The one minute mentor : a pilot study assessing medical students’ and residents’ professional behaviours through recordings of clinical preceptors’ immediate feedback

Introduction: The assessment of professional development and behaviour is an important issue in the training of medical students and physicians. Several methods have been developed for doing so. What is still needed is a method that combines assessment of actual behaviour in the workplace with timely feedback to learners. Goal: We describe the development, piloting and evaluation of a method for assessing professional behaviour using digital audio recordings of clinical supervisors’ brief feedback. We evaluate the inter-rater reliability, acceptability and feasibility of this approach. Methods: Six medical students in Year 5 and three GP registrars (residents) took part in this pilot project. Each had a personal digital assistant (PDA) and approached their clinical supervisors to give approximately one minute of verbal feedback on professionalism-related behaviours they had observed in the registrar’s clinical encounters. The comments, both in transcribed text format and audio, were scored by five evaluators for competence (the learner’s performance) and confidence (how confident the evaluator was that the comment clearly described an observed behaviour or attribute that was relevant). Students and evaluators were surveyed for feedback on the process. Results: Study evaluators rated 29 comments from supervisors in text and audio format. There was good inter-rater reliability (Cronbach α around 0.8) on competence scores. There was good agreement (paired t-test) between scores across supervisors for assessments of comments in both written and audio formats. Students found the method helpful in providing feedback on professionalism. Evaluators liked having a relatively objective approach for judging behaviours and attributes but found scoring audio comments to be time-consuming. Discussion: This method of assessing learners’ professional behaviour shows potential for providing both formative and summative assessment in a way that is feasible and acceptable to students and evaluators. Initial data shows good reliability but to be valid, training of clinical supervisors is necessary to help them provide useful comments based on defined behaviours and attributes of students. In addition, the validity of the scoring method remains to be confirmed

Annotated bibliography of software engineering laboratory literature

An annotated bibliography is presented of technical papers, documents, and memorandums produced by or related to the Software Engineering Laboratory. The bibliography was updated and reorganized substantially since the original version (SEL-82-006, November 1982). All materials were grouped into eight general subject areas for easy reference: (1) The Software Engineering Laboratory; (2) The Software Engineering Laboratory: Software Development Documents; (3) Software Tools; (4) Software Models; (5) Software Measurement; (6) Technology Evaluations; (7) Ada Technology; and (8) Data Collection. Subject and author indexes further classify these documents by specific topic and individual author

On a Catalogue of Metrics for Evaluating Commercial Cloud Services

Given the continually increasing amount of commercial Cloud services in the market, evaluation of different services plays a significant role in cost-benefit analysis or decision making for choosing Cloud Computing. In particular, employing suitable metrics is essential in evaluation implementations. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is not any systematic discussion about metrics for evaluating Cloud services. By using the method of Systematic Literature Review (SLR), we have collected the de facto metrics adopted in the existing Cloud services evaluation work. The collected metrics were arranged following different Cloud service features to be evaluated, which essentially constructed an evaluation metrics catalogue, as shown in this paper. This metrics catalogue can be used to facilitate the future practice and research in the area of Cloud services evaluation. Moreover, considering metrics selection is a prerequisite of benchmark selection in evaluation implementations, this work also supplements the existing research in benchmarking the commercial Cloud services.Comment: 10 pages, Proceedings of the 13th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Grid Computing (Grid 2012), pp. 164-173, Beijing, China, September 20-23, 201

Annotated bibliography of software engineering laboratory literature

An annotated bibliography of technical papers, documents, and memorandums produced by or related to the Software Engineering Laboratory is given. More than 100 publications are summarized. These publications cover many areas of software engineering and range from research reports to software documentation. This document has been updated and reorganized substantially since the original version (SEL-82-006, November 1982). All materials have been grouped into eight general subject areas for easy reference: the Software Engineering Laboratory; the Software Engineering Laboratory-software development documents; software tools; software models; software measurement; technology evaluations; Ada technology; and data collection. Subject and author indexes further classify these documents by specific topic and individual author

Annotated bibliography of Software Engineering Laboratory literature

An annotated bibliography of technical papers, documents, and memorandums produced by or related to the Software Engineering Laboratory is given. More than 100 publications are summarized. These publications cover many areas of software engineering and range from research reports to software documentation. All materials have been grouped into eight general subject areas for easy reference: The Software Engineering Laboratory; The Software Engineering Laboratory: Software Development Documents; Software Tools; Software Models; Software Measurement; Technology Evaluations; Ada Technology; and Data Collection. Subject and author indexes further classify these documents by specific topic and individual author

System cost/performance analysis (study 2.3). Volume 1: Executive summary

The relationships between performance, safety, cost, and schedule parameters were identified and quantified in support of an overall effort to generate program models and methodology that provide insight into a total space vehicle program. A specific space vehicle system, the attitude control system (ACS), was used, and a modeling methodology was selected that develops a consistent set of quantitative relationships among performance, safety, cost, and schedule, based on the characteristics of the components utilized in candidate mechanisms. These descriptive equations were developed for a three-axis, earth-pointing, mass expulsion ACS. A data base describing typical candidate ACS components was implemented, along with a computer program to perform sample calculations. This approach, implemented on a computer, is capable of determining the effect of a change in functional requirements to the ACS mechanization and the resulting cost and schedule. By a simple extension of this modeling methodology to the other systems in a space vehicle, a complete space vehicle model can be developed. Study results and recommendations are presented

A review on the complementarity of renewable energy sources: concept, metrics, application and future research directions

It is expected, and regionally observed, that energy demand will soon be covered by a widespread deployment of renewable energy sources. However, the weather and climate driven energy sources are characterized by a significant spatial and temporal variability. One of the commonly mentioned solutions to overcome the mismatch between demand and supply provided by renewable generation is a hybridization of two or more energy sources in a single power station (like wind-solar, solar-hydro or solar-wind-hydro). The operation of hybrid energy sources is based on the complementary nature of renewable sources. Considering the growing importance of such systems and increasing number of research activities in this area this paper presents a comprehensive review of studies which investigated, analyzed, quantified and utilized the effect of temporal, spatial and spatio-temporal complementarity between renewable energy sources. The review starts with a brief overview of available research papers, formulates detailed definition of major concepts, summarizes current research directions and ends with prospective future research activities. The review provides a chronological and spatial information with regard to the studies on the complementarity concept.Comment: 34 pages 7 figures 3 table

Advanced Techniques for Assets Maintenance Management

16th IFAC Symposium on Information Control Problems in Manufacturing INCOM 2018 Bergamo, Italy, 11–13 June 2018. Edited by Marco Macchi, László Monostori, Roberto PintoThe aim of this paper is to remark the importance of new and advanced techniques supporting decision making in different business processes for maintenance and assets management, as well as the basic need of adopting a certain management framework with a clear processes map and the corresponding IT supporting systems. Framework processes and systems will be the key fundamental enablers for success and for continuous improvement. The suggested framework will help to define and improve business policies and work procedures for the assets operation and maintenance along their life cycle. The following sections present some achievements on this focus, proposing finally possible future lines for a research agenda within this field of assets management

Software Management Environment (SME) installation guide

This document contains installation information for the Software Management Environment (SME), developed for the Systems Development Branch (Code 552) of the Flight Dynamics Division of Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The SME provides an integrated set of management tools that can be used by software development managers in their day-to-day management and planning activities. This document provides a list of hardware and software requirements as well as detailed installation instructions and trouble-shooting information

Operations research and computers

operational research