Communication skills: A new strategy for training

A new five‐year course in communication skills for medical students has been developed at Nottingham Medical School in response to recommendations from the General Medical Council and a large body of research. As one foundation for this course, a multimedia CAL package was developed to aid acquisition of basic skills and associated knowledge. The CAL course uses extensive digital video for illustration, and relies heavily on interaction for learning. Evaluation of the CAL course has used a variety of methods — pre/post tests, randomized trials, and cohort comparisons. Given the investment needed to introduce learning‐technology‐based courses, initial evaluation has been encouraging and has been used to improve later versions of the material

You can go your own way: effectiveness of participant-driven versus experimenter-driven processing strategies in memory training and transfer

Cognitive training programs that instruct specific strategies frequently show limited transfer. Open-ended approaches can achieve greater transfer, but may fail to benefit many older adults due to age deficits in self-initiated processing. We examined whether a compromise that encourages effort at encoding without an experimenter-prescribed strategy might yield better results. Older adults completed memory training under conditions that either (1) mandated a specific strategy to increase deep, associative encoding, (2) attempted to suppress such encoding by mandating rote rehearsal, or (3) encouraged time and effort toward encoding but allowed for strategy choice. The experimenter-enforced associative encoding strategy succeeded in creating integrated representations of studied items, but training-task progress was related to pre-existing ability. Independent of condition assignment, self-reported deep encoding was associated with positive training and transfer effects, suggesting that the most beneficial outcomes occur when environmental support guiding effort is provided but participants generate their own strategies

On better training the infinite restricted Boltzmann machines

The infinite restricted Boltzmann machine (iRBM) is an extension of the classic RBM. It enjoys a good property of automatically deciding the size of the hidden layer according to specific training data. With sufficient training, the iRBM can achieve a competitive performance with that of the classic RBM. However, the convergence of learning the iRBM is slow, due to the fact that the iRBM is sensitive to the ordering of its hidden units, the learned filters change slowly from the left-most hidden unit to right. To break this dependency between neighboring hidden units and speed up the convergence of training, a novel training strategy is proposed. The key idea of the proposed training strategy is randomly regrouping the hidden units before each gradient descent step. Potentially, a mixing of infinite many iRBMs with different permutations of the hidden units can be achieved by this learning method, which has a similar effect of preventing the model from over-fitting as the dropout. The original iRBM is also modified to be capable of carrying out discriminative training. To evaluate the impact of our method on convergence speed of learning and the model's generalization ability, several experiments have been performed on the binarized MNIST and CalTech101 Silhouettes datasets. Experimental results indicate that the proposed training strategy can greatly accelerate learning and enhance generalization ability of iRBMs.Comment: Submitted to Machine Learnin

Will Parent Training Reduce Abuse, Enhance Development, and Save Money? Let's Find Out

Outlines a strategy for testing the feasibility of community-developed parent training initiatives to prevent child abuse and neglect. Calls for a federal grant program to test community-wide implementation of parent training programs in stages

Champagne training on a beer budget

[Abstract]: When confronted by rapidly escalating costs for End User Computing (EUC) training and support, the Gold Coast City Council (GCCC) - the local government authority for Australia’s premier tourist destination - took a proactive stance by adopting a low-cost strategy. This strategy has now been in place for about six years and, as shown in this case study, is reaping rewards in terms of productivity increases and technology diffusion. After identifying an appropriate theoretical perspective for the study, this paper describes the EUC training approach taken at GCCC, and investigates its impact on the productivity of the 1500 person workforce. Both the trainees and the trainers were surveyed to evaluate fully this low-cost strategy. Related social issues of empowering the stakeholders are examined and recommendations are made to ensure that this approach will continue to provide champagne training on a beer budget

Inter-professional in-situ simulated team and resuscitation training for patient safety: Description and impact of a programmatic approach

© 2015 Zimmermann et al.Background: Inter-professional teamwork is key for patient safety and team training is an effective strategy to improve patient outcome. In-situ simulation is a relatively new strategy with emerging efficacy, but best practices for the design, delivery and implementation have yet to be evaluated. Our aim is to describe and evaluate the implementation of an inter-professional in-situ simulated team and resuscitation training in a teaching hospital with a programmatic approach. Methods: We designed and implemented a team and resuscitation training program according to Kerns six steps approach for curriculum development. General and specific needs assessments were conducted as independent cross-sectional surveys. Teamwork, technical skills and detection of latent safety threats were defined as specific objectives. Inter-professional in-situ simulation was used as educational strategy. The training was embedded within the workdays of participants and implemented in our highest acuity wards (emergency department, intensive care unit, intermediate care unit). Self-perceived impact and self-efficacy were sampled with an anonymous evaluation questionnaire after every simulated training session. Assessment of team performance was done with the team-based self-assessment tool TeamMonitor applying Van der Vleutens conceptual framework of longitudinal evaluation after experienced real events. Latent safety threats were reported during training sessions and after experienced real events. Results: The general and specific needs assessments clearly identified the problems, revealed specific training needs and assisted with stakeholder engagement. Ninety-five interdisciplinary staff members of the Childrens Hospital participated in 20 in-situ simulated training sessions within 2 years. Participant feedback showed a high effect and acceptance of training with reference to self-perceived impact and self-efficacy. Thirty-five team members experiencing 8 real critical events assessed team performance with TeamMonitor. Team performance assessment with TeamMonitor was feasible and identified specific areas to target future team training sessions. Training sessions as well as experienced real events revealed important latent safety threats that directed system changes. Conclusions: The programmatic approach of Kerns six steps for curriculum development helped to overcome barriers of design, implementation and assessment of an in-situ team and resuscitation training program. This approach may help improve effectiveness and impact of an in-situ simulated training program