The New Knowledge Environment: Quality Initiatives in Health Sciences Libraries

published or submitted for publicatio

The artisan and the artist. Innovation enables transformation

Technologies Excellence Group, for theCurriculum for Excellence Group for SG (commissioned by/for Mike Russell-Cabinet Secy on Education

The Role of the Private Sector in Training the Next Generation of Biomedical Scientists

Summarizes the proceedings of a conference to address the unique contribution that private funders can make in ensuring that appropriate and adequate training programs are available for basic and clinical research. Offers conclusions and recommendations

Trialing project-based learning in a new EAP ESP course: A collaborative reflective practice of three college English teachers

Currently in many Chinese universities, the traditional College English course is facing the risk of being ‘marginalized’, replaced or even removed, and many hours previously allocated to the course are now being taken by EAP or ESP. At X University in northern China, a curriculum reform as such is taking place, as a result of which a new course has been created called ‘xue ke’ English. Despite the fact that ‘xue ke’ means subject literally, the course designer has made it clear that subject content is not the target, nor is the course the same as EAP or ESP. This curriculum initiative, while possibly having been justified with a rationale of some kind (e.g. to meet with changing social and/or academic needs of students and/or institutions), this is posing a great challenge for, as well as considerable pressure on, a number of College English teachers who have taught this single course for almost their entire teaching career. In such a context, three teachers formed a peer support group in Semester One this year, to work collaboratively co-tackling the challenge, and they chose Project-Based Learning (PBL) for the new course. This presentation will report on the implementation of this project, including the overall designing, operational procedure, and the teachers’ reflections. Based on discussion, pre-agreement was reached on the purpose and manner of collaboration as offering peer support for more effective teaching and learning and fulfilling and pleasant professional development. A WeChat group was set up as the chief platform for messaging, idea-sharing, and resource-exchanging. Physical meetings were supplementary, with sound agenda but flexible time, and venues. Mosoteach cloud class (lan mo yun ban ke) was established as a tool for virtual learning, employed both in and after class. Discussions were held at the beginning of the semester which determined only brief outlines for PBL implementation and allowed space for everyone to autonomously explore in their own way. Constant further discussions followed, which generated a great deal of opportunities for peer learning and lesson plan modifications. A reflective journal, in a greater or lesser detailed manner, was also kept by each teacher to record the journey of the collaboration. At the end of the semester, it was commonly recognized that, although challenges existed, the collaboration was overall a success and they were all willing to continue with it and endeavor to refine it to be a more professional and productive approach

Pilot study: the training of health professionals about genetically modified food from the perspective of the Science, technology and society

The objective of this work was to establish and assess a training module for Nutrition Sciences and Medical Sciences in relation to transgenic food, and additionally to contribute to the construction of a comprehensive learning concept involving scientific, technological and social knowledge. This module is an integrative and multidisciplinary proposal that studies the transgenic foods currently on the market through an integrated scientific, technological and societal approach. The topics offered in the module were: genetics, health, the environment, legislation, ethics, controversies, concerns, visions of the various stakeholders, the scientific method, uncertainty and the precautionary principle. Was evaluated from September to December 2018 through a questionnaire and interview. Were analyzed in the program SPSS, and the interviews in the program Nvivo using content analysis techniques. Participants include: 7 nutritionists and 7 physicians. The structure of the training module presented is innovative and has its genesis in the current Transgenic food state of art. It has been found that both physicians and nutritionists agree with most of the topics. For both nutritionists and physicians, topics with a greater level of agreement were related to “Health” and the lowest level of agreement regarded “Stakeholders’ insight”. For the interviewees, the module’s contents are well structured, comprehensive, well explained and organized by topic. With unanimity, the individuals involved in this study agree and consider the themes presented in the module structure to be important, although there is a difference between the courses of nutrition science and medicine regarding the way in which training is offered as well as differences in some content.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio