Types Of Courses Research Articles

Structured surgical residency training in Germany: an overview of existing training programs in 10 surgical subspecialties.

IntroductionSurgery and the training of young surgeons face various challenges. Work hour restrictions, demographic changes, medicolegal demands, as well as economic constraints have led to changes in patient care and thus changed surgical residency. In addition to the daily training at work, several theoretical and practical courses are offered to surgical residents. The aim of this manuscript is to provide an overview of the existing courses and programs for surgical residents in Germany. It describes the current structure of surgical training in Germany for 10 subspecialties and sets out existing approaches to implement structured surgical training by professional associations as well as by commercial providers.Materials and methodsThe official homepages of 10 surgical associations were analyzed for information on structured surgical training and a Google search for surgical training programs was conducted. Then, the websites of two commercial providers were searched for information in courses. In addition, the members of the German Young Surgeons Association were asked open questions about the existence of structured resident training and additional training opportunities in their specialty. The courses were analyzed for structural characteristics such as the price and type of course (single course, exam preparatory course, and structured program). A structured program was defined as a set of courses based on learning objectives that are designed to cover all aspects of the specialty and include some form of summative or formative assessment.ResultsSeveral courses are offered by varied providers; some of them associated with surgical associations and some commercial. Seven of 10 professional associations offer single courses and six of them offer exam preparatory courses. Commercial providers only offer single courses. All of these courses are optional; there is no requirement to take part in any of them. None of them is free of charge, but most offer discounts for members of surgical societies. Only one structured program exists for orthopedics and trauma surgery. A fixed schedule does not exist for any surgical subspecialty, but it is rather the responsibility of the trainee or his/her supervisor to pick or suggest a course that suits their personal state of knowledge.DiscussionUntil now, it depends on personal motivation and the generosity of hospitals whether or not surgical residents will receive training outside of their training hospital. Various external courses are offered in all surgical subspecialties to complement on-the-job training. It is unknown how many residents take part in them. The implementation of new, competence-based specialist training regulations in Germany in 2018 may facilitate a change in surgical education. Simulation-based education can promote the acquisition and consolidation of surgical skills. Additional training possibilities and structured programs should be implemented in surgical resident training to foster competence-based education and surgical proficiency.

The impact of entrepreneurship education on the entrepreneurial mindset of college students in China: The mediating role of inspiration and the role of educational attributes

Using a mediating model, this article highlights entrepreneurial mindset (EM) as a novel impact of entrepreneurship education (EE) and addresses the scarcity of research on the relationship between EE and EM. Based on 1428 valid samples from higher education students in China, the results revealed that the impact of EE on EM is complex. EE significantly enhanced students' entrepreneurial inspiration, which, in turn, promoted formation of students’ EM. Entrepreneurial inspiration also mediated the impact of EE on EM at a significant level. In addition, the role of educational attributes, including the type of learning experience, type of course, and type of activity were highlighted. Finally, the direct effect of extracurricular activity was found to be significantly positive whilst that of curriculum attendance was significantly negative. Our findings contribute to theories of both EE and EM and particularly to the understanding of not only whether, but also how EE affects EM in higher education settings. The findings of this research can help to inform the future design and assessment of EE programs.

A Multi‐year Biochemistry Lab Experiment Using a Putative Enzyme from Arabidopsis thaliana

Until relatively recently, a typical biochemistry laboratory course format included a series of one to two‐week experiments that exposed students to the “traditional” biochemical techniques of protein purification and kinetic analyses using classic enzymes like alkaline phosphatase or alcohol dehydrogenase. However, there is ample evidence that course‐based undergraduate research (CURE) leads to increased retention and satisfaction, particularly for underrepresented groups, and as a result, there has been a rise in these types of courses for undergraduate students. In a biochemistry lab course this is often accomplished one of two ways ‐ characterizing a novel system (i.e. enzyme, substrate, reaction, or pathway) or studying a known system in a novel way (e.g. introducing a new analytical technique). Either way, it is generally difficult to maintain a level of experimental novelty year after year without redesigning some aspect of the class. This project, using the CURE model, extended over the course of three years and has the potential to extend beyond that. The experimental goal of this multi‐year project was for students to purify and characterize a putative hydroxyacid dehydrogenase from Arabidopsis thaliana, which at the start of this project was uncharacterized. To reach this goal, students in year 1 tested purification and characterization methods using a homologous enzyme from Pseudomonas denitrificans based on methods described in the primary literature. Given the results of work in year 1, the subsequent class in year 2, purified and characterized the enzyme from A. thaliana alongside students working with P. denitrificans. This was so that students had reference data to make conclusions about the quality of their own work and that published in the literature. Once the purification and characterization methods had been worked out, the next class of students in year 3, set out to more fully characterize the enzyme of A. thaliana through a side‐by‐side comparison between their native protein and a protein with a single‐amino acid mutation, which they also generated and purified. Positive outcomes of this multi‐year project are seen through increased student engagement and interest and extend beyond the class as students share their appreciation for being well prepared for summer research experiences, graduate school, and post‐college employment. Additionally, this project allows the instructor to extend their scholarly work into the classroom, maximizing time and resources to advance research productivity. Since the start of this project, the enzyme from A. thaliana was fully characterized by another research group using a different expression system. Future courses will examine the differences in enzyme function based on plasmid selection and gene length using the construct from the author's lab and that which was generated by the other research group.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

A Global Perspective of Muscular System Coverage in Undergraduate Human Anatomy and Anatomy & Physiology Courses, Part III: Comparison between Stand‐alone Human Anatomy and A&P Courses

There is anecdotal data about the variation in breadth and depth of skeletal muscle coverage in undergraduate human anatomy and Anatomy and Physiology (A&P) courses. Saladin (2008) examined muscle coverage from a small self‐reported sample of 20 A&P instructors. Yet, no comprehensive data collection and comparative analysis about undergraduate muscular system coverage has been performed. Further complicating the matter is that at the undergraduate level, some institutions may offer stand‐alone human anatomy courses while others may offer multiple‐semester combined A&P courses. The format and structure of these two types of courses likely plays a role in the breadth and depth of muscle coverage.In response to a call for more representative data, the authors developed a skeletal muscular survey about undergraduate human anatomy and A&P courses. Muscles surveyed were those listed and described in a typical undergraduate human anatomy text (Human Anatomy, 5th edition textbook by McKinley, O'Loughlin, and Pennefather‐O'Brien (2017)). The survey was created by the authors, underwent several rounds of validation with colleagues, and was administered online via Qualtrics. The research study was deemed exempt by Indiana University IRB –Protocol #1805378498. Participants (instructors of these courses) were recruited via a poster presentation at the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society (HAPS) 2018 meeting and emails to the AAA, HAPS and AACA listservs. Survey data was collected for 163 stand‐alone undergraduate human anatomy courses and 189 undergraduate A&P courses.Stand‐alone human anatomy courses have the following characteristics: 77.5% are taught at 4 year baccalaureate institutions, and are housed primarily in biology departments followed by anatomy departments. In contrast, 53% of the A&P courses are taught at community colleges, and are housed primarily in biology departments followed by multidisciplinary health sciences departments. Both human anatomy and A&P courses were similarly likely to teach specific muscles and compartments across broad muscular regions (e.g., back, thorax, upper limb), although the A&P course percentages were slightly lower. The human anatomy courses required students to identify more specific muscles in each region than their A&P counterparts. In addition, a greater proportion of stand‐alone human anatomy courses required students to learn specific muscles of the hand, foot, and pelvis. These comparisons about muscular system coverage between human anatomy and A&P courses provide a better picture of the undergraduate anatomy landscape and should help guide instructor discussions about curricula.Support or Funding InformationnoneThis abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

A Quest for a One-Size-Fits-All Neural Network: Early Prediction of Students at Risk in Online Courses

A significant amount of research effort has been put into finding variables that can identify students at risk based on activity records available in learning management systems (LMS). These variables often depend on the context, for example, the course structure, how the activities are assessed or whether the course is entirely online or a blended course. To the best of our knowledge, a predictive model that can generalize well to many different types of courses using data available in the LMS does not currently exist in the learning analytics literature. In this study, early prediction of students at risk is tackled by training a number of neural networks to predict which students would likely submit their assignments on time based on their activity up to two days before assignments’ due dates. Five different datasets that cover a total of 78 722 student enrolments in 5487 courses have been used in this study. In order to improve how well the neural networks generalize, our networks can perform different forms of feature engineering using course peers data. The different architectures of these networks have been compared to find the one with more predictive power. To validate the models trained from the networks, both new datasets and unseen examples extracted from the same datasets have been used for training. Our research show that adding contextual information results in better prediction accuracies and F1 scores. Our networks are able to give predictions with accuracies in the 67.46–81.63% range and F1 scores in the 71.30–83.09% range.

A Retrospective Analysis of a Cross-Year Peer Tutoring Program for Oral Health Students.

Health professions education is extremely challenging for students, requiring high performance in fast-paced learning environments. In addition, the challenge of instructing students at many performance levels and the lack of teaching assistants can create a knowledge gap between educators and students. Using cross-year peer tutors is one potential method to close this gap and improve student performance. The aims of this study were to retrospectively evaluate the impact of a cross-year peer tutoring program on successful course completion of oral health students and to assess student and tutor perceptions of the experience. First- and second-year dental and dental therapy students were assigned to cross-year tutors as a result of progression committee recommendations and self-identification. Potential tutors were vetted by the course directors. The collected data included number of courses in which students were assigned a tutor, the type of course (lecture vs. lab), and students' success in the courses. These data were collected for a four-year period (2013-14 to 2016-17), and student and tutor perceptions were assessed in one year. The results showed that 94% of the students who received tutoring passed their courses. Students who had been tutored had a significantly lower failure rate than those who were not tutored (20% vs. 80%, respectively). These results suggest that the cross-year peer tutoring program was useful in closing the learning gap between instructors' expert level and novice learners. Participating students and tutors also perceived the program as a positive and beneficial experience.

Developing a Service Quality Framework for a Special Type of Course

This paper addresses the issue of service quality measurement and evaluation in higher education and stresses the need to develop sound measures for special types of courses. During these courses students carry out project works under special circumstances and with special characteristics compared to "ordinary" courses where traditional course evaluation methods have been applied for a long time. The primary aim of the paper is to support the need to develop valid, reliable and replicable measures of service quality in case of these courses. Therefore, a questionnaire was designed for these courses to collect students' perceptions. The results are reported by using an importance-performance analysis supplemented by the draw of statistical conclusions. The presented methodology allows the identification of importance-performance gaps and supports the assessment of quality improvement programs.

The infraorbital artery: From descriptive anatomy to mucosal perforator flap design.

The terminal and perforating branches of the infraorbital artery (IOA) are poorly described. Its anatomical situation and mucosal component could provide an interesting donor site for mucosal reconstruction. The aims of the following study were to establish an anatomical description and to assess the feasibility of mucosal perforator flaps for eyelid and nasal reconstruction. Twenty-three fresh cadaver hemifaces were studied in order to perform an IOA anatomical classification by recording the artery's characteristics, its course, number, type, and diameter of terminal branches. We also examined the feasibility of local flaps for facial reconstruction. We highlighted five different types of courses. All cadavers had at least one superior vestibular branch with a caliber of ≥0.4 mm. A pedicled flap arising from the vestibular branch was raised in all dissections. The vestibular perforator flap based on the IOA seems to be a reliable flap in reconstruction of mucosal defects.

Initiatives for the quality of medical simulation in the training of nurses

Introduction. In the training of nurses, simulation is used more and more often as an educational tool. For that purpose, various means and tools of simulation are employed, starting with simple trainers, which have been in use for quite a long time, through complex in structure and more and more physiologically and informatically advanced high-fidelity simulators placed in a realistic virtual environment to trained people (so called standardised patients). The addressee of the educational actions, assuming an active role, is a student, but it is the teacher with a special training in conducting this type of courses that is the coordinator of such actions. 
 Purpose. Presentation of selected initiatives for the quality of medical simulation in training nurses. 
 Method. Unsystematic review of literature, based on the thematic selection of articles, with a preference for the studies constituting a systematic review of works published in the last 14 years.
 Results.All the organizations mentioned below support and shape globally the development of medical simulation in the training of nurses. It is worth getting familiar with their mission and standards as they can help to develop medical simulation and educate the students of nursing at the best possible level so as to master not only the basic skills, but also those related to the communication within a team or decision making. 
 Summary. Simulation has existed for centuries, but only recently has it started to have a big impact on healthcare. A need exists for the change in the training of nurses to facilitate the transfer of theoretical knowledge for the student into the clinical context and develop the necessary personal competences, which can be provided for by high-fidelity simulation.

Why Do Students Enroll in Political Science Courses?

ABSTRACTWhy do students enroll in political science courses? I conducted an experiment designed to test the appeal of three possible motivations: students might hope to develop valuable skills, look for a better grasp of current events, or expect a deeper understanding of how the world works and their place within it. The experiment involved visiting several sections of Introduction to American Government courses. In each section, I advertised a political science course offered in the following semester. However, I varied the way in which the course was described and subsequently tracked whether students enrolled in it. I find that highlighting opportunities to develop skills does not have a significant effect on enrollment. In contrast, emphasizing “how the world works” is most effective at increasing enrollment. Qualitative evidence suggests that students are attracted to this type of course because it offers the opportunity for personal development and growth.

(In)compatibility of CLIL and ESP courses at university

Author/s
 Joseba M. González ArdeoUniversidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Spain
 
 ABSTRACT
 This paper deals with the current coexistence of ESP (English for Specific Purposes) and CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) courses in tertiary educational settings in the Basque Country. The University of the Basque Country (UBC) is immersed in an ongoing process of internationalization and, consequently, its language teachers are witnessing an unstoppable process of Anglicization. At present, and presumably in the medium and long term, institutional decisions will continue to support CLIL in preference to ESP. In order to analyse this process within the UBC, quantitative data about these two linguistic approaches are gathered and compared with data from 2005. A questionnaire aimed at gathering the opinions of engineering students who currently take both types of courses is also used as a source of qualitative data. The main conclusion of this exploratory study is that both types of courses seem to be compatible. However, language teachers, English-medium content teachers and students are facing a tough challenge, since neither of the two types of course is a panacea.

Bridging the Educational Gap between Emerging and Established Scientific Computing Disciplines

In this paper we describe our experience in developing curriculum courses aimed at graduate students in emerging computational fields, including biology and medical science. We focus primarily on computational data analysis and statistical analysis, while at the same time teaching students best practices in coding and software development. Our approach combines a theoretical background and practical applications of concepts. The outcomes and feedback we have obtained so far have revealed several issues: students in these particular areas lack instruction like this although they would tremendously benefit from it; we have detected several weaknesses in the formation of students, in particular in the statistical foundations but also in analytical thinking skills. We present here the tools, techniques and methodology we employ while teaching and developing this type of courses. We also show several outcomes from this initiative, including potential pathways for fruitful multi-disciplinary collaborations.

Learning medical professionalism – the application of appreciative inquiry and social media

ABSTRACTBackground: Medical professionalism is often considered difficult to be clearly observed and learned. However, although most medical students or residents affirm the necessity of medical professionalism courses, few agree that those currently offered are adequate for a medical career.Objective: To develop a curriculum for teaching professionalism by enabling students to share positive examples of professionalism in social media that reflects the authentic experience in clinical environment.Design: Between October 2015 and June 2017, the authors developed a clerkship program to teach professionalism with the support of social media and appreciative inquiry. Medical students were required to write posts on the positive behaviors they observed during clinical practice in the Facebook group. Other students and course instructors commented or responded to the posted content. The content on Facebook analyzed by course instructors and was based on the definition of medical professionalism according to the 18 attributes proposed by Cruess et al.Results: In total, 103 medical students in their first clinical year participated and posted 435 records of role model learning in the Facebook group. The majority of students learned the most when the clinical instructors were passionate about their teaching and guidance in medical expertise; this accounted for 23.0% of all role model behaviors. Other attributes of professionalism that students appreciated most were being caring and compassionate (17.2%), competence (9.6%), openness (8.8%), and presence (7.7%). More than 90% of the students reported enjoying this type of course and would like to integrate their learning experiences into future behavior.Conclusions: This innovative training program was well accepted in the formal curriculum and the predesigned social media environment. Appreciative inquiry for medical professionalism should be integrated into the organizational culture and the culture of social media interaction.

Lenses on the Post-oil Economy: Integrating Entrepreneurship into Sustainability Education through Problem-Based Learning

In the context of enormous global challenges such as climate change, poverty, and the unequal distribution of wealth, sustainability education within higher education has gained momentum as a tool to train a new generation of change agents. In practice, previous research has examined the relationship between sustainability education and entrepreneurship education. Both educational domains share similar teaching and learning frameworks as they both seek to train action-oriented professionals. Yet despite these similarities, there is a knowledge gap regarding course development strategies that can integrate entrepreneurship competencies into sustainability education. Following a classroom action research (AR) approach, we developed a three-week graduate course aimed at an interdisciplinary cohort of students in the social sciences from partner universities in Brazil and Norway. The course integrated a problem-based learning (PBL) framework. As part of the methodology, teachers introduced real-world challenges in the context of a post-extractive economic transition. Working in groups of four to five members, the students provided business solutions framed in a post-oil development context. The results indicate tension points in the integration of the learning principles of PBL along the different phases of PBL, namely during the group formation and problem analysis phases. To tackle these tensions, we propose that this type of course should facilitate early group formation and integrate formative feedback and progressive problem analysis. Our framework contributes to the debate on competence-based frameworks within the sustainability education literature. The framework can also serve as an inspiration for course designers in higher education.

Development of linguistic institutional educational virtual environment at Moscow State Linguistic University (2016-2018)

Within the framework of The Government Contract (№ 214/102, № 27.9307.2017/ƃɥ) on the basis of E-Learning Centre, now the Laboratory for Fundamental and Applied Issues of Virtual Education at Moscow State Linguistic University there has recently been developed an institutional educational environment (IEVE) for commercial purpose, which consists of nodes – LMS Moodle foreign language courses. The aim of the programme is to devise a commercial model of distance teaching foreign languages that will secure an effective and efficient learning. Successful implementation of about twenty educational programmes of distance learning at MSLU has proved the effectiveness of management and the important role of information gathering with the aim of further expertise. For that purpose special software has been developed. Then some statistic data are given, proving the relevance of courses in different languages, monthly fluctuation of agreement making, the relevance of different types of courses, the relative percentage of students with more than one agreement ect. The results give reasons to believe that in terms of development prospects the major focus in the near future will be placed on increasing the number of taught languages and expanding the variety of educational programmes (with an important step being launching a programme of Russian as a foreign language), upgrading software products with a view to improving distant learning management.

Гиперкоагуляция плазмы крови со спонтанными сгустками как биологический маркер степени выраженности психических расстройств

Introduction: currently, it is proved that the pathogenesis of schizophrenia is associated with the formation of chronic foci of aseptic inflammation (neuroinflammation) in the brain of patients. It is also known that chronic neuroinflammation quickly turns into systemic inflammation. Permeability of the blood-brain barrier impaired. Proinflammatory cytokines and other inflammatory factors release into the blood. Systemic inflammation leads to activation of all cells of the immune system and blood platelets. Activation of platelets is accompanied by а generation of a large number of procoagulant platelet-derived microparticles, which can cause an increase in blood clotting. Objective: to identify the impairments of thrombodynamic coagulation parameters in adults and children suffering from different forms of schizophrenia in the acute stage. Patients: the study included 3 groups of patients with schizophrenia with different type of course. Group 1: 79 patients with attack-like or progredient attack-like type of schizophrenia; group 2: 28 patients with schizotypal disorder; group 3: 28 patients with child schizophrenia. Methods: to determine the coagulation parameters, the Thrombodynamics method (TD) was used on the thrombodynamics device T-2 according to the instructions of the manufacturer of the device (Hemacore, Moscow, Russia). Results: the presence of spontaneous clots was shown in all three groups of patients. The analysis of the results of TD was carried out. For group 1 shows a significant increase of parameters Vi, Vst, V and CS. The Tsp parameter is significantly lower than normal values. For the second group, the 3 parameters, such as Vst, V and Tsp, differ significantly from the normal values. Velocity indicators are significantly higher than the norm, Tsp — below the norm. For the third group, parameters Vi, Vst, V and CS are statistically significantly higher than normal. Tsp is statistically significantly lower than normal. Conclusion: Using the thrombodynamics test (TD) it was shown that there is a hypercoagulation of blood plasma accompanied by the generation of spontaneous clots in patients with schizophrenia in the acute stage. The TD test reveals a tendency to hypercoagulation at an early stage, when other methods are not yet sensitive enough.

Identification of Affective States in MOOCs

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a type of online coursewere students have little interaction, no instructor, and in some cases, no deadlines to finisch assignments. For this reason, a better understanding of student affection in MOOCs is importantant could have potential to open new perspectives for this type of course. The recent popularization of tools, code libraries and algorithms for intensive data analysis made possible collect data from text and interaction with the platforms, which can be used to infer correlations between affection and learning. In this context, a bibliographical review was carried out, considering the period between 2012 and 2018, with the goal of identifying which methods are being to identify affective states. Three databases were used: ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore and Scopus, and 46 papers were found. The articles revealed that the most common methods are related to data intensive techinques (i.e. machine learning, sentiment analysis and, more broadly, learning analytics). Methods such as physiological signal recognition andself-report were less frequent.

A study to assess the selfitis behaviour and selfie syndrome (level of selfitis) among the nursing students

Background: Photography is seen as a powerful means of expression, as a symbolic language to express what cannot be said in words, and as a stimulator of emotions and behaviors about which often are not aware. The term the selfie, is declared as the word of the by the Oxford English Dictionary. Selfie fever has taken a new dimension known as ‘selfitis’. Objectives: To assess the selfitis behavior, the selfie syndrome (level of selfitis) and find out significant association of selected background variables with selfie syndrome (level of selfitis) among nursing students. Material and Methods: It is a non-experimental study carried out on the nursing students in nursing training institutes in Bikaner city, Rajasthan. A study was conducted during the year of 2018 and 200 nursing students who are under training of GNM, B.Sc. nursing and M.Sc. Nursing were selected by using multi stage random sampling. Self developed questionnaire, Selfitis behavior scale and structured questionnaire used to collect the date from participants. Results: Based on the finding of the majority of 141(70.5%) nursing students has moderate selfitis behavior followed by 59(29.50%) nursing students has severe Selfitis Behaviour and no candidate has mild Selfitis. The mean score of selfitis behaviour was 62.595 with SD 12.334. Based on findings there was no significant association of back ground variable with the level of selfitis except type of course in which student is admitted for nursing training. Conclusion: The present study has proved that selfie syndrome is dominantly developing craze of modern era due to modern fat changes in technologies. From the finding of the present study it is concluded that the majority of nursing students have moderate selfitis behaviour.

Factors that Influence the Adoption of Postgraduate Online Courses

A research about factors that lead students to choose online courses, as well as the acceptance of these courses, can provide very relevant information for higher education institutions’ decision makers to amend these offers to students’ interests and needs. An investigation through questionnaire was developed involving students who attended online post-graduate courses. It was intended to know which factors affect students' decision to opt for postgraduate online courses. A model, based on the TAM (Technology Acceptance Model), was tested to find out what factors determine the intention to use online learning. The results shows that most respondents favour online courses and that their decision, when choosing this type of course, is mainly influenced by time management flexibility, avoiding going to school and the course curriculum interest. The test of the model, with structural equations, shows that attitude regarding online courses and perceived usefulness are factors that predict the intention to use. It was also concluded that the perceived ease of use induces a direct and indirect effect on the intention to use. The most significant results are consistent with published studies and can help the higher education institutions to define offer and communication strategies to reach a greater number of candidates for online learning.

Art connections: An investigation of art education courses for preservice generalists

This article discusses a mixed-methods study funded by the National Arts Education Foundation that investigated art education courses designed for preservice generalist teachers at universities across the United States. Qualitative data from the survey revealed five reoccurring concepts: (a) arts integration, (b) time/course mandate, (c) missing components to the course, (d) need for quality faculty, and (e) respect for arts education. The data provided from this study establish baseline information and set benchmarks to guide future policies and investigations regarding this type of course.