The role of 3D printed heart models in immediate and long-term knowledge acquisition in medical education

Background: The long-term effect of three-dimensional printed heart model (3DPHM) on knowledge acquisition of congenital heart disease (CHD) remains unknown. This prospective cohort study aims to investigate the role of 3DPHM in improving immediate knowledge gain and long-term knowledge retention on CHD among the medical students. Methods: Fifty-three second and third year medical students were assigned into two groups to compare their immediate knowledge acquisition and knowledge retention after an education session on anatomy and pathophysiology of CHD. During the 1.5 hour-long education session, both the control (n = 25) and study groups (n = 28) had access to identical teaching materials: digital 3D heart models, 2D diagrams, and medical images, except for 3DPHM which were only used in the study group. The immediate knowledge gain was assessed via an online quiz, whereas the long-term knowledge retention was assessed using another quiz in 6-weeks’ time post-intervention. A survey was also conducted to evaluate the participants’ learning experience. Results: There is no significant difference in the immediate knowledge acquisition and long-term knowledge retention between the groups (U = 272, p = 0.16 and r = –0.143, p = 0.15 respectively). Majority of the students (96% in control group and 85% in 3DPHM group) responded that the 3DPHM would have/had improved their learning experience. Despite that, there is no significant difference in the self-perceived knowledge improvement between the groups. Conclusions: This study concludes that the 3DPHM do not significantly improve both immediate knowledge acquisition and knowledge retention among the medical students. However, further research with larger sample size, as well as categorizing the type of questions in the quiz, is needed to better assess the role of 3DPHM in different educational components

Acquiring Correct Knowledge for Natural Language Generation

Natural language generation (NLG) systems are computer software systems that produce texts in English and other human languages, often from non-linguistic input data. NLG systems, like most AI systems, need substantial amounts of knowledge. However, our experience in two NLG projects suggests that it is difficult to acquire correct knowledge for NLG systems; indeed, every knowledge acquisition (KA) technique we tried had significant problems. In general terms, these problems were due to the complexity, novelty, and poorly understood nature of the tasks our systems attempted, and were worsened by the fact that people write so differently. This meant in particular that corpus-based KA approaches suffered because it was impossible to assemble a sizable corpus of high-quality consistent manually written texts in our domains; and structured expert-oriented KA techniques suffered because experts disagreed and because we could not get enough information about special and unusual cases to build robust systems. We believe that such problems are likely to affect many other NLG systems as well. In the long term, we hope that new KA techniques may emerge to help NLG system builders. In the shorter term, we believe that understanding how individual KA techniques can fail, and using a mixture of different KA techniques with different strengths and weaknesses, can help developers acquire NLG knowledge that is mostly correct

Enhancing vocabulary learning through understanding the human memory system: Episodic memory

Vocabulary acquisition in learning languages is a crucial aspect of language learning, and effective teaching theories are essential for the retention and application of new vocabulary. However, understanding the memory system is important for educators to design and implement effective vocabulary teaching strategies that support student learning and retention. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the human memory system, including sensory, short-term, and long-term memory, with a focus on the differences between semantic and episodic memory. It explains the impact of episodic memory on vocabulary recall. In addition, it puts forward two teaching theories that enhance the utilization of episodic memories. Experiential Learning and Elaboration Theory focus on connecting vocabulary with personal experience for episodic memory and using previous knowledge to help students remember new vocabulary

Review helps learn better: Temporal Supervised Knowledge Distillation

Reviewing plays an important role when learning knowledge. The knowledge acquisition at a certain time point may be strongly inspired with the help of previous experience. Thus the knowledge growing procedure should show strong relationship along the temporal dimension. In our research, we find that during the network training, the evolution of feature map follows temporal sequence property. A proper temporal supervision may further improve the network training performance. Inspired by this observation, we propose Temporal Supervised Knowledge Distillation (TSKD). Specifically, we extract the spatiotemporal features in the different training phases of student by convolutional Long Short-term memory network (Conv-LSTM). Then, we train the student net through a dynamic target, rather than static teacher network features. This process realizes the refinement of old knowledge in student network, and utilizes it to assist current learning. Extensive experiments verify the effectiveness and advantages of our method over existing knowledge distillation methods, including various network architectures and different tasks (image classification and object detection) .Comment: Under review in AAAI 202

Outcomes of International Service Learning (ISL): Alumni Perspectives

Service learning is an active method that combines academic knowledge and hands-on experience while serving a community. Service learning is well established within occupational therapy (OT) and allied health education, as many institutions have organized both domestic and international service learning experiences. Literature supports student benefits of participation in international service learning (ISL), but limited literature exists on the long-term impact of participation in ISL throughout allied health education. Many OT students participate in ISL during their education, but there is limited literature on the impact of an ISL experience on participants’ careers in OT. In this qualitative study, an online survey was distributed to past participants of an ISL trip of an OT program in the Midwest. Of the 100 subjects, 30 completed the survey. Researchers used conventional content analysis to extract themes from the data. Two themes were identified: (1) evolving professional self and (2) transformative personal experience. Subthemes of the evolving professional self theme included: (1) desire to work with vulnerable populations, (2) professional soft skill development, and (3) acquisition of knowledge and skills. Results indicate that benefits are maintained after graduation signifying that participation in ISL may have a sustained, lasting influence on OT practitioners. ISL supports the values of OT education by shaping professional identity through active, diverse learning and self-reflection to promote lifelong learning. Results broaden the profession’s understanding of the outcomes of ISL post-graduation and inform ISL best practice standards within OT education

Transformative Service-Learning Experience Through Participatory Project Management

Studies have shown that for Service-Learning (SL) to be truly valuable and transformative, it must employ participatory project management practices and is ideally conducted in a face-to-face setting. This case study aims to highlight the strategies used to make SL projects long-term and participatory. It also measures the effectiveness of such approach in achieving a valuable and transformative SL experience for students and partner communities. Qualitative results show that students were able to develop desired personal, professional, and civic competencies. On the part of the partner communities, qualitative results reveal that they appreciate the year-long participatory SL engagement with the students that brought about high quality SL projects. Quantitative data, on the other hand, indicate that the paired samples t-test resulted in a moderate practical significant difference in the pre-and post-test scores of students when it came to their personal, professional, and civic mindedness skills. Finally, quantitative results indicate that partner communities reported that SL projects brought them a very favorable impact in terms of skills and competencies, motivation and commitments, personal growth and self-concept, and acquisition of knowledge