Desafios na formação médica: a contribuição da avaliação

O curso de medicina da Faculdade de Medicina de Marília (Famema) adota um currículo integrado, orientado por competência, em que a avaliação do desempenho dos estudantes recai sobre aspectos cognitivos, habilidades e atitudes. Desse modo, o objetivo deste estudo foi analisar as concepções dos professores dessa Instituição a respeito da avaliação. Para tanto, realizou-se a filmagem de 12 Exercícios de Avaliação da Prática Profissional (Eapp). Para a análise dos discursos, utilizou-se o método de interpretação dos sentidos, que se baseia em princípios hermenêutico-dialéticos. Foram identificadas diferentes concepções de avaliação, desde a mais tradicional até a mais crítica e reflexiva. Concluiu-se que o Eapp é um espaço privilegiado para avaliar o desempenho dos estudantes e problematizar a prática avaliativa dos professores.

Consciência fonêmica em escolares antes e após oficinas de linguagem

OBJETIVO: Verificar o desempenho de escolares em consciência fonêmica antes e após a realização de oficinas de linguagem. MÉTODOS: Foi realizada a avaliação da consciência fonêmica em 49 escolares do quarto ano do Ensino Fundamental, utilizando a parte dois do teste "Consciência Fonológica - Instrumento de Avaliação Sequencial" (CONFIAS). Os critérios de exclusão no estudo foram: presença de queixas relacionadas ou de indicadores de alterações da audição e/ou visão; presença de distúrbios neurológicos, comportamentais e/ou cognitivos. Foram incluídas no estudo as crianças que participaram das avaliações inicial e final e de, no mínimo 75% dos encontros das oficinas. Conforme desempenho no teste, os escolares foram divididos em três grupos: inicial, intermediário e avançado. Foram realizadas oficinas semanais para estimulação das habilidades fonológicas e fonêmicas, de acordo com o grupo a que pertenciam. Após as cinco oficinas, os escolares passaram por avaliação final idêntica à inicial. RESULTADOS: O desempenho em consciência fonêmica dos escolares de todos os grupos evoluiu de forma significante após a realização das oficinas. O grupo intermediário foi o que apresentou maior evolução na média de acertos. CONCLUSÃO: O desempenho de escolares em consciência fonêmica evolui consideravelmente após a realização de oficinas de linguagem.

THE DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF SOFTWARE TO VERIFY DIAGNOSTIC ACCURACY

This article describes the development and evaluation of software that verifies the accuracy of diagnoses made by nursing students. The software was based on a model that uses fuzzy logic concepts, including PERL, the MySQL database for Internet accessibility, and the NANDA-I 2007-2008 classification system. The software was evaluated in terms of its technical quality and usability through specific instruments. The activity proposed in the software involves four stages in which students establish the relationship values between nursing diagnoses, defining characteristics/risk factors and clinical cases. The relationship values determined by students are compared to those of specialists, generating performance scores for the students. In the evaluation, the software demonstrated satisfactory outcomes regarding the technical quality and, according to the students, helped in their learning and may become an educational tool to teach the process of nursing diagnosis.

PBL and B-Learning for Civil Engineering Students in a Transportation Course

The results of a pedagogical strategy implemented at the University of Sao Paulo at Sao Carlos are presented and discussed. The initiative was conducted in a transportation course offered to Civil Engineering students. The approach is a combination of problem-based learning and project-based learning (PBL) and blended-learning (B-learning). Starting in 2006, a different problem was introduced every year. From 2009 on, however, the problem-based learning concept was expanded to project-based learning. The performance of the students was analyzed using the following elements: (1) grades in course activities; (2) answers from a questionnaire designed for course evaluation; and (3) cognitive maps made to assess the effects of PBL through the comparison of the responses provided by the students involved and those not involved in the experiment. The results showed positive aspects of the method, such as a strong involvement of several students with the subject. A gradual increase in the average scores obtained by the students in the project activities (from 6.77 in 2006 to 8.24 in 2009) was concomitant with a better evaluation of these activities and of the course as a whole (90 and 97% of options "Good" or "Very good" in 2009, respectively). A growing interest in the field of transportation engineering as an alternative for further studies was also noticed. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)EI.1943-5541.0000115. (C) 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Evaluation of a multimedia online tool for teaching bronchial hygiene to physical therapy students

Background: Advances in information technology have been widely used in teaching health care professionals. The use of multimedia resources may be important for clinical learning and we are not aware of previous reports using such technology in respiratory physical therapy education. Objectives: Our approach was to evaluate a conventional bronchial hygiene techniques (BHTs) course with an interactive online environment, including multimedia resources. Methods: Previous developed audiovisual support material comprised: physiology, physiopathology and BHTs, accessible to students through the Internet in conjunction with BHTs classes. Two groups of students were compared and both attended regular classes: the on-line group (n=8) received access to online resources, while the control group (n=8) received conventional written material. Student's performance was evaluated before and after the course. Results: A preliminary test (score 0 to 10) was applied before the beginning of the course, showing that the initial knowledge of both groups was comparable [online, 6.75 (SD=0.88) vs. control, 6.125 (SD=1.35); p>0.05]. Two weeks after the end of the course, a second test showed that the online group performed significantly better than the control group [respectively, 7.75 (SD=1.28) vs. 5.93 (SD=0.72); p>0.05]. Conclusions: The use of a multimedia online resource had a positive impact on student's learning in respiratory therapy field in which instrumental and manual resources are often used and can be explored using this technology.

Evolving decision trees with beam search-based initialization and lexicographic multi-objective evaluation

Decision tree induction algorithms represent one of the most popular techniques for dealing with classification problems. However, traditional decision-tree induction algorithms implement a greedy approach for node splitting that is inherently susceptible to local optima convergence. Evolutionary algorithms can avoid the problems associated with a greedy search and have been successfully employed to the induction of decision trees. Previously, we proposed a lexicographic multi-objective genetic algorithm for decision-tree induction, named LEGAL-Tree. In this work, we propose extending this approach substantially, particularly w.r.t. two important evolutionary aspects: the initialization of the population and the fitness function. We carry out a comprehensive set of experiments to validate our extended algorithm. The experimental results suggest that it is able to outperform both traditional algorithms for decision-tree induction and another evolutionary algorithm in a variety of application domains.