Affordances of PDAs: Undergraduate Student Perceptions

This paper reports on an empirical study of undergraduate students’ exploration and use of PDAs for educational purposes over a period of six months. In previous studies, educational applications of PDAs have focused mainly on exploring designed research or experiments, in which students have used this technology for prescribed learning tasks. Students have fewer opportunities to explore how PDAs can be used effectively for general educational and study purposes. How students perceive and use PDAs on their own is not well understood. This study explores student understandings and use of PDAs to support their academic studies at a university. It investigates students’ free exploration and use of PDAs for various educational purposes through applying rich, descriptive qualitative research methodology. Two cases are reported in this study. Data collection methods included: interviews with students, a review of student artifacts created using the PDA, student electronic journals and observation of student PDA uses. Seven emerging categories of PDA affordances were identified. They include: multimedia collection, multimedia access, communication, scheduling, data processing , connectivity and representation. Each category is presented both at rich descriptive and interpretive levels. I mplications regarding findings are explored.published_or_final_versio

Emergency Department Efficiency in an Academic Hospital: A Simulation Study

Gemstone Team HOPE (Hospital Optimal Productivity Enterprise)This study examined the effects of the resident education model on the efficiency of a teaching hospital emergency department. Patient data was collected from the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, MD. This data consisted of both patient information physically collected in the emergency department, as well as historical patient information accessed through the hospital’s electronic databases. Simulation modeling was then used to analyze in a statistically significant manner the effects of the resident education model on patient throughput in the emergency department. We determined that the presence of residents in the ED improves patient throughput for both high-priority and low-priority patients. However, this improvement is higher for lowpriority patients than for high-priority patients, which is a novel result. Future studies will entail determining how replacing residents with other types of personnel, such as nurse practitioners or other types of physicians, affects patient throughput