Habilidades informacionais abordadas em instrumentos de avaliação de CI

Internationally there are validated instruments that are used on a large scale to verify the information literacy of individuals in different contexts. Their results serve as a diagnostic for the planning and implementation of information literacy activities. In Brazil there is no validated assessment tools of information literacy. An analysis of contents of four international instruments attached to the upper level educational institutions duly recognized in the literature of the field and validated. The results will be presented related to information literacy addressed in these instruments. It was found that the instruments analyzed the skills focused on the identification of terms of the informational needs, the preparation and construction of search strategies available in parameter two of the Association of College and Research Libraries; differentiation of information sources (parameter one); evaluation and selection of informational sources and selection of the theme searched information (parameter three); and, finally, the abilities of the ethical issue related to use of the information (parameter five). The parameter four, which is facing the communication of information, was not addressed by the instruments. It was concluded that there is a concern of those responsible for preparing the instruments covered with more traditional technical aspects of training users and aspects of information literacy at the expense of ethical and aesthetic aspects.

Interpretando reflexões de futuros professores de Física sobre sua prática profissional durante a formação inicial: a busca pela construção da autonomia docente

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

A avaliação da efetividade de um modelo de intervenção breve (método BASICS) para o uso de risco de álcool em estudantes do ensino médio

Pós-graduação em Saúde Coletiva - FMB

Summarization in Math Class

This action research study of twenty students in my sixth grade mathematics classroom examines the implementation of summarization strategies. Students were taught how to summarize concepts and how to explain their thinking in different ways to the teacher and their peers. Through analysis of students’ summaries of concepts from lessons that I taught, tests scores, and student journals and interviews, I discovered that summarizing mathematical concepts offers students an engaging opportunity to better understand those concepts and render that understanding more visible to the teacher. This analysis suggests that non-traditional summarization, such as verbal and written strategies, and strategies involving movement and discussions, can be useful in mathematics classrooms to improve student understanding, engagement in learning tasks, and as a form of formative assessment.

Is Everyone Rated Equal? An Examination of Factors Related to Sexual Risk in Ethnically Diverse Male Adolescents Who Have Sexually Offended

As the juvenile justice system has evolved, there has been a need for clinicians to make judgments about risk posed by adolescents who have committed sexual offenses. There are inherent difficulties in attempting to assess risk for violence among adolescents due to the developmental changes taking place and the absence of well-validated instruments to guide risk prediction judgments. With minority groups increasing in numbers in the U.S., it is likely that professionals will encounter minority individuals when conducting risk assessments. Overall questions regarding race/ethnicity have been neglected and there are few if any published research that explores risk factors with minority juvenile sex offenders. The present study examined whether differences exist between Caucasian and racial/ethnic minority adolescent sexual offenders on four risk assessment measures (J-SORRAT-II, J-SOAP-II, SAVRY, and ERASOR). The sample of 207 male adolescent sexual offenders was drawn from treatment facilities in a Midwestern state. Overall results indicated that minority adolescent sex offenders had fewer risk factors endorsed than Caucasian youth across all risk assessment tools. Exploration of interactions between race and factors such as: family status, exposure to family violence, and family history of criminality upon the assessment tools risk ratings yielded non-significant findings. Limitations, suggestions for future directions, and clinical implications are discussed.

Weekly Problems Scales: Instruments for Sexually Abused Youth and Their Nonoffending Parents in Treatment

This study’s purpose was to determine if efficient measures could be created to assess multiple problematic behaviors identified in youth who were sexually abused and in treatment. Because of the lack of easily administered brief instruments that assess multiple domains of interest in this population, complementary parent and child assessment measures were developed. The Weekly Problems Scale–Child Version (WPSC) and the Weekly Problems Scale–Parent Version (WPS-P) were created to monitor the weekly progress of the child and family in treatment and focus specifically on common areas of difficulties in this population. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to assist in identifying the number of underlying dimensions in the scales. Results indicate that the WPS-C and WPS-P demonstrate adequate internal consistency, temporal stability, and construct validity. The WPS-C and WPSP display significant promise as research and clinical assessment tools for use with youth who are sexually abused and their nonoffending parents in treatment.

Validation of the Brazilian versions of two inventories for measuring oral health-related quality of life of edentulous subjects

'Objectives: To analyse the validity of the Brazilian versions of OHIP-EDENT and GOHAI as assessment tools of edentulous subjects' OHRQoL. Background: Inventories for measuring oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) are important in clinical studies regarding oral rehabilitation. However, there is a need for comprehensive validation after translation into different cultural settings. Materials and methods: The sample comprised of 100 complete denture wearers (29 men, 71 women, mean age of 65.2 +/- 9.9 years). The associations between each OHRQoL inventory and other variables served as measurements of construct validity. Data analysis comprised the Spearman correlation test as well as multiple regression using the OHRQoL inventories as dependent variables and the other scales as determinants. Results: Both OHRQoL inventories showed good correlation with denture satisfaction, whereas lower correlation coefficients were found among the inventories and the HAD subscales. Denture satisfaction alone explained 48% and 39% of the variance found for the OHIP-EDENT and GOHAI, respectively, as assessed by multiple regression. A smaller effect was found for OHIP-EDENT. Conclusion: Both OHIP-EDENT and GOHAI showed good construct validity for measurement of OHRQoL of edentulous subjects.

Intelligent tutoring system for distance education

This study aims to develop and implement a tool called intelligent tutoring system in an online course to help a formative evaluation in order to improve student learning. According to Bloom et al. (1971,117) formative evaluation is a systematic evaluation to improve the process of teaching and learning. The intelligent tutoring system may provide a timely and high quality feedback that not only informs the correctness of the solution to the problem, but also informs students about the accuracy of the response relative to their current knowledge about the solution. Constructive and supportive feedback should be given to students to reveal the right and wrong answers immediately after taking the test. Feedback about the right answers is a form to reinforce positive behaviors. Identifying possible errors and relating them to the instructional material may help student to strengthen the content under consideration. The remedial suggestion should be given in each answer with detaileddescription with regards the materials and instructional procedures before taking next step. The main idea is to inform students about what they have learned and what they still have to learn. The open-source LMS called Moodle was extended to accomplish the formative evaluation, high-quality feedback, and the communal knowledge presented here with a short online financial math course that is being offered at a large University in Brazil. The preliminary results shows that the intelligent tutoring system using high quality feedback helped students to improve their knowledge about the solution to the problems based on the errors of their past cohorts. The results and suggestion for future work are presented and discussed.

La evaluación del Trabajo Fin de Grado a través de la rúbrica

[ES] En el área de Ciencias Sociales en la actualidad, dada la situación novedosa y compleja de la evaluación de la asignatura Trabajo Fin de Grado (TFG), se precisa de nuevos modelos que orienten a los diferentes agentes que tendrán que desarrollar la evaluación: tutores, miembros del tribunal, etc. El objetivo en este artículo es presentar una propuesta de evaluación alternativa que oriente a los tutores en la valoración de las competencias transversales de los TFG de las titulaciones de Educación Infantil y Primaria a través de la rúbrica. Presentamos el proceso de diseño que hemos seguido en dos rúbricas para establecer su calidad. Las orientaciones que ofrecemos han surgido de una revisión de la literatura existente y de un trabajo de campo. [EN] The Final Year Project, a new compulsory subject linked to Social Sciences, has been recently introduced in the Spanish University Degrees. Given its novelty and the difficulties its assessment entails, those agents, involved in evaluating the students’ perform ance on this subject (e.g. supervisors, members of the assessment committee), need a fresh set of guidelines to assist their work. In order to meet this need in the Degrees of Preschool and Primary Education, our objective in this paper is to propose an alternative assessment model to help supervisors judge the TFGs by means of a rubric, and we offer two examples of this instrument. These assessment tools have been adapted for the TFGs where students specifically carry out a bibliographic review. The guidelines that we suggest here are the result of both the revision of existing research and fieldwork.

El aula de múscia: múltiples realidades superpuestas

[ES] En el área de Ciencias Sociales en la actualidad, dada la situación novedosa y compleja de la evaluación de la asignatura Trabajo Fin de Grado (TFG), se precisa de nuevos modelos que orienten a los diferentes agentes que tendrán que desarrollar la evaluación: tutores, miembros del tribunal, etc. El objetivo en este artículo es presentar una propuesta de evaluación alternativa que oriente a los tutores en la valoración de las competencias transversales de los TFG de las titulaciones de Educación Infantil y Primaria a través de la rúbrica. Presentamos el proceso de diseño que hemos seguido en dos rúbricas para establecer su calidad. Las orientaciones que ofrecemos han surgido de una revisión de la literatura existente y de un trabajo de campo. [EN] The Final Year Project, a new compulsory subject linked to Social Sciences, has been recently introduced in the Spanish University Degrees. Given its novelty and the difficulties its assessment entails, those agents, involved in evaluating the students’ performa ce on this subject (e.g. supervisors, members of the assessment committee), need a fresh set of guidelines to assist their work. In order to meet this need in the Degrees of Preschool and Primary Education, our objective in this paper is to propose an alternative assessment model to help supervisors judge the TFGs by means of a rubric, and we offer two examples of this instrument. These assessment tools have been adapted for the TFGs where students specifically carry out a bibliographic review. The guidelines that we suggest here are the result of both the revision of existing research and fieldwork.

Test-retest reliability of the nociceptive withdrawal reflex and electrical pain thresholds after single and repeated stimulation in patients with chronic low back pain

Recent studies have shown that the nociceptive withdrawal reflex threshold (NWR-T) and the electrical pain threshold (EP-T) are reliable measures in pain-free populations. However, it is necessary to investigate the reliability of these measures in patients with chronic pain in order to translate these techniques from laboratory to clinic. The aims of this study were to determine the test-retest reliability of the NWR-T and EP-T after single and repeated (temporal summation) electrical stimulation in a group of patients with chronic low back pain, and to investigate the association between the NWR-T and the EP-T. To this end, 25 patients with chronic pain participated in three identical sessions, separated by 1 week in average, in which the NWR-T and the EP-T to single and repeated stimulation were measured. Test-retest reliability was assessed using intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC), coefficient of variation (CV), and Bland-Altman analysis. The association between the thresholds was assessed using the coefficient of determination (r (2)). The results showed good-to-excellent reliability for both NWR-T and EP-T in all cases, with average ICC values ranging 0.76-0.90 and average CV values ranging 12.0-17.7%. The association between thresholds was better after repeated stimulation than after single stimulation, with average r (2) values of 0.83 and 0.56, respectively. In conclusion, the NWR-T and the EP-T are reliable assessment tools for assessing the sensitivity of spinal nociceptive pathways in patients with chronic pain.

Sleep quality, the neglected outcome variable in clinical studies focusing on locomotor system; a construct validation study

In addition to general health and pain, sleep is highly relevant to judging the well-being of an individual. Of these three important outcome variables, however, sleep is neglected in most outcome studies.Sleep is a very important resource for recovery from daily stresses and strains, and any alteration of sleep will likely affect mental and physical health, especially during disease. Sleep assessment therefore should be standard in all population-based or clinical studies focusing on the locomotor system. Yet current sleep assessment tools are either too long or too specific for general use.

Identification of noninvasive biomarkers for alcohol-induced liver disease using urinary metabolomics and the Ppara-null mouse

Alcohol-induced liver disease (ALD) is a leading cause of nonaccident-related deaths in the United States. Although liver damage caused by ALD is reversible when discovered at the earlier stages, current risk assessment tools are relatively nonspecific. Identification of an early specific signature of ALD would aid in therapeutic intervention and recovery. In this study, the metabolic changes associated with ALD were examined using alcohol-fed male Ppara-null mouse as a model of ALD. Principal components analysis of the mass spectrometry-based urinary metabolic profile showed that alcohol-treated wild-type and Ppara-null mice could be distinguished from control animals without information on history of alcohol consumption. The urinary excretion of ethyl-sulfate, ethyl-beta-d-glucuronide, 4-hydroxyphenylacetic acid, and 4-hydroxyphenylacetic acid sulfate was elevated and that of the 2-hydroxyphenylacetic acid, adipic acid, and pimelic acid was depleted during alcohol treatment in both wild-type and the Ppara-null mice albeit to different extents. However, indole-3-lactic acid was exclusively elevated by alcohol exposure in Ppara-null mice. The elevation of indole-3-lactic acid is mechanistically related to the molecular events associated with development of ALD in alcohol-treated Ppara-null mice. This study demonstrated the ability of a metabolomics approach to identify early, noninvasive biomarkers of ALD pathogenesis in Ppara-null mouse model.

Risk factors for geriatric patient falls in rehabilitation hospital settings: a systematic review

Objective: To review the literature to identify and synthesize the evidence on risk factors for patient falls in geriatric rehabilitation hospital settings. Data sources: Eligible studies were systematically searched on 16 databases from inception to December 2010. Review methods: The search strategies used a combination of terms for rehabilitation hospital patients, falls, risk factors and older adults. Cross-sectional, cohort, case-control studies and randomized clinical trials (RCTs) published in English that investigated risks for falls among patients ≥65 years of age in rehabilitation hospital settings were included. Studies that investigated fall risk assessment tools, but did not investigate risk factors themselves or did not report a measure of risk (e.g. odds ratio, relative risk) were excluded. Results: A total of 2,824 references were identified; only eight articles concerning six studies met the inclusion criteria. In these, 1,924 geriatric rehabilitation patients were followed. The average age of the patients ranged from 77 to 83 years, the percentage of women ranged from 56% to 81%, and the percentage of fallers ranged from 15% to 54%. Two were case-control studies, two were RCTs and four were prospective cohort studies. Several intrinsic and extrinsic risk factors for falls were identified. Conclusion: Carpet flooring, vertigo, being an amputee, confusion, cognitive impairment, stroke, sleep disturbance, anticonvulsants, tranquilizers and antihypertensive medications, age between 71 and 80, previous falls, and need for transfer assistance are risk factors for geriatric patient falls in rehabilitation hospital settings.

Huntington's like conditions in China, A review of published Chinese cases

Background: Knowledge about HD in China is lacking in the international literature. We have therefore analyzed the Chinese literature to thoroughly explore the clinical characteristics of Huntington disease in China. Methods: A computer-based online search of China National Knowledge Infrastructure was performed to review case reports concerning HD published between January 1980 and April of 2011, and the clinical characteristics were extracted. Results: A total of 92 studies involving 279 patients (157 males and 122 females) were collected, 82.0% of which were from provinces of North China. Most of the cases (97.8%) had a family history of HD, and paternal inheritance (65.5%) was higher than maternal inheritance (34.5%). Onset age was 35.8 (± 11.8) years, death occurred with 45.6 (± 13.5) years after a course of 11.6 (± 5.6) years. Involuntary movements were the most frequent reported presentation (found in 52.3%, including 64.4% in the entire body, 19.8% in the upper limbs, and 13.7% in the head and face). Psychiatric symptoms at onset were reported in 16.1%, and cognitive impairment in 1.8%. With disease progression, 99.6% of patients had abnormal movements, 67.9% cognitive impairment, and 35.0% suffered psychiatric symptoms. Of the reported patients, only 22 underwent IT15 gene testing with positive results. Conclusion: HD is a well-reported entity in Chinese medical literature, however, only a small number of instances have been proven by molecular diagnosis. Most of the features resemble what is known in other countries. The highly predominant motor presentation, and the higher male prevalence as well as the apparent concentration in Northern China may be due to observational bias. There is therefore a need to prospectively examine cohorts of patients with appropriate comprehensive assessment tools including genetic testing.