It all started during our third year in dental school. Two colleagues and I were in charge of writing sheets for the Operative Dentistry course and by the end of the year we managed to make a plagiarized, un-referenced, & well-organized book of all the lectures we took. We even added some illustrations we drew (using Paint). In an effort to share our work with our peers, we approached a faculty member, who was at that time in charge of E-learning, to publish “our book”. To our shock, we learned that our work is illegal (plagiarized & not referenced). One might say: “naïve”, but we actually learned a lot from that experience. We learned what plagiarism is, we improved our editing and writing skills, and most importantly we learned the topic well! Interestingly, it was at that time I first thought of a site on which learning resources can be shared since there was no suitable platform for “our book” (if it was legal).
Fast forward to our fifth year in dental school, I have had some difficulties in Periodontics so I borrowed the Periodontics textbook from the school’s library and long story short I made a clinical manual; yet, this time without the mistakes of the Operative book. After I have had made the “Students Manual of Clinical Periodontics”; I made a second manual “Infection Control for Dental Students”. At the same time, my colleague, Khalid Alfaifi, have had just finished “Endodontic Diagnosis” a one page guide. Around that period of time, I realized we need a platform to share our work with peers and colleagues. For that purpose, I have searched the internet for ways to get our content to others. I stumbled upon some e-book publishing sites which offer statistics and that made me think “Awesome! … I can see the impact of our work”. After thorough searching and studying the idea more carefully, I realized that the best approach is to make a website dedicated to our audience (i.e. Saudi dental undergrads).
Author: Yazan Aljohani Editor: Khawla Aljohani Designer: Noha Alkurdi