Integrating Technology in a Statistics Course for a Special Program at Florida International University

A special undergraduate program for selected biology majors was recently inaugurated at Florida International University. The curriculum emphasizes science, mathematics, and statistics. A statistics course was implemented for this program integrating PowerPoint, statistical software (SPSS), and data from biological/biomedical studies. This didactic experience is discussed here.

Achievement of generic baccalaureate student nurses using computer -assisted instruction simulations during a nursing review course

The use of computer assisted instruction (CAI) simulations as an instructional strategy provides nursing students with a critical thinking approach for evaluating risks and benefits and choosing correct alternatives in "safe" patient care situations. It was hypothesized that using CAI simulations during an upper level nursing review course would have a positive effect on the students' posttest scores. Subjects (n = 36) were senior nursing students enrolled in a nursing review course in an undergraduate baccalaureate program. A limitation of the study was the small sample size. The study employed a modified group experimental design using the t test for independent samples. The group who received the CAI simulations during the physiological system review demonstrated a significant increase (p $<$.01) in the posttest score mean when compared to the lecture-discussion group score mean. There was no significant difference between high and low clinical grade point average (GPA) students in the CAI and lecture-discussion groups and their score means on the posttest. However, score mean differences of the low clinical GPA students showed a greater increase for the CAI group than the lecture-discussion group. There was no significant difference between the groups in their system content subscore means on the exit examination completed three weeks later. It was concluded that CAI simulations are as effective as lecture-discussion in assisting upper level students to process information for clinical decision making. CAI simulations can be considered as an instructional strategy to supplement or replace lecture content during a review course, allowing more efficient use of faculty time. It is recommended that the study be repeated using a larger sample size. Further investigations are recommended in comparing the effectiveness of computer software formats and various instructional strategies for other learning situations and student populations. ^

To what extent does the Health Professions Admission Test-Ireland predict performance in early undergraduate tests of communication and clinical skills? – An observational cohort study

Background: Internationally, tests of general mental ability are used in the selection of medical students. Examples include the Medical College Admission Test, Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admission Test and the UK Clinical Aptitude Test. The most widely used measure of their efficacy is predictive validity.A new tool, the Health Professions Admission Test- Ireland (HPAT-Ireland), was introduced in 2009. Traditionally, selection to Irish undergraduate medical schools relied on academic achievement. Since 2009, Irish and EU applicants are selected on a combination of their secondary school academic record (measured predominately by the Leaving Certificate Examination) and HPAT-Ireland score. This is the first study to report on the predictive validity of the HPAT-Ireland for early undergraduate assessments of communication and clinical skills. Method. Students enrolled at two Irish medical schools in 2009 were followed up for two years. Data collected were gender, HPAT-Ireland total and subsection scores; Leaving Certificate Examination plus HPAT-Ireland combined score, Year 1 Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) scores (Total score, communication and clinical subtest scores), Year 1 Multiple Choice Questions and Year 2 OSCE and subset scores. We report descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficients and Multiple linear regression models. Results: Data were available for 312 students. In Year 1 none of the selection criteria were significantly related to student OSCE performance. The Leaving Certificate Examination and Leaving Certificate plus HPAT-Ireland combined scores correlated with MCQ marks.In Year 2 a series of significant correlations emerged between the HPAT-Ireland and subsections thereof with OSCE Communication Z-scores; OSCE Clinical Z-scores; and Total OSCE Z-scores. However on multiple regression only the relationship between Total OSCE Score and the Total HPAT-Ireland score remained significant; albeit the predictive power was modest. Conclusion: We found that none of our selection criteria strongly predict clinical and communication skills. The HPAT- Ireland appears to measures ability in domains different to those assessed by the Leaving Certificate Examination. While some significant associations did emerge in Year 2 between HPAT Ireland and total OSCE scores further evaluation is required to establish if this pattern continues during the senior years of the medical course.

Study Abroad Course Development: Pre-Departure Sessions

Study abroad is a highly encouraged component of the undergrad business program at Bella Lake University, with the large majority of undergraduate students choosing to study and live in a foreign country to expand on their international experiences. Currently, there is no learning structure or learning outcome expectation for students that will participate in the study abroad experience. This project focuses on the development of a course that supports students in the pre-departure phase of their study abroad journey and prepares them to set goals, understand the learning process and the practices of experiential learning to encourage students to achieve both personal and professional goals, and encourage the development of intercultural competence. The discourse surrounding the perceptions and efficacy of the course development is based on a self-assessment survey completed by 121 undergraduate business students that participated in the pre-departure sessions prior to leaving for study abroad in March 2016. The self-assessment results overall showed that the course achieved its aims with the majority of students rating that they were more likely to understand and engage in experiential learning, set goals for their study abroad experience and felt more prepared for study abroad after attending the pre-departure sessions. The project concludes that in order for the pre-departure course to maintain its value, the conversation with students surrounding experiential learning in study abroad needs to continue with further course development focusing on both during and post-study abroad. Further exploration can also be done to find varying ways to motivate different students to engage in the learning potential of study abroad.

A Biocultural Examination of Student Learning Behaviors in Large Undergraduate Lectures

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Practical Activities. Subject: Ecology. Undergraduate Studies in Biology and Marine Sciences. Ecology Department

Notebook of practical activities in Ecology during the 2on course of Biology career.

Undergraduate Social Education Student’s Perspectives about the Profession

Higher education institutions, responsible for training social educators, should ensure the construction of a profile marked by their technical versatility and whose socio-educational intervention is directed at all people, regardless of their situations in life. Reflection on the construction of this profile is fundamental given the difficulties of identity that the profession faces. In this context, we sought to develop a study which would allow us to identify how the students of a degree course in Social Education characterise this professional, in order to reflect on the contribution of training provided by the institution concerned and, if necessary, make the adjustments arising from the results. This is a qualitative, exploratory study, using an unstructured questionnaire applied to a convenience sample of 140 Portuguese students of the three years of a degree course in Social Education. Its emerging categorical content analysis was performed using the NVivo software, version 11. The main results point to a broad vision of the profession and are not limited to the work geared to specific populations or issues, valuing the relevance of the professional in the field of non-assistance socio-educational intervention. The main area of overlap between training objectives and students’ perceptions about practice allows the impact of training to be positively assessed, despite possible curricular adjustments resulting from further analysis, including the need to reinforce community intervention, undervalued by students, even though it plays a key role for social educators.

‘I can use things, but I can't make anything’: a qualitative exploration of team networks in the development and implementation of a new undergraduate e-compendium

In higher education, undergraduate teaching materials are increasingly becoming available online. There is a need to understand the complex processes that happen during their production and how social networks between different groups impact on their development. This paper draws on qualitative interviews and participant drawings of their social networks to understand the dynamics of creating a new e-compendium for a four-year online undergraduate nursing programme in Norway. Twenty staff interviews were undertaken to explore views of the e-compendium, the development process and the perceived networks that were formed during this course. Interview data were thematically analysed along with networks drawings. The findings showed three main institutional stakeholder groups emerging: the ‘management team’, ‘design team’ and ‘lecturers’. Analysis of social networks revealed variability of relations both within and between groups. The pedagogical designer, who was part of the design team, was central to communicating with and co-ordinating staff at all levels. The least well connected were the lecturers. To them, the e-compendium challenged and even threatened previously well-established notions of pedagogy. Future development of e-compendiums should account for the perceived lack of time and existing workload of lecturers so they may be involved with the development process.

Cariology In Curriculum Of Brazilian Dental Schools.

Reasons for the iniquities of caries, globally recognized, may be related to how Cariology has been taught in dental schools. In Brazil, the most important universities, when considering healthcare teaching, are the public ones. The objective of this study was to identify the insertion of the contents of Cariology in the course flowcharts of public dental schools in the country. The survey was conducted in 2013 seeking to identify the realities of different geographical regions, aimed to the census of public dental schools. It was performed a documentary analysis of the menus of disciplines, identifying the following issues: number of dental schools that include content related to Cariology in their curricula; average total workload undergraduate courses and disciplines that contemplate the theme; distribution of disciplines in professional training cycles (basic, clinical and public health); existence of discipline and/or a specific department; verification of bibliographic indication directly related to Cariology. The response rate was 93.6%. All dental schools recommended specific books, and none of them had a Department of Cariology. All dental schools in the country contemplated content related to Cariology in their disciplines, distributed in specific disciplines (except for the Northern region) and disciplines in the three cycles of learning (basic, clinical and public health), with larger workload in the clinical cycle. Although public dental schools in Brazil demonstrated commitment to contemplating the content related to Cariology in their disciplines, the emphasis on the clinical cycle may not be promoting the integrated formation of students, which could be contributing to reflect the inequalities of the disease in the country.

Impact Of Pregabalin Treatment On Synaptic Plasticity And Glial Reactivity During The Course Of Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune and neurodegenerative disease that affects young adults. It is characterized by generating a chronic demyelinating autoimmune inflammation in the central nervous system. An experimental model for studying MS is the experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), induced by immunization with antigenic proteins from myelin. The present study investigated the evolution of EAE in pregabalin treated animals up to the remission phase. The results demonstrated a delay in the onset of the disease with statistical differences at the 10th and the 16th day after immunization. Additionally, the walking track test (CatWalk) was used to evaluate different parameters related to motor function. Although no difference between groups was obtained for the foot print pressure, the regularity index was improved post treatment, indicating a better motor coordination. The immunohistochemical analysis of putative synapse preservation and glial reactivity revealed that pregabalin treatment improved the overall morphology of the spinal cord. A preservation of circuits was depicted and the glial reaction was downregulated during the course of the disease. qRT-PCR data did not show immunomodulatory effects of pregabalin, indicating that the positive effects were restricted to the CNS environment. Overall, the present data indicate that pregabalin is efficient for reducing the seriousness of EAE, delaying its course as well as reducing synaptic loss and astroglial reaction.

Disarray Of Glomerular And Tubular Cell Adhesion Molecules In The Course Of Experimental Bothrops Moojeni Envenomation.

In this study, we show that administration of Bothrops moojeni venom in rats induces a general disturbance in the distribution and content of the tight junctional protein ZO-1, the cell-matrix receptor beta 1 integrin, the cytoskeletal proteins, vinculin and F-actin, and of the extracellular matrix component laminin in renal corpuscles and cortical nephron tubules. These findings suggest that cell-cell and cell-matrix adhesion proteins may be molecular targets in the B. moojeni-induced kidney injury.

Delivery Of A Urology Online Course Using Moodle Versus Didactic Lectures Methods.

To subjectively and objectively compare an accessible interactive electronic library using Moodle with lectures for urology teaching of medical students. Forty consecutive fourth-year medical students and one urology teacher were exposed to two teaching methods (4 weeks each) in the form of problem-based learning: - lectures and - student-centered group discussion based on Moodle (modular object-oriented dynamic learning environment) full time online delivered (24/7) with video surgeries, electronic urology cases and additional basic principles of the disease process. All 40 students completed the study. While 30% were moderately dissatisfied with their current knowledge base, online learning course delivery using Moodle was considered superior to the lectures by 86% of the students. The study found the following observations: (1) the increment in learning grades ranged from 7.0 to 9.7 for students in the online Moodle course compared to 4.0-9.6 to didactic lectures; (2) the self-reported student involvement in the online course was characterized as large by over 60%; (3) the teacher-student interaction was described as very frequent (50%) and moderately frequent (50%); and (4) more inquiries and requisitions by students as well as peer assisting were observed from the students using the Moodle platform. The Moodle platform is feasible and effective, enthusing medical students to learn, improving immersion in the urology clinical rotation and encouraging the spontaneous peer assisted learning. Future studies should expand objective evaluations of knowledge acquisition and retention.

A importância da Química Analítica Qualitativa nos cursos de Química das instituições de ensino superior brasileiras

The results of a survey of institutions offering undergraduate studies, with the objective of evaluating the importance of Qualitative Analytical Chemistry for Chemistry courses in Brazil, are presented and discussed. Judging by the data, the content of the course of Qualitative Analytical Chemistry is considered by the Brazilian institutions offering undergraduate studies to be a body of knowledge essential for the formation of the chemist. This aspect is deemed valid for both baccalaureate and teaching license studies.

Preparação do (+)-±-terpineol a partir do (+)-limoneno: monoterpenos de odor agradável em um projeto para química orgânica experimental

A synthesis of (+)-±-terpineol from (+)-limonene was proposed as a project for undergraduate organic laboratory course. Terpineol is a useful flavor and fragrance compound, and several aspects of this preparation are suited for experimental organic classes, including basic techniques for extraction and analyses of essential oils, different reaction types and the possibility of a high degree of student interest.

Resolução do ibuprofeno: um projeto para disciplina de química orgânica experimental

A practical and didactic sequence of experiments was proposed to illustrate the stereochemistry concept, optically active compounds, resolution of racemates, and use of the NMR technique, including 2D-COSY for identification of organic compounds, on a laboratory course for undergraduate students. The sequence was: extractions of racemic ibuprofen and chiral naproxen from commercial tablets; syntheses of diastereoisomeric amides reacting chiral (S)-(-)-α-methylbenzylamine with (±)-ibuprofen; separation and determination of absolute configuration of amides by ¹H NMR spectroscopy and GC analysis, and hydrolysis of amides to obtain (+)- and (-)-ibuprofen.