0000ff;” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff;”><a style=”color: #0000ff;” href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/TalEval-DH-Grading-Outcomes-Assessment-Guide-2019-rev.pdf” data-mce-href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/TalEval-DH-Grading-Outcomes-Assessment-Guide-2019-rev.pdf” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff;”>TalEval DH Grading & Outcomes Assessment Guide 2019</a></span></em></strong><strong><em><span style=”color: #0000ff;” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff;”><a style=”color: #0000ff;” href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TalEval-How-to-Grade.pptx-2017.pdf” data-mce-href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TalEval-How-to-Grade.pptx-2017.pdf” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff;”>TalEval – How to Grade.pptx 2017</a></span></em></strong><span style=”color: #0000ff;” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff;”><em><strong><a style=”color: #0000ff;” href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TalEval-Efficient-Check-in-Grading.pptx-2017.pdf” data-mce-href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TalEval-Efficient-Check-in-Grading.pptx-2017.pdf” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff;”>TalEval Efficient Check-in Grading.pptx 2017</a></strong></em></span><span style=”text-decoration: underline;” data-mce-style=”text-decoration: underline;”><span style=”color: #0000ff;” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff;”><a style=”color: #0000ff;” href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/DH-TalEval-Manual-Grade-Forms.zip” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer” data-mce-href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/DH-TalEval-Manual-Grade-Forms.zip” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff;”><b><i>TalEval Manual Grade Forms Set</i></b></a></span></span><span style=”color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;”><b><i><a style=”color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;” href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TalEval-Presentation-for-Students.ppt2017.pdf” data-mce-href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/TalEval-Presentation-for-Students.ppt2017.pdf” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;”>TalEval Presentation for Students.ppt2017</a></i></b></span><a href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Tables-for-calc-percentag.zip” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer” data-mce-href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Tables-for-calc-percentag.zip”><span style=”text-decoration: underline;” data-mce-style=”text-decoration: underline;”><span style=”color: #0000ff;” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff;”><b>Tables for Calculus Percentage (multiple files in one zip file)</b></span></span> added 10/04/2012 </a><a href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Patient-Criteria-Requirements.pdf” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer” data-mce-href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Patient-Criteria-Requirements.pdf”><span style=”text-decoration: underline;” data-mce-style=”text-decoration: underline;”><span style=”color: #0000ff;” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff;”><b>Patient Criteria Requirements</b></span></span> added 03/07/201</a>7<span style=”color: #0000ff;” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff;”><em><strong><span style=”text-decoration: underline;” data-mce-style=”text-decoration: underline;”><a style=”color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;” href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DH-Program-Screening-Form.pdf” data-mce-href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DH-Program-Screening-Form.pdf” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;”>DH Program Screening Form</a></span></strong></em></span><span style=”text-decoration: underline;” data-mce-style=”text-decoration: underline;”><span style=”color: #0000ff;” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff;”><a style=”color: #0000ff;” href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/TalEval-testimonials.pdf” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer” data-mce-href=”https://www.dhmethed.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/TalEval-testimonials.pdf” data-mce-style=”color: #0000ff;”><b>TalEval Testimonials</b></a></span></span>System Requirements: TalEval is a secure web-based application so you can access it from any computer connected to the internet. There is no software to download or install! Safeguarding your data is one of our most important priorities. That’s why we automatically encrypt all sensitive student and patient information sent between your computer and our servers.Contact: America’ Software Corporation 800-467-1170 FAX 866-302-3905 Call for live demo! www.americassoftware.com 188 Ponderosa Circle Mooresville, NC 28117
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