Cost-effectiveness of peer role play and standardized patients in undergraduate communication training.

BACKGROUND The few studies directly comparing the methodological approach of peer role play (RP) and standardized patients (SP) for the delivery of communication skills all suggest that both methods are effective. In this study we calculated the costs of both methods (given comparable outcomes) and are the first to generate a differential cost-effectiveness analysis of both methods. METHODS Medical students in their prefinal year were randomly assigned to one of two groups receiving communication training in Pediatrics either with RP (N = 34) or 19 individually trained SP (N = 35). In an OSCE with standardized patients using the Calgary-Cambridge Referenced Observation Guide both groups achieved comparable high scores (results published). In this study, corresponding costs were assessed as man-hours resulting from hours of work of SP and tutors. A cost-effectiveness analysis was performed. RESULTS Cost-effectiveness analysis revealed a major advantage for RP as compared to SP (112 vs. 172 man hours; cost effectiveness ratio .74 vs. .45) at comparable performance levels after training with both methods. CONCLUSIONS While both peer role play and training with standardized patients have their value in medical curricula, RP has a major advantage in terms of cost-effectiveness. This could be taken into account in future decisions.

Alex Garvie. Aeschylus' Supplices. Play and Trilogy, Bristol Phoenix Press, UK, 2006, i-xxiv + 279 pp.

Fil: Fernández Deagustini, María del Pilar. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación; Argentina.

Alex Garvie. Aeschylus' Supplices. Play and Trilogy, Bristol Phoenix Press, UK, 2006, i-xxiv + 279 pp.

Fil: Fernández Deagustini, María del Pilar. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación; Argentina.

The complete works of Shakespeare, from the original text: carefully collated and compared with the editions of Halliwell, Knight, and Collier: with historical and critical introductions, and notes to each play; and a lifeof the great dramatist,

Mode of access: Internet.

The birth of Montreal, a chronicle play and other poems.

Mode of access: Internet.

A common-place book of the fifteenth century : containing a religious play and poetry, legal forms, and local accounts /

Spine title: The boke of Brome.

Postdigital play and the aesthetics of recruitment

This paper analyses reconfigurations of play in newly emergent material and digital configurations of game design. It extends recent work examining dimensions of hybridity in playful products by turning attention to interfaces, practices and spaces, rather than devices. We argue that the concept of hybrid play relies on predefining clear and distinct entities that then enter into hybrid situations. Drawing on concepts of the ‘interface’ and ‘postdigital’, we argue the distribution of computing devices creates difficulties for such presuppositions. Instead, we propose an ‘aesthetic of recruitment’ that is adequate to the new openness of social and technical play.

THE INTERPLAY PERFORMANCE PRACTICE: PLAY AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN LATE CAPITALISM

Practitioners of the performance form “InterPlay” utilize dance, storytelling and song to build community and generate social change. I elucidate how this community of practitioners conceptualizes “social change.” I argue that the InterPlay social movement organizes around the application of play to performances of self in everyday life. I explore how the InterPlay non-profit corporation, Body Wisdom Inc., employs this technique to address racial justice in its organizational practices. I also examine how practitioners understand their use of this performance play in places of work, concluding that—even in these endeavors—they see social change as a process immanent to both individual people and the systems they create, not as the intervention of an autonomous external power. Ultimately, I argue that, within late capitalism, play should no longer be conceptualized as an activity separate from everyday sociality but as an immanent process of change constitutive of a socioaesthetic domain.

Language Outcomes of the Play and Language for Autistic Youngsters (PLAY) Project Home Consultation model—An Extended Analysis

The current study is a post-hoc analysis of data from the original randomized control trial of the Play and Language for Autistic Youngsters (PLAY) Home Consultation program, a parent-mediated, DIR/Floortime based early intervention program for children with ASD (Solomon, Van Egeren, Mahone, Huber, & Zimmerman, 2014). We examined 22 children from the original RCT who received the PLAY program. Children were split into two groups (high and lower functioning) based on the ADOS module administered prior to intervention. Fifteen-minute parent-child video sessions were coded through the use of CHILDES transcription software. Child and maternal language, communicative behaviors, and communicative functions were assessed in the natural language samples both pre- and post-intervention. Results demonstrated significant improvements in both child and maternal behaviors following intervention. There was a significant increase in child verbal and non-verbal initiations and verbal responses in whole group analysis. Total number of utterances, word production, and grammatical complexity all significantly improved when viewed across the whole group of participants; however, lexical growth did not reach significance. Changes in child communicative function were especially noteworthy, and demonstrated a significant increase in social interaction and a significant decrease in non-interactive behaviors. Further, mothers demonstrated an increase in responsiveness to the child’s conversational bids, increased ability to follow the child’s lead, and a decrease in directiveness. When separated for analyses within groups, trends emerged for child and maternal variables, suggesting greater gains in use of communicative function in both high and low groups over changes in linguistic structure. Additional analysis also revealed a significant inverse relationship between maternal responsiveness and child non-interactive behaviors; as mothers became more responsive, children’s non-engagement was decreased. Such changes further suggest that changes in learned skills following PLAY parent training may result in improvements in child social interaction and language abilities.

Contested Play and Clean Water: McMillan Park, Race, and the Built Environment in Washington, D.C., 1900-1941

This study focuses on the intersection of the politics and culture of open public space with race relations in the United States from 1900 to 1941. The history of McMillan Park in Washington, D.C. serves as a lens to examine these themes. Ultimately, the park’s history, as documented in newspapers, interviews, reports, and photographs, reveals how white residents attempted to protect their dominance in a racial hierarchy through the control of both the physical and cultural elements of public recreation space. White use of discrimination through seemingly neutral desires to protect health, safety, and property values, establishes a congruence with their defense of residential property. Without similar access to legal methods, African Americans acted through direct action in gaps of governmental control. Their use of this space demonstrates how African-American residents of Washington and the United States contested their race, recreation, and spatial privileges in the pre-World War II era.

Hoyle's games : illustrated edition. Embracing all the most modern modes of play, and the rules practised at the present time, in billiards, whist, draughts, cribbage, backgammon, and all other fashionable games; together with sixteen games adapted to the new Yankee-notion cards. Also the whole of Frer̀e's chess hand-book. Containing, besides elementary instruction and the laws of chess, about fifty select games by the first players, endings of games, and the defeat of the muzio gambit. Also, thirty-six of the choicest chess problems, and a description of, and rules for, four-handed chess /

Classified for chess; Frère's chess hand-book, p. 229-324.