Simulated Conference Research Articles

Catering for the Audience Needs in English-Arabic Interpreting: The Case Study of Arabicized Words in Conferences

This research sheds light on whether Arab interpreters take into consideration the audience preferences when interpreting Arabicized words in conferences. The researchers selected four groups; three of them are students at Birzeit University majoring in the English language with a minor in translation or English language only, as well as students coming from different majors but not English language majors. Forty contextualized Arabicized words were used in a simulated conference situation, and students were asked to select either the loan words or the loan translations they preferred to hear for the Arabicized words. Five certified interpreters also participated in this study. The results showed that there were clear trends; the English language majors with a minor in translation, as well as the English language majors, opted for the loan translations, while the other students not majoring in English selected the loan words. Finally, the five interpreters supported the loan translation options. Thus, it became clear that those who major in language and or translation tend to prefer loan translation rather than loan words since they think these translations are more formal, more standard, and purer.

A Preliminary Cyber-Physical Study of a VR Training Material for Engineering Students to Give a Presentation in English

Due to the rapid globalization of engineering fields and studies, engineering students are required to present their research in English at an international level. However, many engineering students feel anxiety for speaking in English; thus, proper training is necessary for them by providing a simulated conference environment. In this study, the authors develop a prototype of virtual reality (VR) training material for engineering students to practice and experience difficult communication situations in English at an international conference. The effects of the material were investigated by measuring the changes in the hemoglobin (Hb) concentration of the frontal cortex and heart rates of subjects who participated in the VR training and evaluation sessions with an English conversation trainer. The physiological data measurements obtained from the subjects before and after the VR training showed that they were more relaxed when responding to difficult English questions at a mocked question-and-answer (Q&A) session after the training. The result indicates that the VR training material can reduce the anxiety of engineering students who need to give a presentation in English, and this type of learning material is expected to be effectively used from an educational standpoint.

Crisis leadership: Teaching external corporate communications via an experiential learning exercise

Crises are inevitable in today’s corporate world. This paper outlines a crisis leadership exercise to help business students understand the complexities of external corporate communications. This exercise is suited to class sizes of approximately 30 students, but variations can be used for larger classes. Students are placed into groups and use a playbook to help them navigate a real-life crisis. Students then use the playbook to deliver a simulated press conference. A mixed-methods study was used to investigate the learning experience, and the findings showed that students not only improved significantly in their ability to lead external corporate communications, but also in their understanding of key crisis leadership concepts.

“That’s Obviously Really Insensitive:” Attuning to Marginalization in a Parent-Teacher Encounter

This paper draws on Ahmed’s construct of affective economies to explore the role of affect in explaining how marginalization becomes (re)produced in pre-service teachers’ encounters with an actor playing a Kurdish refugee mother in a simulated parent-teacher conference. Through an interpretive case study of four matched-pair pre-service teachers, this paper argues that affective explanations can complement an ideological perspective on marginalization. It does so by attending to the systemic production of marginalization and to the historicized selves and attunements of both pre-service teachers and the actor, and by illustrating the opportunities afforded for reproduction or resistance in particular encounters. The affective approach offers alternate entry points for teacher educators interested in the development of justice-oriented pre-service teachers.

GAINING INTERPROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE THROUGH A GERIATRICS CASE CONFERENCE

There is increased demand to provide health professions students with interprofessional education and practice experience. Interprofessional Case Conferences (ICC) allow students to work in teams to learn about different professions while exploring a topic through the lens of an interprofessional core competency. The goal of this particular ICC was to provide students an experience to witness and discuss team-based, person-centered care for a common geriatric disorder. The case was designed to develop the interprofessional competency of teams and teamwork. Students were divided into teams and observed live vignettes of a care conference involving an 80-year old female admitted to a rehabilitation facility following a hip fracture and replacement. Students witnessed how patients, families, and healthcare providers work together during a stressful time. After each vignette, students discussed questions related to miscommunications, motivations of the different actors involved, and how the healthcare team should respond. In the first offering, 93 students participated, increasing to 150 in the next year. Students completed a post-survey to determine if the session delivered a positive interprofessional experience. The average positive response rate was 92.5% (92-94%, n = 53) in year-1 and 93.5% (90-97%, n = 71) in year-2. By allowing students to witness a simulated live care conference, they had a tangible event to dissect instead of discussing hypotheticals. By discussing a geriatrics case in a rehabilitation setting, students witnessed how numerous healthcare professions coordinate care for a patient and her family, thereby demonstrating competence in teamwork.

Traveling through the liminal: mixed reality simulations in educational leadership preparation

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to explore how aspiring school leaders grappled with threshold concepts related to educational leadership within mixed reality simulations. An exploratory collective case study was used to understand the experiences of the participants (n = 12) who practiced mixed reality simulations of conferences with subsequent coaching in a simulation laboratory in one year of their educational leadership preparation program. There were three data sources: video observational data of the performances within the simulations and after simulation coaching, both peer and mentor; individual semi-structured interviews; and reflective documents following the simulations. Using both deductive and inductive approaches to data analysis, we found that purposefully planning for using threshold concepts within the simulations led to separation, liminal and professional portals of learning. Participants sometimes oscillated backward into a previous portal when they demonstrated growth in some, but not all, leadership behaviors within the simulated conferences. Liminality, by its very nature, is anti-structured, changeable, and ambiguous and these changes were evident in our findings. Discussion and implications for educational leadership programs are offered.

A study on the model of academic spoken English teaching for medical postgraduates based on project-based learning

Objective To explore the feasibility and teaching effect of academic spoken English teaching model for medical postgraduates based on project-based learning. Methods 22 graduates from Army Military Medical University were taken as the research subjects and a one-semester project-based learning practice was carried out. And then the feedback was collected and the satisfaction survey was conducted through questionnaire. The data was analyzed with SPSS 22.0. Results In terms of teaching design, 95.5% students though it was reasonable that the course was composed of two blocks: daily communication English and academic spoken English (4.18±0.66). 77.2% students agreed that the division of project groups and awarded marks for active performance in class stimulated their enthusiasm of evolving in class (3.64±0.90). 86.4% students thought that it is necessary for both the professional teachers and foreign language teachers to participate in the simulated international academic conference (4.09±1.02). In terms of the satisfaction of course experience, the students gave a positive overall evaluation on the design of academic spoken English for medical postgraduate based on PBL. Among 21 questions, except the first one (3.45±0.91), lower than 4.00, the rest of them were all above 4.00. Conclusion With the implement of project-based learning into academic spoken English teaching model, the teaching design highlighted the learners' needs, motivation and learning process, which gradually transformed static academic English knowledge into academic communicative competence during the completion of the project. Also, it is necessary to balance the proportion of language and content in the teaching practice and strengthen the training of teaching staff, so as to improve its teaching effect. Key words: Academic spoken English; Project-based learning; Medical college graduates

Enhancing the learning experience of interpreting students outside the classroom. A study of the benefits of situated learning at the Scottish Parliament

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this article is to observe and analyse the potential benefits of the situated learning experience for MSc interpreting students enrolled in the Conference Interpreting and Translation programme at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh by taking them outside the classroom and confronting them with the realities of a working parliament (the Scottish Parliament). Our curriculum already includes a number of activities designed to draw on theories of experiential learning developed by Lave and Wenger (1991) generally, and D’Hayer (2006) specifically for interpreter education, for instance in the shape of simulated multilingual conferences organised in a university interpreting laboratory. However, this study is designed to analyse the benefits of taking situated learning one step further, by placing students in the real, live environment in which professional interpreters work: an interpreting booth, during a live Scottish parliamentary session. By taking the learning experience out of the usual academic environment and into a professional setting, we intend to use a mixed-method approach in order to examine how students react to the experience and to what extent it contributes to focusing their study strategies and learning.

Linking classroom exercises to real-life practice: a case of situated simultaneous interpreting learning

ABSTRACTIn training graduates to become future interpreters or to undertake interpreting-related jobs, a learner-centred and work experience-related pedagogical design can help students quickly adapt to the professional community of practice (CoP). Although many translation and interpreting (T&I) programmes now offer Simultaneous Interpreting (SI) courses at undergraduate level, there is a paucity of relevant pedagogical explorations. In light of this gap, the present study reports a case of SI teaching in an undergraduate T&I training programme in Hong Kong. The course design was guided by the principles of situated learning. Based on the SI skill and knowledge preparation in the first half of the course, students were guided through a scaffolded process to attempt live simulated conference SI. With carefully designed guidelines and step-by-step scaffolding, students successfully delivered a series of conferences and demonstrated their potential to perform practical SI. The study reported findings from the teacher’s observation, students’ achievement results and their feedback regarding the situated learning experience. It provides a feasible model of situated SI learning that is applicable to the teaching of other varieties of interpreting and sheds light on the philosophies and practice of interpreter education.

Conference simulation in an English composition course

This article discusses the use of a conference format in teaching a required English composition course. The focus of the course is student research and presentation; thus, simulating a conference was a natural fit for the course's overall goals. Students worked in one of four committees: the Call for Proposals Committee, the Proposal Evaluation Committee, the Program Committee, and the Conference Facilitation Committee. The students chaired or cochaired one of these committees. Although none of the students had presented at a conference or submitted a proposal for presentation, they quickly grasped the professionalism associated with these tasks. Debriefing revealed overwhelming support for the simulated conference approach to teaching research and presentation skills.

Media handling aspects of multimedia conferencing in broadband wireless ad hoc networks

The emergence of broadband wireless technologies has made broadband wireless ad hoc networks a reality. Broadband wireless ad hoc networks are infrastructure-less and can be used in a wide range of scenarios in private, public, commercial, and military settings. Multimedia conferencing is an important application area. Its two main components are signaling and media handling. This article focuses on the media handling aspects or multimedia conferencing in broadband wireless ad hoc networks, with a critical review of the state of the art and a proposed novel architecture. The main components of this architecture are a distributed mixing system and a self-organizing system. The distributed mixing system is a two-level structure. The first level is a full mesh network of active nodes that act as media mixers. The second level is made up of passive nodes that rely on the mixers in the first level. Each second-level node is connected to a first-level node. The self-organizing system is based on a resource efficient scheme that provides for the automatic allocation (or deallocation) of mixers when the network grows (or shrinks). Furthermore, it enables the automatic assignment of new nodes to mixers when they join the conference. We have built a proof-of-concept prototype of the architecture and have evaluated the self-organizing system through simulations. We have simulated conferences and observed how mixers are allocated and deallocated. The simulations show that our self-organizing system utilizes resources efficiently in most cases

Using Computer and Internet-based Resources to Teach Health Care Planning and Administration in an Undergraduate Medical Program

We describe the teaching methods, involving computer and Internet-based resources, used in the "Administration and Planning in Health Care" course of the undergraduate medical program at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Description on how the curriculum guidelines for the undergraduate medical education in Brazil have been implemented at this university. The guidelines specify that graduates should be skilled and knowledgeable in health care administration and management, understand the market dynamics of health care services, and be prepared to contribute to the development of health policy. A required 60-hour course provides students with an opportunity to learn about the structure, planning and administration of the Brazilian and of other health care systems, and their roles, as health care professionals, within those systems. The course is also intended to allow students to develop the minimal skill set required for manipulation of health care data available from national and international databases, and to use the Internet as a source of information in health care. The curriculum includes: Module 1 - basic computer skills, an introduction to networks as an infrastructure for management, the use of spreadsheets and databases for data processing and system modelling, retrieval of Internet-based health data and on-line bibliographic searches; Module 2 - health system financing and service quality management, using a university hospital as a case study; and Module 3 - a comparison of the Brazilian public health care system (SUS) with other national health systems resulting in a term paper formatted for journal submission and presented at a simulated conference at the end of the course. Progressive shift in emphasis from theory to practice in this course has resulted in better development of the skill set required for the students.

Real time responsive animation with personality

Building on principles from prior work on procedural synthesis (K. Perlin, 1985), we are able to create remarkably lifelike, responsively animated characters in real time. Rhythmic and stochastic noise functions are used to define time varying parameters that drive computer generated puppets. Because we are conveying just the texture of motion, we are able to avoid computation of dynamics and constraint solvers. The subjective impression of dynamics and other subtle influences on motion can be conveyed with great visual realism by properly tuned expressions containing pseudo random noise functions. For example, we can make a character appear to be dynamically balancing herself, to appear nervous, or to be gesturing in a particular way. Each move has an internal rhythm, and transitions between moves are temporally constrained so that impossible transitions are precluded. For example, if while the character is walking we specify a dance turn, the character will always step into the turn onto the correct weight bearing foot. An operator can make a character perform a properly connected sequence of actions, while conveying particular moods and attitudes, merely by pushing buttons at a high level. Potential uses of such high level textural approaches to computer graphic simulation include role playing games, simulated conferences, clip animation, graphical front ends for MUDs, and synthetic performances. >

STUDENT COMMUNICATION IN THE ADVANCED MATHEMATICS CLASSROOM

ABSTRACT The author describes his experiences in adding formal writing and speaking components to upper level courses in Geometry and Analysis. The se components include student journals, having students review some of their written proofs with a student Writing Associate, and simulated conferences.

Informational and Controlling Language in Simulated Supervisory Conferences

Two studies are reported that were designed to determine if teachers and supervisors discriminate among three different types of direct supervisory communication (information only, information with suggestions, and information with directives) in instructional improvement conferences. Thirty teachers in the first study and 133 supervisors in the second study were randomly assigned to three experimental groups according to the Latin Squares design. Each experimental group viewed videotapes that simulated supervisory conferences. Each conference differed according to degree of informational versus controlling language. Subjects’ perceptions of supportiveness, authenticity, loyalty, trust, and productivity were measured after each conference. Data were analyzed using a repeated measures analysis of covariance with a priori orthogonal comparisons. Differences in perceptions toward the three conferences were found for every measure among both teachers and supervisors. The order of preference for both groups was as follows: the conference offering information with suggestions was rated highest, information only was favored next, and information with directives was favored least. Findings are discussed in terms of communication theory along with implications for supervision and future research.

Communication skills training for parents: experimental and social validation.

Coordination of professional services of behalf of children often hinges on the involvement of informed parents. The purposes of this study were to identify and experimentally and socially validate skills required of parents for effective communication with professionals. Target skills were identified on the basis of judges' social validation ratings of (a) sample interactions between parents and professionals and (b) the behaviors comprising a resultant task analysis. Eight parents were then trained in these skills via an instructional package. Results of a multiple baseline design across subjects and grouped skill domains showed that each parent acquired the targeted skills during simulated conferences and that correct responding usually generalized to actual conferences. Independent judges validated training outcomes, and participating parents indicated satisfaction with the curriculum.

A comparison of systematic desensitization and social skill acquisition in the modification of a social fear

Systematic desensitization (SD) and social skill training (SST) were compared in helping undergraduates participate more actively and comfortably in class discussion. Subjects were preselected on the basis of self-reported difficulty for the target situation (QSDI) and observer ratings of low frequency verbalization in the natural environment. SD and SST led to significant improvements relative to a notreatment control group (NT) on the QSDI. SST was superior to both SD and NT on observer ratings of frequencies of verbalizations in a simulated conference section conducted in the laboratory. Neigher treatment nor control condition yielded significant changes in observer ratings of anxiety or verbal performance in the natural environment.

Video Conferencing: Reactions of Users

Three studies of video conferencing are reported. The first describes a video conferencing facility linking two locations about 35 miles apart, and summarizes the reactions of people who used it for naturally occurring conferences. This facility used conventional television cameras and monitors, and incorporated voice-activated switching among cameras to provide “close-up” video coverage of the person talking at any given time. The second study was a laboratory preference test to determine user opinions regarding positioning and viewing parameters of cameras and monitors for video conferencing. In this study, reduced bandwidth (1 MHz) equipment was used. The third study investigated the acceptability of a reduced bandwidth video conferencing facility by means of simulated conferences.