Encouraging Feedback Research Articles

Autism Spectrum Disorder in the COVID 19 Era: New Challenges — New Solutions

This survey explored the support available and the effect of lockdown on children with autism spectrum disorder and their families in India and the United Kingdom. Our findings showed significant problems for children and families due to lockdown. App-based information delivered to parents with support showed encouraging feedback.Electronic Supplementary MaterialSupplementary material is available in the online version of this article at 10.1007/s13312-021-2314-3.

Predictors of Parental Contentment with the Amount of Encouraging Digital Feedback from Teachers in Finnish Schools

The Finnish National curriculum obligates teachers to give parents encouraging feedback about their children’s learning and development, the aim being to build a constructive relationship between homes and schools and to encourage close collaboration among all parties. Teachers in Finland nowadays use digital platforms that allow effective online communication. The frequency and quality of such communication vary a great deal. In particular, there seems to be a lack of clarity concerning the amount of encouraging feedback delivered in this way. The focus in this paper is on the extent to which Finnish parents (N = 1117) in both urban and rural areas are content with the amount of such feedback. We carried out a logistic regression analysis to predict parental contentment with the amount of encouraging messaging, with the pupil’s grade level, parental attitudes to digital communication, as well as parental educational level and gender as independent variables. In sum, parents who were less highly educated, with a neutral-to-positive attitude to digital communication and with a child in lower secondary school were most likely to be content with the amount of communication. These results have both research and practical implications in terms of enhancing the understanding of how best to deliver encouraging digital feedback between homes and schools. Furthermore, it seems that teacher education should focus on communicative competence early on. The current study completes our three-part series of studies on digital home–school communication in Finland.

Teaching Mechatronics to Non-traditional Mechanical Engineering Students – An Adaptive Approach

The mechanical engineering program at our university has adopted an integrated curriculum, with the first-two years based on multidisciplinary engineering foundation spiral courses across the college, and the last-two years following traditional mechanical engineering courses within the home department. This paper presents how we introduce the broad field of mechatronics to non-traditional mechanical engineering students via a single technical elective course. Students enrolled in mechatronics usually demonstrate a wide range in knowledge and skill preparation, especially in the areas of electronics, instrumentation, and programming. Such diversity of backgrounds, in addition to the breadth of topics typically associated with mechatronics, impose a great challenge to the design and delivery of the course. In this empirical investigation, we propose an adaptive approach to respond to the challenge. Two stages of adaptation are involved in this teaching approach. At the stage of course design, design-loop adaption is applied to restructure the course contents based on a starting point assessment. During the process of course delivery, task-loop adaption is implemented based on the dynamic assessment of student knowledge state. By replacing the common one-fixed-content-fit-all teaching approach to an adaptive one, we can engage the less prepared and less enthusiastic students while maintaining the interest of the majority in class. Qualitative analysis of the course evaluation results have shown that the adaptive teaching approach has achieved success in several dimensions. The most encouraging feedback lies in the fact that students’ interests in the broad field of mechatronics are greatly inspired by the course.

Linguistic Patterns and Linguistic Styles for Requirements Specification: Focus on Data Entities

Requirements specification includes technical concerns of an information system and is used throughout its life cycle. It allows for sharing the vision of the system among stakeholders and facilitates its development and operation processes. Natural languages are the most common form of requirements representation, however, they also exhibit characteristics that often introduce quality problems, such as inconsistency, incompleteness, and ambiguousness. This paper adopts the notions of linguistic pattern and linguistic style and discusses their relevance to produce better technical documentation. It focuses on the textual specification of data entities, which are elements commonly referred to throughout different types of requirements, like use cases, user stories, or functional requirements. This paper discusses how to textually represent the following elements: data entity, attribute, data type, data entity constraint, attribute constraint, and even cluster of data entities. This paper shows concrete examples and supports the discussion with three linguistic styles, represented by a rigorous requirements specification language and two informal controlled natural languages, one with a more compact and another with a more verbose, expressive, and complete representation. We analyzed how other languages cope with the representation of these data entity elements and complemented that analysis and comparison based on the PENS classification scheme. We conducted a pilot evaluation session with nineteen professional subjects who participated and provided encouraging feedback, with positive scores in all the analyzed dimensions. From this feedback, we preliminarily conclude that the adoption of these linguistic patterns would help to produce better requirements specifications written more systematically and consistently.

Value co-creation between consumers and distributors: the moderating effect of relationship characteristics

PurposeAlthough value co-creation has been widely analyzed in digital contexts and various types of services (tourism, healthcare, etc.), it has received less study in the area of retail distribution. This study proposes that trust in the retailer and perceived support can encourage co-creation behavior on various levels: a basic level related to communication of service errors and a moderate-high level related to participation in service innovation. This study also proposes modeling for two different segments according to the participation in a loyalty program and according to the relationship duration.Design/methodology/approachA survey (N = 644) was used to test the model in the context of the consumer goods retail industry. Confirmatory factor analysis and multigroup structural equation modeling techniques were used to assess the proposed model.FindingsThe results show differences in the formation of co-creation behaviors depending on the customers analyzed. To encourage communication of service errors, customers affiliated to the program and customers with the longest customer-firm relationships must trust the distributor. Perceived support is crucial in encouraging feedback on service errors among non-affiliated and new customers. For promoting service innovation, the most significant antecedent is perceived support, followed by trust, independently of whether or not the customer belongs to the loyalty program. Customers with the longest relationship participate in co-innovation motivated equally by trust and perceived support. Customers with shorter relationship duration only participate in co-innovation if they perceived support.Originality/valueThis study contributes to deepening knowledge of co-creation behavior in the field of retail distribution. To date, research in this context has not considered the existence of various levels of co-creation: the basic level related to feedback on service errors and the moderate/high level related to participation in service co-innovation. Nor have studies tested the influence of trust and perceived support on these co-creation behaviors. Further, this study is the first study to integrate two significant variables that moderate retailers' strategy in the same model: membership in a loyalty program and duration of customer-firm relationship.

Interactive Visual Exploration of Longitudinal Historical Career Mobility Data.

The increased availability of quantitative historical datasets has provided new research opportunities for multiple disciplines in social science. In this article, we work closely with the constructors of a new dataset, CGED-Q (China Government Employee Database-Qing), that records the career trajectories of over 340,000 government officials in the Qing bureaucracy in China from 1760 to 1912. We use these data to study career mobility from a historical perspective and understand social mobility and inequality. However, existing statistical approaches are inadequate for analyzing career mobility in this historical dataset with its fine-grained attributes and long time span, since they are mostly hypothesis-driven and require substantial effort. We propose CareerLens, an interactive visual analytics system for assisting experts in exploring, understanding, and reasoning from historical career data. With CareerLens, experts examine mobility patterns in three levels-of-detail, namely, the macro-level providing a summary of overall mobility, the meso-level extracting latent group mobility patterns, and the micro-level revealing social relationships of individuals. We demonstrate the effectiveness and usability of CareerLens through two case studies and receive encouraging feedback from follow-up interviews with domain experts.

What Kind of Feedback is Perceived as Encouraging by Finnish General Upper Secondary School Students?

Our main aim in this study was to compare encouraging feedback practices in Finnish general upper secondary foreign language classes and examine how students perceive language teachers’ assessment practices. The participants were 160 students of English, 95 students of Swedish, and 27 students of French from six general upper secondary schools. The data comprised one open-ended question and one Likert scale question with nine items. Both qualitative and quantitate methods were used to analyze the data. The results showed that content was the most important feature in feedback that was perceived as encouraging by students. The results further indicated that students considered teacher assessment practices to be primarily summative, but differences were also found between schools. The evidence from this study suggests that students appreciate teacher feedback, but do not perceive it to be an intrinsic part of teacher assessment practices. The importance of formative assessment and feedback should be more heavily emphasized in foreign language teacher education.

Linguistic Patterns, Styles, and Guidelines for Writing Requirements Specifications: Focus on Use Cases and Scenarios

A system requirements specification is a technical document extensively used during the respective system life cycle. It gathers the concerns and needs of various stakeholders, describes the common vision of that system, and therefore supports its development and operation processes. The popular form to write requirements specifications is with natural languages that, however, exhibit characteristics that often introduce quality problems, such as inconsistency, incompleteness, and vagueness, which shall be mitigated or avoided to some extent. This paper is part of a series of papers that have discussed linguistic patterns and linguistic styles to produce technical documentation more systematically and consistently. Specifically, this paper proposes a cohesive set of patterns and styles to better write use cases and scenarios. It also presents 38 practical guidelines and supports the discussion with concrete pedagogical examples represented with different styles, namely: visual use cases diagram (UML), a rigorous requirements specification language (RSL), and two informal controlled natural languages, one with a compact (CNL-A) and another with a more complete and verbose writing style (CNL-B). We conducted a pilot evaluation session with 24 subjects who provided encouraging feedback, with positive scores in all the analyzed dimensions. Based on this feedback, we may conclude that the adoption of these patterns, styles, and guidelines would help to produce better requirements specifications, written more systematically and consistently.

Longitudinal Use of the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research to Evaluate the Creation of a Rural Center of Excellence in Transgender Health.

Background: Transgender people face numerous barriers to accessing care, particularly in rural settings. Transportation, travel time, a lack of providers offering transgender care, and discrimination all contribute to these barriers. The Gender Wellness Center was established in New York State, USA, to fill a gap in rural transgender care and was subsequently awarded a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant to establish a Center of Excellence. This study examined the implementation of the Center of Excellence, a complex intervention, to assess barriers and facilitators to implementation over 18 months. Methods: The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) was used to develop baseline and follow-up surveys. These were distributed to members of the core implementation team at the Gender Wellness Center at the midpoint and conclusion of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant. Responses were largely open-ended and analyzed qualitatively. Results: Results are presented in terms of CFIR domains and constructs, as well as the relative outlook (positive or negative) of implementation. Overall, there were improvements over time, with more encouraging feedback and examples of success at follow-up. Though true, organizational culture and individual beliefs about the provision of transgender care challenged implementation of the Center of Excellence throughout the project. Conclusions: This study highlights the importance of organizational culture on implementation efforts, as well as the need for complex, multifaceted interventions to overcome such challenges in order to improve care for marginalized populations.

Early Experience of a Multidisciplinary Group Pain Program with Cognitive Behavioural Strategies, Physiotherapy and Peer Support for Patients with Chronic Noncancer Pain

BackgroundChronic non-cancer pain affects about 20% of the population worldwide. The effect of medical treatment in isolation is often limited. A multidisciplinary approach has been strongly advocated to help manage patients' pain more effectively. AimsThe primary purpose was to reduce pain severity, pain interference on patients’daily activities and improve their levels of self-efficacy despite pain. The secondary aim was to evaluate the possible changes in patients’ depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms after amultidisciplinary group pain program. The program content and structure were also evaluated. DesignThis scholarly project used within-subject pre- and post-test design. Settings/SubjectsFifty-six patients were recruited from the project center pain clinic. MethodsAn evidence-based eight-hour multidisciplinary group pain program was implemented. Data was collected before and 3 months after the program. InterventionsThe program covered pain physiology, cognitive behavioural strategies, demonstration of various exercises, self-management skills, medication management, and peer support. ResultsThree months postprogram, there was a statistically significant improvement in patients’ pain severity (β = −0.9, 95% CI: −1.73 to −0.14, p = .023) and self-efficacy (β = 5.6, 95% CI: 0.85 to 10.41, p = .023). Pain interference on their daily activities was also significantly reduced (β = −2.0, 95% CI: −2.90 to −0.83, p = .001). Patients provided positive and encouraging feedback about the program. ConclusionInitial improvements in patients’ ability to cope with pain and to perform daily activities were demonstrated following participation in the brief multidisciplinary group pain program. Future randomized controlled trials are needed to confirm that the results are due to patients’ participation in the program.

Application of Varma Kalai (art of vital points) in autism spectrum disorder

IntroductionAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurobehavioral disorder with deficits in the neural networks of the brain. Varma Kalai, a distinct branch of ancient Siddha System of Medicine, involves manipulation of energy points on the body to heal, and/or revive from injury. This paper introduces the science of Varma Kalai and its potential therapeutic application in ASD. MethodsBased on Siddha texts and traditional practices, we observed the effects of Varma Kalai application in four ASD participants, males ages 3, 4, 7 and 11 years. The procedure involved non-invasive physical manipulation of 14 points between brain and spine. Intervention was given once a day at bedtime by their caregiver/parent over a period of 4 weeks, minimum. Observations were based on comparing parameters in initial and follow up questionnaires (4 weeks) and also verbal, email and in-person appointments/communications over 4 months. ResultsVarma Kalai therapy in ASD has shown promising improvements in select areas of cognitive functions like social behaviors, language and communication skills, and physical functions. No side effects were reported. ConclusionVarma Kalai application for ASD is simple, cost-effective, non-invasive, and safe therapy as revealed in the cases presented in this report. Encouraging feedback in the cases paves way for urgent examination of the etiology of the devastating condition of ASD through the lens of Siddha medicine to better understand this complex disorder and to develop more effective and safer treatments. To further systematically study the application of Varma Kalai in ASD, randomized controlled clinical trials are warranted.

Likes, Comments, Views

This article presents a content analysis of academic library Instagram accounts at eleven land-grant universities. Previous research has examined personal, corporate, and university use of Instagram, but fewer studies have used this methodology to examine how academic libraries share content on this platform and the engagement generated by different categories of posts. Findings indicate that showcasing posts (highlighting library or campus resources) accounted for more than 50 percent of posts shared, while a much smaller percentage of posts reflected humanizing content (emphasizing warmth or humor) or crowdsourcing content (encouraging user feedback). Crowdsourcing posts generated the most likes on average, followed closely by orienting posts (situating the library within the campus community), while a larger proportion of crowdsourcing posts, compared to other post categories, included comments. The results of this study indicate that libraries should seek to create Instagram posts that include various types of content while also ensuring that the content shared reflects their unique campus contexts. By sharing a framework for analyzing library Instagram content, this article will provide libraries with the tools they need to more effectively identify the types of content their users respond to and enjoy as well as make their social media marketing on Instagram more impactful.

Affective Learning in Physical Education: A Systematic Review

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to carry out a systematic review of intervention programs that have addressed affective learning outcomes within physical education and to explore pedagogical practices in alignment with teaching, lesson content, and learning outcomes. Method: The literature search was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement. Included were 26 peer-reviewed pedagogical studies of physical education programs that addressed affective outcomes and reported fidelity of implementation. Results and Discussion: Affective outcomes were grouped into four themes: motivation, emotional responses, self-concept, and resilience. The findings showed that offering choice, encouraging peer feedback, asking deductive questions, focusing on personal improvement, and differentiating are effective teaching strategies that were widely used to support affective learning in children and adolescents. This review highlights the importance of fidelity of implementation to understand how intervention programs are delivered.

Occupational Stress on Job Satisfaction: A Qualitative Study among Nurses at the University of Ghana Hospital

The purpose of the study was to examine the causes of occupational stress on employee job satisfaction. The study aims to draw on the causes of stress and coping strategies to reduce its adverse effect on nurses at the University of Ghana Hospital. A qualitative method approach was adopted where 10 nurses were interviewed. Content Analysis method was used to analyze the data obtained. The findings revealed that nurses experience a wide range of stressors in the cause of their duties and increased workload was dominant among them. It was further observed that poor interpersonal relationship and unavailability of logistics had negative effect on nurses’ job satisfaction. Developing coping strategies such as increasing management support, Training and Development and encouraging autonomy and effective feedback among nurses could reduce occupational stress. The study provides an in-depth experience account of nurses on the subject matter which provide a focus for strategy implementation at the University of Ghana Hospital management level. The study brings to bare a qualitative data on the causes of stress on nurses’ job satisfaction and may inform future research on the impact of stress among nurses.

Remote and optical monitoring techniques applied to the maritime sector

A rising global attention to the environmental impact of anthropogenic activities pushes towards a continuous reduction of such impact and a control, through monitoring techniques, of the main sources of pollution. The transport sector is involved, as all other field of anthropogenic activities in the efforts towards a drastic abatement of emissions. Shipping activities generate greenhouse effect gases (GHGs), affecting the environment on a global scale, and other pollutants harmful for human health and the ecosystem on a local scale. These latter aspects are particularly relevant in ports where berths are close to densely inhabited areas. Many efforts have been and will be spent to predict and quantify these emissions with the aim of controlling them but direct measurements aimed at the identification and quantification of particularly polluting substances are to be considered a key point to achieve an effective control of emissions. In the context of ports, as in any transportation infrastructure, an identification of polluting vehicles and a quantification in an objective way of their emissions is crucial to implement any control activity of the polluting emissions. The development of optical remote sensing techniques appears to be particularly promising. This work provides a state of the art of the main techniques based on optical sensors (LIDAR, LIDAR DIAL, DOAS, camera UV) possibly applied in the maritime sector, highlighting advantages and potentialities. Results of a preliminary measurement campaign are reported to show the first encouraging feedback for the feasibility of the application.

Online Training Course on COVID-19

<p>In the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, global trend for launching online courses and trainings regarding risk factors, acquisition, diagnosis, clinical presentation, management and prevention of COVID-19 is cresting. Department of Family Medicine at University of Health Sciences Lahore introduced a 2-hours online course where a total of 39993 health professionals from all over the world were enrolled and 32000 participants completed the course with encouraging feedback.</p>

Medical Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Single Institution Experience

Social distancing to curb the COVID-19 pandemic has caused suspension of classroom teaching in all educational institutions. We implemented a novel online classroom platform at our institute to continue medical education. The program attracted encouraging feedback from the students. It may serve as a model for uninterrupted teaching and training during times of crisis.

An Approach for the Railway Multiterritory Dispatching Problem

In this research, we address the railway multiterritory dispatch planning (RMTDP) problem. The goal of the RMTDP problem is to find the optimal movement of trains across consecutive dispatch territories, and it is one of the major challenges that decision makers face on a daily basis. It ideally takes into account the correct placement of maintenance windows, remaining capacity of terminals, and availability of train crews, among other critical aspects such as locomotive balance, fueling locations, and inspections. Although these train movement plans are made at the corridor level, which comprises several dispatch territories, when it comes to execution, the meet–pass decisions are made at the individual dispatch territories. This notion causes disruptions and misalignment at the boundaries of dispatch territories. The approach in this paper aims at finding a holistic conflict-free master plan by optimally matching train lineups at territory boundaries and smoothly routing trains through bottlenecks. We propose an efficient solution approach that iteratively constructs a master scheduling plan while minimizing the amount of train delay within a given planning horizon. This is accomplished by designing a time–space network model to identify feasible schedules and developing a mathematical programming–based heuristic to solve the underlying model. A thorough computational study shows the effectiveness of our heuristic approach, as we report reasonable average run times of 3.0 and 6.5 minutes to solve instances of moderate to large size problems, respectively. The results obtained from the algorithm using test snapshots from a Class I railroad company have been shown to assistant chief dispatchers and have received encouraging feedback for applicability.

A context-aware mobile learning system for adapting learning content and format of presentation: design, validation and evaluation

To date, the growth usage of mobile technologies and devices as well as the ubiquitous wireless communication have led to the development of new systems and applications in many fields and areas including education. This technological progress can be used to facilitate the students’ lives by creating smart and personalized solutions considering their personal and academic profiles as well as their real environments. This is because mobile technologies have the capacity to detect the contextual dimensions of learners through different sensors, and also because of the available software that have known a big improvement in the recent years. In this way, this article focuses on proposing a model called Dynamic Mobile Adaptive Learning Content and Format (D-MALCOF) that considers the learner’s knowledge level and learning styles in order to provide the suitable learning for each and every student. The paper introduces the design of our approach as well as its conception and modelling activities. In addition, we validated this model in real life learning settings by developing an Android mobile application that has been tested in the context of Moroccan higher education system. The evaluation of the model was conducted with undergraduate students, and examined the impact of D-MALCOF on the students’ knowledge level and learning achievements. The results showed that our solution has the potential to enhance the students’ knowledge level in the java programming language by comparing the tests’ results of the participants who used our mobile app with those who have learned through a traditional e-learning platform. Moreover, the students showed encouraging feedback, general satisfaction, positive perceptions and good intentions towards the application after completing their learning activities and responding to the survey.

Research fair: A three pronged innovative effort for fruitful publications out of post graduate dissertations

BACKGROUND: Medicine and research have almost become synonymous due to the emergence of evidence-based medicine. To keep up with the advancements in medical science, postgraduate students should learn the art and science of research. Postgraduate dissertations should take no longer a formality to acquire the degree but can be the best opportunity for disseminating their works as effective research publications. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We adapted research fair intervention to encourage the postgraduate students to publish their dissertation work. Students were asked to convert their dissertation into poster, which was adjudged by the experts from within and outside the institution. Best dissertation award competition was held to encourage them to showcase their work. The manuscript writing workshop was conducted to orient them on preparing a research article by making them work for the small group with the expert mentor. RESULTS: Among 100 students who participated in the research fair, 88 completed the feedback survey. The majority of the participants, 71.6% and 59.1%, mentioned that poster presentation and the feedback by the judges were very useful. About 54.5% of the participants mentioned that the manuscript writing workshop was very useful. Out of 100 manuscripts drafted during research fair, 78 (78.0%) have been submitted to various national and international journals. Out of these 21 articles are accepted for publication, 12 are published and 45 are in the review process. The overall success rate of the intervention was 42.3%. CONCLUSIONS: The research fair intervention was successful in encouraging feedback from the participants and the higher rate of submission for publication.