A Video of Myself Helps Me Learn : A Scoping Review of the Evidence of Video-Making for Situated Learning

Nursing, dance and studio-based arts, engineering, and athletic therapy are viewed as practice-oriented professions in which the teaching and situated learning of practical skills are central. In order to succeed, students must perform a series of performance-based assessments, which seemingly require an “able” body to enact complex tasks in situated and/or simulation-based contexts (for example, “safe nursing practice”). Our interdisciplinary research seeks to intervene within the culture of professional learning by investigating what we know about the use of smartphone video recording for situated, practice-based learning, and for supporting interactive video-based assessment as a means of accommodation and extending access for students, including students with performance anxiety, mature students, ESL learners, students with disabilities, and students in remote communities. In this paper we employ a scoping review methodology to present our findings related to students’ and instructors’ perspectives on the use of smartphone video to demonstrate and document practical knowledge and practice-oriented competencies across fields in the arts and sciences. We also examine broader research, as well as the ethical and design implications for the development of our technology-based toolbox project – an online resource created to advance pedagogies deploying smartphones as tools for practical skills acquisition - and for accommodation - within multidisciplinary practical learning environments

Exploring Predictors of Teamwork Performance in an Interprofessional Education Setting

Abstract EXPLORING PREDICTORS OF TEAMWORK PERFORMANCE IN AN INTERPROFESSIONAL EDUCATION SETTING By Danah M. Alsane, MS. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Pharmaceutical Science at Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University, 2016 Advisor: Patricia Slattum, Pharm.D., Ph.D. Professor and Director of the Geriatric Pharmacotherapy Program Department of Pharmacotherapy and Outcomes Science Objectives: The primary objective of this study was to explain how individual characteristics influence teamwork development. In addition, it evaluated how teamwork development, in conjunction with content knowledge, impact students’ performance on a team-based project in an Interprofessional Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (IPQIPS) course. Methods: This cross sectional study included medical, pharmacy, and nursing students enrolled in an IPQIPS course offered for the first time at VCU. Predictors of teamwork development examined included collective orientation (measured using the Collective Orientation Scale, which included dominance and affiliation subscales), and prior interprofessional teamwork experience (measured using self-report). The Team Development Measure (TDM) was used to measure teamwork development. The Statistical Process Control Quiz (SPCQ) was used to assess content knowledge acquired during the course. The final project score was used to evaluate students’ performance on a team-based project. Structural equation modeling was used to test study hypotheses. Results: Among the proposed predictors (dominance, affiliation, and interprofessional teamwork experience), only dominance was related to TDM. No significant relationship was found between teamwork development combined with content knowledge and successful accomplishment of team-based project. Conclusion: This study was the first to our knowledge to simultaneously assess the impact of individual characteristics on teamwork development, and how teamwork development (combined with individual student knowledge) influences students’ performance on team-based project in an interprofessional education setting. Although findings were not conclusive, several potential avenues for future study are highlighted

The new Dutch timetable: The OR revolution

In December 2006, Netherlands Railways introduced a completely new timetable. Its objective was to facilitate the growth of passenger and freight transport on a highly utilized railway network, and improve the robustness of the timetable resulting in less train delays in the operation. Further adjusting the existing timetable constructed in 1970 was not option anymore, because further growth would then require significant investments in the rail infrastructure. Constructing a railway timetable from scratch for about 5,500 daily trains was a complex problem. To support this process, we generated several timetables using sophisticated operations research techniques, and finally selected and implemented one of these timetables. Furthermore, because rolling-stock and crew costs are principal components of the cost of a passenger railway operator, we used innovative operations research tools to devise efficient schedules for these two resources. The new resource schedules and the increased number of passengers resulted in an additional annual profit of 40 million euros ($60 million) of which about 10 million euros were created by additional revenues. We expect this to increase to 70 million euros ($105 million) annually in the coming years. However, the benefits of the new timetable for the Dutch society as a whole are much greater: more trains are transporting more passengers on the same railway infrastructure, and these trains are arriving and departing on schedule more than they ever have in the past. In addition, the rail transport system will be able to handle future transportation demand growth and thus allow cities to remain accessible. Therefore, people can switch from car transport to rail transport, which will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.

Veterans engineering resource center: the DREAM project

Due to technological advances, data collected from direct healthcare delivery is growing by the day. The constantly growing data that was collected from various resources including patient visits, images, laboratory results and physician notes, though important, has no significance beyond its satisfying reporting and/or documentation requirements and potential application to specific clinical situations, mainly due to the voluminous and heterogeneous nature of the data. With this tremendous amount of data, manual extraction of information is expensive, time consuming, and subject to human error. Fortunately, information technologies have enabled the generation and collection of this data and also the efficient extraction of useful information. Currently, there is a broad spectrum of secondary uses of this clinical data including clinical and translational research, public health and policy analysis, and quality measurement and improvement. The following case study examines a pilot project undertaken by the Veterans Engineering Resource Center(VERC) to design a data mining software utility called Data Resource Engine & Analytical Model (DREAM).This software should be operable within the VA IT infrastructure and will allow providers to view aggregate patient data rapidly and accurately using electronic health records

Hospital Industry Restructuring and Input Substitutability: Evidence from a Sample of Italian Hospitals

In this paper we investigate the economic rationality of the bed downsizing process characterising the hospital industry worldwide in the last decades, providing new evidence on the factor substitutability in the production of hospital services. We consider a sample of Italian regional producers and – differently from other studies – estimate a general cost function model, namely the Generalised Composite, firstly introduced by Pulley & Braunstein (1992). Alternative cost function specifications (included Translog) are estimated jointly with their associated input cost-share equations. For all models we derive Allen, Morishima and Shadow elasticities of substitution between input pairs, obtaining a fairly consistent picture across all specifications and elasticity concepts. More precisely, our results suggest a very limited degree of substitutability between factors in the production of hospital services (in particular, between beds and medical staff). These findings, consistent with previous evidence in the literature, suggest that a restructuring policy of the hospital industry which is confined to limiting the number of beds could not be a viable strategy for controlling the increase in public health care expenditure.Public health care expenditure, Hospital industry downsizing, Input substitutability

An Empirical Assessment of User Perceptions of Feature versus Application Level Usage

Users often use application software because of particular features. However, little remains known on whether user perceptions of application use is merely feature-driven or whether users perceive their application use as being more than an amalgamation of features. As the software industry ushers trends such as Web services, it becomes evermore important for vendors and users alike to clarify how users perceive features and applications. The paper is an attempt to confirm whether users can perceptively unbundle application software features from the overall applications themselves. Using a modified version of the repertory grid technique, this study investigates user perceptions of application features using data collected from users in the design and development departments across five firms. The results suggest that user perceptions of overall applications overshadow their perceptions of independent features, suggesting application-level lock-in effects and pointing out the difficulty in vendor attempts to unbundle features from feature categories and applications. The study closes with a discussion of the findings and offering cues for future research

Specification and Analysis of Resource Utilization Policies for Human-Intensive Systems

Contemporary systems often require the effective support of many types of resources, each governed by complex utilization policies. Sound management of these resources plays a key role in assuring that these systems achieve their key goals. To help system developers make sound resource management decisions, I provide a resource utilization policy specification and analysis framework for (1) specifying very diverse kinds of resources and their potentially complex resource utilization policies, (2) dynamically evaluating the policies’ effects on the outcomes achieved by systems utilizing the resources, and (3) formally verifying various kinds of properties of these systems. Resource utilization policies range from simple, e.g., first-in-first-out, to extremely complex, responding to changes in system environment, state, and stimuli. Further, policies may at times conflict with each other, requiring conflict resolution strategies that add extra complexity. Prior specification approaches rely on relatively simple resource models that prevent the specification of complex utilization and conflict resolution policies. My approach (1) separates resource utilization policy concerns from resource characteristic and request specifications, (2) creates an expressive specification notation for constraint policies, and (3) creates a resource constraint conflict resolution capability. My approach enables creating specifications of policies that are sufficiently precise and detailed to support static and dynamic analyses of how these policies affect the properties of systems constrained or governed by these policies. I provide a process- and resource-aware discrete-event simulator for simulating system executions that adhere to policies of resource utilization. The simulator integrates the existing JSim simulation engine with a separate resource management system. The separate architectural component makes it easy to keep track of resource utilization traces during a simulation run. My simulation framework facilitates considerable flexibility in the evaluation of diverse resource management decisions and powerful dynamic analyses. Dynamic verification through simulation is inherently limited because of the impossibility of exhaustive simulation of all scenarios. I complement this approach with static verification. Prior static resource analysis has supported the verification only of relatively simple resource utilization policies. My research utilizes powerful model checking techniques, building on the existing FLAVERS model checking tool, to verify properties of complex systems that are also verified to conform to complex resource utilization policies. My research demonstrates how to use systems such as FLAVERS to verify adherence to complex resource utilization policies as well as overall system properties, such as the absence of resource leak and resource deadlock. I evaluated my approach working with a hospital emergency department domain expert, using detailed, expert-developed models of the processes and resource utilization policies of an emergency department. In doing this, my research demonstrates how my framework can be effective in guiding the domain expert towards making sound decisions about policies for the management of hospital resources, while also providing rigorously-based assurances that the guidance is reliable and well-founded. My research makes the following contributions: (1) a specification language for resources and resource utilization policies for human-intensive systems, (2) a process- and resource-aware discrete-event simulation engine that creates simulations that adhere to the resource utilization policies, allowing for the dynamic evaluation of resource utilization policies, (3) a process- and resource-aware model checking technique that formally verifies system properties and adherence to resource utilization policies, and (4) validated and verified specifications of an emergency department healthcare system, demonstrating the utility of my approach