Extrinsic Resources Research Articles

Has language as resource been the basis for mother-tongue instruction in Sweden? On the evolution of policy orientations towards a uniquely enduring bilingual policy

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the motivations that key policy documents have put forward as justifications for Sweden’s mother-tongue instruction in immigrant and historical minority languages as a multicultural policy that has endured for nearly half a century. The diachronic development of these motivations is analysed in four periods and interpreted with the help of Ruiz’s (1984) orientations in language planning. The corpus consists of 26 key policy documents making up the coordinative discourse among policy actors. Based on an innovative mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, the motivations are presented in a three-tiered taxonomy consisting of motivational units, themes and language-planning orientations. The results point to both continuity and change in how mother-tongue instruction has been justified over time. Confirming previous research, the results show that the language-as-resource orientation has played a central role in justifying both the establishment and the maintenance of mother-tongue instruction in Sweden and that language as right complemented this orientation. Furthermore, the study illustrates that the language-as-problem orientation need not always be detrimental to bilingualism and minority-language maintenance. Contrary to some claims in the literature, it is argued that language as extrinsic resource is not necessarily underpinned by neoliberalism, as there are also social liberal and conservative inroads to this orientation. The paper concludes that although the language-as-resource orientation plays an indispensable role in supporting bilingualism in education, not only the language-as-right orientation but also the language-as-problem orientation should not be neglected.

Implementing Lean Techniques to Increase the Efficiency of a Rural Primary Care Clinic: A Prospective Controlled Study

Lean, a management approach focused on identifying and eliminating waste, has been proposed as a solution for shortages in health care. Many studies implementing Lean in health care have lacked adequately designed controls. This was a prospective, block randomized, controlled study conducted in a single primary care clinic comprising three primary care providers. A multidisciplinary team constructed a value stream, proposing foci of waste and possible solutions. These were implemented during three consecutive eight-week blocks. A sample was taken of 40 random visits for each physician during each block, and one physician was randomized to implement the interventions while the other two served as controls. Intervention blocks were significantly shorter compared to control blocks, with a mean difference (MD) of -1,190 seconds (s) (95% confidence interval = 1,039-1,342, p < 0.001). This was primarily the result of four interventions: (1) relocating the printer to the front desk (MD -378 s, p < 0.001), (2) adding another parallel working station (MD -258 s uploading the patient's file and MD -138 s uploading the history, p < 0.001 for both), (3) documenting in plain typing (MD -229 s, p < 0.001), and (4) rerouting delayed patients to the next available physician (MD -195 s, p = 0.004). Two steps were modestly lengthened: anamnesis (MD 24 s, p < 0.001) and explaining the diagnosis and treatment plan (MD 11 s, p = 0.001). Average productivity was increased by 1.65 appointments per hour (p < 0.001). Burnout scores decreased from an average of 74 points during control blocks to 63.8 on intervention (p < 0.01). No clinically or statistically significant difference was noted in quality of care, definitivity of treatment, or patient satisfaction (p = 0.83, 0.55, and 0.77, respectively). Intrinsically led, multidisciplinary Lean implementation in a rural primary care clinic dramatically shortened the value stream duration, while requiring no extrinsic resources. Widening Lean implementation and research in primary care, particularly in rural settings, may increase the availability and effectiveness of primary care.

Reactivity and Adaptability: Applying Gender and Age Assessment to the Leader Resilience Profile®

Turbulent events in leadership, and in life, can challenge even those most stoic in the face of adversity and loss. Prefacing with a combined definition of resilience, this paper illustrates the complete life cycle of resilience in the face of adversity, and its resultant rewards when and if appropriately applied. Phases included in this life cycle are: normalcy, deterioration, adaptation, recovery, and growth. The paper then discusses the application of the revised Leader Resilience Profile® (LRP) data, comparing leader resilience according to gender and age. Results from this ongoing study on resilience clearly show as people age, their resilience increases. The 60+ age group, in particular, had significantly higher resilience scores than participants in other age groups. Men between the ages of 20-29 had significantly higher resilience scores than women of the same age group. Other age groups provided no notable differences or substantial correlations when it came to gender and age. A framework has been developed is presented for how to become more resilient as a person ages throughout the life course. This framework includes positive well-being, assessing and strengthening meaningful intrinsic and extrinsic resources, self-efficacy, future-focus, and important strategic avenues for resilient aging. The paper then raises the questions: who ages resiliently, and how, and what differences are there between young, old, retired, and elderly individuals when it comes to living and working resiliently? The paper concludes that with the following: support and proactivity are the means for achieving positive growth orientation, quality of life, self-identity, purpose, inhibiting stress-related debilitation, and resilient aging.

3362 Enhancing Mentee Motivation Using the CARES Mentoring Model: A New Online Mentor Training Module

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The goals of this project are to develop, disseminate, and evaluate an online, self-paced training module designed to help mentors better understand and support their mentees’ motivation. The module introduces learners to the CARES mentoring model, which is rooted in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), one of the leading theories of motivation. According to SDT, an optimal mentoring environment provides support for mentees’ psychological needs for Competence, Autonomy, Relatedness, Equity in extrinsic resources, and Structure (CARES). METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Content for the CARES online module was drawn from a previously developed two-hour mentor training workshop designed for delivery in a face-to-face, small group setting. Content experts developed a slide deck and speaker notes. These materials were edited, adapted into a storyboard, and translated into a 60-minute interactive online module created with e-learning authoring software (Articulate Storyline). An evaluation survey was developed to assess mentors’ perceived skills gains related to course content (e.g., “Encouraging my mentees to think about how well their psychological needs are being met within the work/training environment,” “Recognizing how diversity, equity, and inclusion can be salient issues that impact a mentee’s motivation”) and mentors’ confidence gains in their ability to implement motivation-focused practices into their mentoring relationships (e.g., “Autonomy: Giving my mentees freedom in deciding what goals to pursue and how they to do their work,” “Competence: Working with my mentees to establish appropriate challenges to stretch their abilities”). The module was beta tested in October 2018 by 11 individuals with experience as mentors and in facilitating mentor training. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: The beta testing process produced useful recommendations for improving clarity of content, visual design, and navigation. Users expressed a high level of enthusiasm for the content, which included a combination of practical information and empirical support for the CARES mentoring model. They also appreciated specific functionality in the module, including the presentation of brief case examples of mentoring scenarios that enhance or diminish motivation, opportunities for self-reflection, and a downloadable guide for initiating conversations with mentees about different domains in the CARES model. Evaluation data (quantitative and qualitative) from beta testers (n=11) are being analyzed. A preliminary examination of these findings found that mentors report gains from before to after the training in their self-perceived skills and confidence levels. Moreover, all expressed an intention to makes changes in their mentoring practices as a result of the training. Comments indicated potential value in offering a follow up face-to-face experience in which mentors can hear from others who have successfully implemented the CARES approach and acquire practice in skillfully implementing the CARES conversation guide with their mentees. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: This innovative e-learning module offers a readily accessible and theoretically driven training approach to help mentors recognize the value of supporting their mentees’ motivation, and become more intentional in implementing motivation-focused practices into their mentoring relationships. In future work, the CARES module will be pilot tested with specific cohorts and in different implementation scenarios (as a standalone training, or combined with other programming) and made available to users nationally with support from the University of Minnesota Clinical and Translational Science Institute and the NIH National Research Mentoring Network.

Bsmooth: Learning from user feedback to disambiguate query terms in interactive data retrieval

There is great interest in supporting imprecise queries (e.g., keyword search or natural language queries) over databases today. To support such queries, the database system is typically required to disambiguate parts of the user-specified query against the database, using whatever resources are intrinsically available to it (the database schema, data values distributions, natural language models etc.). Often, systems will also have a user-interaction log available, which can serve as an extrinsic resource to supplement their model based on their own intrinsic resources. This leads to a problem of how best to combine the system's prior ranking with insight derived from the user-interaction log. Statistical inference techniques such as maximum likelihood or Bayesian updates from a subjective prior turn out not to apply in a straightforward way due to possible noise from user search behavior and to encoding biases endemic to the system's models. In this paper, we address such learning problem in interactive data retrieval, with specific focus on type classification for user-specified query terms. We develop a novel Bayesian smoothing algorithm, Bsmooth, which is simple, fast, flexible and accurate. We analytically establish some desirable properties and show, through experiments against an independent benchmark, that the addition of such a learning layer performs much better than standard methods.

How nurses cope with patient death: A systematic review and qualitative meta-synthesis.

To review literature on nurses' coping strategies with patient death. Dealing with the loss of a patient was viewed as one of the most demanding and challenging encounters in clinical practice. Those nurses who are not competent in coping with patient death may be inadequate in supporting dying patients and their family members, and minimise the quality of end-of-life care. To get a broader understanding of how nurses cope with patient death and to develop meaningful and effective interventions, a systematic review which would help underpin the multidimensional approaches is needed. A systematic review. Exhaustive searching in ten databases: CINAHL Plus, EMBASE, MEDLINE, AMED, PsycINFO, ProQuest Health & Medical Complete, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, Google Scholar, EThOS and CareSearch. Meta-aggregation was used to synthesise the findings of the included studies. This systematic review aggregated ten categories from the sixteen qualitative studies included, and then two synthesised findings were derived: intrinsic resources and extrinsic resources. The intrinsic resources consisted of setting boundaries, reflection, crying, death beliefs, life and work experience, and daily routines and activity. The extrinsic resources were comprised of talking and being heard, spiritual practices, education and programmes, and debriefing. This systematic review synthesised the findings about what resources nurses use when coping with patient death and made recommendations on future directions. Areas which could be developed to improve deficiencies that nurses had when faced with the losses of their patients were identified. Nurses need more support resources, which better assist them in coping with patient death. The results of this systematic review could provide evidence for nurses' coping strategies when dealing with patient death, and the recommendations could be employed by nurses to cope with the losses of patients.

Multiplayer Game Design: Performance Enhancement with Employment of Novel Technology

Online multiplayer educational game is designed to support collaboration and assess different cognitive and social abilities among students. The educational games are developed to capture student responses or actions, both shared and unshared, within the game environment and extrinsic resources. This paper describes the implementation of new technology with better performance over existing HTML5 and Flash platform to develop such games, which have been developed as part of the ATC21STM research study by the University of Melbourne. CONSTRUCT2 has been used in preference to other available technologies in creating the games to deliver a reliable experience for students across all browsers, platforms, and devices. The multiplayer component of the games was maintained with the use of the AJAX and Web Socket application which allowed the communication protocol between the client and server to be established. Embedded Canvas on CONSTRUCT2 is used to create all animations and game objects. The paper will describe the issue such as multiplayer game design with new technology and optimization of collaborative game design using dynamic platform structure called „CONSTRUCT2‟ over HTML5 to facilitate the game flow and a positive user experience.

An Exploratory Study of Grief and Health-Related Quality of Life for Caregivers of People With Dementia.

The aim of this qualitative study was to explore key positive and negative factors that impact on grief resolution and health outcomes of caregivers who were caring, or had cared, for a family member with dementia who had died. The study was a scoping study and involved face-to-face interviews with these family caregivers (N = 13). Results indicated a complex interaction of issues (many unique to dementia caregiving) which in different combinations acted as protective or risk factors for caregiver outcomes. Interaction of individual characteristics, role appraisal, value of intrinsic and extrinsic resources, and experiences with health professionals during the caregiving period and around the death of their relative were shown to have the most influence on caregiver outcomes. Psychological resilience and satisfaction with caregiving were protective against negative outcomes while unresolved grief was a risk factor. These findings highlight the potential benefits of multicomponent, holistic dementia caregiver interventions.

Pulsed-Resource Dynamics Constrain the Evolution of Predator-Prey Interactions

Although temporal variability in the physical environment plays a major role in population fluctuations, little is known about how it drives the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of species interactions. We studied experimentally how extrinsic resource pulses affect evolutionary and ecological dynamics between the prey bacterium Serratia marcescens and the predatory protozoan Tetrahymena thermophila. Predation increased the frequency of defensive, nonpigmented prey types, which bore competitive costs in terms of reduced maximum growth rate, most in a constant-resource environment. Furthermore, the predator densities of the pulsed-resource environment regularly fluctuated above and below the mean predator densities of the constant environment. These results suggest that selection favored fast-growing competitor prey types over defensive but slower-growing prey types more often in the pulsed-resource environment (abundance of resources and low predation risk). As a result, the selection for prey defense fluctuated more in the pulsed-resource environment, leading to a weaker mean response in prey defense. At the ecological level, the evolution of prey defense weakened the relative strength of top-down regulation on prey community. This was more evident in the constant-resource environment, whereas the slow emergence of defensive prey types gradually decreased the amplitude of predator peaks in the pulsed-resource environment. Our study suggests that rapid evolution plays a smaller role in the ecological dynamics of communities dominated by resource pulses.

Correlative coherence analysis: variation from intrinsic and extrinsic sources in competing populations

The concept of the correlation between two signals is generalized to the correlative coherence of a set of n signals by introducing a Shannon–Weaver-type measure of the entropy of the normalized eigenvalues of the n-dimensional correlation matrix associated with the set of signals. Properties of this measure are stated for canonical cases. The measure is then used to evaluate which subsets of a particular set of n signals are more or less coherent. This set of signals comprises extrinsic, stochastic resource inputs and the population trajectories obtained from simulations of a discrete time model of competing biological populations driven by these resource inputs. The analysis reveals that, at low levels of competition, the correlative coherence of the combined system of intrinsic population and extrinsic resource variables is relatively low, but increases with increasing variation in the resources. Further, at intermediate and high competition levels, the correlative coherence depends more strongly on competition than entrainment of stochasticity in the extrinsic resource variables. Density dependence has the effect of amplifying variation in noise only when this variation is relatively large. Also, chaotic systems appear to be entrained by sufficiently noisy environmental inputs.