Tailoring the curriculum to fit students’ needs: Designing and improving a language course at Dhaka University - Bangladesh

The assessment of students’ language needs is a crucial pre-requisite in EAP (English for Academic purposes) curriculum development. Effective needs analysis leads to the specification of objectives for a course at the same time considering the available resources and existing constraints. This leads to curriculum design and choice of methodology, which is implemented through appropriately selected teaching materials. This paper presents the findings of a research study undertaken at the Business Studies Faculty of Dhaka University. A needs analysis was conducted on ninety students of three departments of the Business Studies Faculty to assess their English language needs. A corresponding needs analysis was conducted on faculty members to find out their perceptions of their students’ English language needs. Several procedures, namely questionnaires, interviews and classroom observations, were used to gather information about the objective needs of the students and teaching staff. Analysis of the findings of this needs analysis revealed that some perceptions of the two groups converged to some extent but there was also some incongruency that needed to be addressed. The EAP course that was being used was evaluated in order to negotiate a more effective curriculum that would address the needs of all the stakeholders involved

Video content delivery for the ESL classroom with vodcasting technology

In this paper I will explain the means by which video content can be delivered to the ESL classroom via a technology known as vodcasting. The ability to deliver video to the ESL classroom CAN profoundly change the learning process, and I will explore the implications of this new technology in this paper. It must be emphasized, however, that the ABILITY to deliver video does not NECESSARILY enhance the learning experience. Content material needs to be appropriate and delivered in a manner that leads toward mastery of required language skills. To meet that goal, I will explain how material can be organized into “knowledge units”, as defined by B.F. Skinner in his work on programmed learning techniques. Using these knowledge units we will progress beyond the linguistic competence emphasized in traditional classrooms and work toward achieving true communicative competence. The American psychologist B.F. Skinner believed people are best able to learn when the cognitive domain, or target material, is divided into knowledge units he called “learning frames”. He defined a learning frame as a limited set of new facts coupled with an incomplete statement or question the learner was required to complete based on information provided from within the frame itself, or from previous frames. Skinner’s “programmed learning” approach required that frames be ordered so that knowledge units required for subsequent frames were mastered before they were needed. Learning was made possible through a series of very small and rigidly ordered steps directed toward mastery of a series of learning frames and the inferences that could be associated with the facts contained within those learning frames. The step-by-step approach advocated by Skinner provided reinforcement for correct responses, and kept the student focused on the material being studied. Skinner was especially critical of traditional education’s inability to provide sufficient reinforcement for the material being studied. “Perhaps,” said Skinner, “the most serious criticism of the current classroom is the relative infrequency of reinforcement.” (Skinner, 1962, page 25) Skinner believed reinforcement was crucial to the learning process because it was only through repetition and reinforcement that a behavior, or acquired skill, could be maintained in strength. Skills not used frequently were easily lost, as language teachers and students can attest to. The concept of programmed learning based on learning frames and the sequential mastery of material became extremely influential in textbook development in the 1960s, even 3 though the practice of computerized programmed learning itself was limited by access to the rather expensive computers of the time. Ironically, interest in programmed learning techniques seemed to have waned just as the development of personal computers made it truly possible to implement the practices Skinner had advocated

Experience of a recreational diabetic day by a non-governmental organisation, T1 Diams, in Mauritius

Background: T1 Diams, a non-profit organisation on the island of Mauritius, has been working on the implementation of therapeutic and educational activities for its members. It regularly organises a recreational diabetic day (‘Enjoy life’ or ‘T1 Diams en Balade’).Aim: To give an overview of a typical diabetic recreational day.Methods: The author participated in several of these activities organised by the organisation in 2014 and 2015.Results: A total of 22 patients came to the event; 11 (≥ 12 years old) attended for the day. The morning session was dedicated to diabetic therapeutic education and was carried out by two diabetes nurses. During the afternoon session there were physical activities for those > 12 years old and low-intensity activities for the other group. The menu for lunch was devised by a nutritionist. Blood glucose levels were regularly monitored. The patients did their own insulin injections.Conclusion: This recreational diabetic day gives an opportunity for parents to be reassured that their diabetic children can be autonomous. The day was carried out in a professional way so as to empower the patients. These activities should be organised regularly during the year.Keywords: diabetic recreation day, diabetic therapeutic education, T1 Diams, Type 1 diabete

Chapter 1 : Learning Online

The OTiS (Online Teaching in Scotland) programme, run by the now defunct Scotcit programme, ran an International e-Workshop on Developing Online Tutoring Skills which was held between 8–12 May 2000. It was organised by Heriot–Watt University, Edinburgh and The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK. Out of this workshop came the seminal Online Tutoring E-Book, a generic primer on e-learning pedagogy and methodology, full of practical implementation guidelines. Although the Scotcit programme ended some years ago, the E-Book has been copied to the SONET site as a series of PDF files, which are now available via the ALT Open Access Repository. The editor, Carol Higgison, is currently working in e-learning at the University of Bradford (see her staff profile) and is the Chair of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT)

Medical Students React to Cadaveric Dissections

The medical student is under considerable stress as he is facing a professional course that needs total dedication and concentration. As enters the course, he goes through the anatomy curriculum, which involves interaction with cadavers and cadaveric material. This study analyses the reactions of students on their first exposure to the human cadaver. 300 students were included in the study. A proforma was designed with the objective of identifying specific patterns of attitudes and problems faced by the students on their first exposure to the human cadaver. Viewpoints regarding the need for pre-education sessions were also elicited. The positive feelings included a curiosity and interest  to learn about the structure of human body. Few were scared, some put off by the formalin fumes and few were hesitant to dissect the cadaver. Students also felt a sense of gratefulness to the people who donated their bodies for dissection. It was reported by some that negative feelings influenced their routine activities. Students felt the need to seek help from faculty in overcoming their anxiety. They felt that a pre-education session should be conducted before the formal dissection teaching begins which could instill a sense of respect into the minds of the students and eliminate the feeling of anxiety. A better teacher – student interaction will go a long way in improving the attitude of students towards cadaveric dissection. This will offer a stable mental status for the fresh medicos to handle higher levels of stress in their clinical careers, thereby reducing the drop- out rates. ÂÂ

Evaluation of T1 relaxation time in prostate cancer and benign prostate tissue using a Modified Look-Locker inversion recovery sequence

Purpose of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of T1 relaxation time (T1) for differentiating prostate cancer (PCa) from benign tissue as well as high- from low-grade PCa. Twenty-three patients with suspicion for PCa were included in this prospective study. 3 T MRI including a Modified Look-Locker inversion recovery sequence was acquired. Subsequent targeted and systematic prostate biopsy served as a reference standard. T1 and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) value in PCa and reference regions without malignancy as well as high- and low-grade PCa were compared using the Mann-Whitney U test. The performance of T1, ADC value, and a combination of both to differentiate PCa and reference regions was assessed by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. T1 and ADC value were lower in PCa compared to reference regions in the peripheral and transition zone (p < 0.001). ROC analysis revealed high AUCs for T1 (0.92; 95%-CI, 0.87-0.98) and ADC value (0.97; 95%-CI, 0.94 to 1.0) when differentiating PCa and reference regions. A combination of T1 and ADC value yielded an even higher AUC. The difference was statistically significant comparing it to the AUC for ADC value alone (p = 0.02). No significant differences were found between high- and low-grade PCa for T1 (p = 0.31) and ADC value (p = 0.8). T1 relaxation time differs significantly between PCa and benign prostate tissue with lower T1 in PCa. It could represent an imaging biomarker for PCa

Characterization and suppression techniques for degree of radiation damping in inversion recovery measurements

Radiation damping (RD) has been shown to affect T1 measurement in inversion recovery experiments. In this work, we demonstrate that the extent of RD depends upon the T1 of the sample. RD difference spectroscopy (RADDSY) is used to characterize the severity of RD, while gradient inversion recovery (GIR) is used for RD suppression in T1 measurements. At 9.4 T, for the radiation damping characteristic time (Trd) of 50 ms, these investigations show non-negligible RD effects for T1 values greater than Trd, with severe distortions for T1 longer than about 150 ms, showing reasonable agreement with the predicted Trd. We also report a discrepancy between published expressions for the characteristic RD time

Incorporating Relaxivities to More Accurately Reconstruct MR Images

Purpose To develop a mathematical model that incorporates the magnetic resonance relaxivities into the image reconstruction process in a single step. Materials and methods In magnetic resonance imaging, the complex-valued measurements of the acquired signal at each point in frequency space are expressed as a Fourier transformation of the proton spin density weighted by Fourier encoding anomalies: T2⁎, T1, and a phase determined by magnetic field inhomogeneity (∆B) according to the MR signal equation. Such anomalies alter the expected symmetry and the signal strength of the k-space observations, resulting in images distorted by image warping, blurring, and loss in image intensity. Although T1 on tissue relaxation time provides valuable quantitative information on tissue characteristics, the T1 recovery term is typically neglected by assuming a long repetition time. In this study, the linear framework presented in the work of Rowe et al., 2007, and of Nencka et al., 2009 is extended to develop a Fourier reconstruction operation in terms of a real-valued isomorphism that incorporates the effects of T2⁎, ∆B, and T1. This framework provides a way to precisely quantify the statistical properties of the corrected image-space data by offering a linear relationship between the observed frequency space measurements and reconstructed corrected image-space measurements. The model is illustrated both on theoretical data generated by considering T2⁎, T1, and/or ∆B effects, and on experimentally acquired fMRI data by focusing on the incorporation of T1. A comparison is also made between the activation statistics computed from the reconstructed data with and without the incorporation of T1 effects. Result Accounting for T1 effects in image reconstruction is shown to recover image contrast that exists prior to T1 equilibrium. The incorporation of T1 is also shown to induce negligible correlation in reconstructed images and preserve functional activations. Conclusion With the use of the proposed method, the effects of T2⁎ and ∆B can be corrected, and T1 can be incorporated into the time series image-space data during image reconstruction in a single step. Incorporation of T1 provides improved tissue segmentation over the course of time series and therefore can improve the precision of motion correction and image registration