Identity as Pedagogy: A Work in Progress

Reggio Emilia philosophy understands teaching as relationship (Malaguzzi, 1994). Høveid and Finne (2014) extend the notion of relationship as a space created between two people shaped by how we enter and engage in that space. Pedagogical relationships are influenced by how we understand our identity, which, in this study, is defined as the inner and outer forces that shape who we are (Palmer, 2017). This study will explore how identity enters teaching in profound ways; when teaching is relationship, identity is pedagogy. Residing in an ecological paradigm and theoretically situated in feminist, critical, and humanist theory, as well as the work of Dewey, I engage with a group of teachers in a narrative inquiry into teacher identity, utilizing appreciative inquiry as a structure for our conversation. Together, we seek to co-construct and illuminate how we might consider pedagogy through reflections on our evolving teacher identities and explore how identity might be seen to shape pedagogical relationships

#48 - The Relationship Between Optimism and BMI in Generation Z- An Exploratory Investigation

The Relationship Between Optimism and BMI in Generation Z- An Exploratory Investigation Optimism is defined as explaining and expecting the future in a positive manner (Seligman, 2017). Biber and Czech (2015) have shown a significant negative correlation between optimism and overall BMI. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to examine differences between Optimism and Healthy, Overweight and Obese Generation Z university students. METHODS: This study is classified as a quantitative, quasi-experimental, cross-sectional descriptive study. There were 2287 participants- 986 male and 1285 female who were all aged 18-22. Participants attended a southeastern University and were enrolled in a required physical activity course. These students were classified in the Generation Z. Participants self-reported weight and height which was used to calculate BMI. Participants were given a questionnaire which asked demographic questions as well as questions from the Life Orientation Test (1994) to measure optimism and pessimism. RESULTS: Using the SPSS system., the data was collected from participants and put into a T-test and ANOVAs. Using Pearson’s correlation, there was not a significant relationship between BMI and optimism (r = -.003). There was also not a significant difference between healthy, overweight, and obese groups for optimism (p = .55). DISCUSSION: The results from this study are being used as research for future generations. It intrigues other questions and research as optimism could have a correlation with other health aspects. Keywords: BMI, optimism, Life Orientation Tes

The Influence of Thermal Conditions on the Thermomechanics of Particulate-Composite, Mock Explosive Samples under Near-Resonant Excitation

Vapor detection is one of the most effective ways to find hidden plastic-bonded explosives in the field today. In recent years, it has been demonstrated that providing near-resonant vibratory excitation to explosives dramatically increases their vapor pressure, allowing for easier detection. Unfortunately, there currently exists a limited understanding of the thermomechanics of energetic material. This study seeks to help fill this technical void by exploring the thermomechanics of mock plastic-bonded explosives using direct mechanical excitation with varying thermal conditions. Using two different ambient thermal boundary conditions (insulated geometric boundaries and boundaries with free convection), a 7 by 10 by 0.5 HTPB/Ammonium Chloride particulate-composite plate was tested by fixing it to an electrodynamic shaker and vibrating the sample at low frequencies (under 1000 Hz). Vibratory and thermal data was collected using a Polytec scanning laser Doppler vibrometer and a FLIR infrared camera. It was determined that insulating boundary conditions, allow the mock energetic material temperature to increase significantly as compared to the convective boundaries under near-resonant excitation. Future work will investigate alternate thermal boundary and initial conditions, as well as alternate mock energetic materials

One Path, Four Travellers: A PhD Journey of the Mind, Heart, Body and Spirit

As PhD students in Education Sustainability at Nipissing University, the authors each experienced a personal process of becoming and knowing (Absolon, 2011; Miller, 2019). This paper draws on journal entries, personal narratives, various significant artifacts and uses an autoethnographic (Bochner & Ellis, 2016; Holman et al., 2013) process. The paper offers a counternarrative to the solely academic PhD experiences. We consider how holistic learning engages the whole person and is deep, rich and sustaining (Archibald, 2008; Miller, 2000; Sterling, 2001). Through an exploration of how one path was shared by four travelers and personally understood, it is also an opportunity to reimagine learning (Sterling, 2001) as relational and personally meaningful journeys of mind, heart, body and spirit (Wilson, 2008). It focuses on relational learning (Battiste, 2013), communities of trust (Palmer, 1998), inter-sectionality, acknowledgement and acceptance of many ways of being. In this paper, four graduate students share humanized, educational experiences rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing and relationality that are personally constructed and transformative in nature. Their experiences bring about new ways of understanding themselves and extend it to an emergent and deepening understanding of their world views and of who they are as researchers, writers and learners. The four interconnected papers explore each student’s learning journey as it was understood in this context, at this time in life and within this community of learners

Broadening community engagement in clinical research: Designing and assessing a pilot crowdsourcing project to obtain community feedback on an HIV clinical trial.

BACKGROUND/AIMS:Community engagement is widely acknowledged as an important step in clinical trials. One underexplored method for engagement in clinical trials is crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing involves having community members attempt to solve a problem and then publicly sharing innovative solutions. We designed and conducted a pilot using a crowdsourcing approach to obtain community feedback on an HIV clinical trial, called the Acceptability of Combined Community Engagement Strategies Study. In this work, we describe and assess the Acceptability of Combined Community Engagement Strategies Study's crowdsourcing activities in order to examine the opportunities of crowdsourcing as a clinical trial community engagement strategy. METHODS:The crowdsourcing engagement activities involved in the Acceptability of Combined Community Engagement Strategies Study were conducted in the context of a phase 1 HIV antibody trial (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03803605). We designed a series of crowdsourcing activities to collect feedback on three aspects of this clinical trial: the informed consent process, the experience of participating in the trial, and fairness/reciprocity in HIV clinical trials. All crowdsourcing activities were open to members of the general public 18 years of age or older, and participation was solicited from the local community. A group discussion was held with representatives of the clinical trial team to obtain feedback on the utility of crowdsourcing as a community engagement strategy for informing future clinical trials. RESULTS:Crowdsourcing activities made use of innovative tools and a combination of in-person and online participation opportunities to engage community members in the clinical trial feedback process. Community feedback on informed consent was collected by transforming the clinical trial's informed consent form into a series of interactive video modules, which were screened at an open public discussion. Feedback on the experience of trial participation involved designing three fictional vignettes which were then transformed into animated videos and screened at an open public discussion. Finally, feedback on fairness/reciprocity in HIV clinical trials was collected using a crowdsourcing idea contest with online and in-person submission opportunities. Our public discussion events were attended by 38 participants in total; our idea contest received 43 submissions (27 in-person, 16 online). Facebook and Twitter metrics demonstrated substantial engagement in the project. The clinical team found crowdsourcing primarily useful for enhancing informed consent and trial recruitment. CONCLUSION:There is sufficient lay community interest in open calls for feedback on the design and conduct of clinical trials, making crowdsourcing both a novel and feasible engagement strategy. Clinical trial researchers are encouraged to consider the opportunities of implementing crowdsourcing to inform trial processes from a community perspective

Designing and Implementing an Assessment Plan for a Virtual Engineering Lab

This article describes the process of creating, implementing, and assessing an innovative learning tool. The game based laboratory simulation, “Gaming for Applied Materials Engineering” (GAME), incorporated into the Engineering curriculum at a large public university, is intended to facilitate the same learning previously taught in a traditional hands-on laboratory. Through this technological tool, researchers hope to extend an integral learning opportunity to students currently unable to access physical labs, as well as, to augment and reinforce the material taught to those currently enrolled in physical lab courses. Throughout the article, the research team discusses the assessment methodology, describes several challenges overcome, and offers recommendations for others interested in utilizing game-based technology in educational settings.  

Ethical Concerns of and Risk Mitigation Strategies for Crowdsourcing Contests and Innovation Challenges: Scoping Review.

BACKGROUND: Crowdsourcing contests (also called innovation challenges, innovation contests, and inducement prize contests) can be used to solicit multisectoral feedback on health programs and design public health campaigns. They consist of organizing a steering committee, soliciting contributions, engaging the community, judging contributions, recognizing a subset of contributors, and sharing with the community. OBJECTIVE: This scoping review describes crowdsourcing contests by stage, examines ethical problems at each stage, and proposes potential ways of mitigating risk. METHODS: Our analysis was anchored in the specific example of a crowdsourcing contest that our team organized to solicit videos promoting condom use in China. The purpose of this contest was to create compelling 1-min videos to promote condom use. We used a scoping review to examine the existing ethical literature on crowdsourcing to help identify and frame ethical concerns at each stage. RESULTS: Crowdsourcing has a group of individuals solve a problem and then share the solution with the public. Crowdsourcing contests provide an opportunity for community engagement at each stage: organizing, soliciting, promoting, judging, recognizing, and sharing. Crowdsourcing poses several ethical concerns: organizing-potential for excluding community voices; soliciting-potential for overly narrow participation; promoting-potential for divulging confidential information; judging-potential for biased evaluation; recognizing-potential for insufficient recognition of the finalist; and sharing-potential for the solution to not be implemented or widely disseminated. CONCLUSIONS: Crowdsourcing contests can be effective and engaging public health tools but also introduce potential ethical problems. We present methods for the responsible conduct of crowdsourcing contests

Crowdsourcing contests to facilitate community engagement in HIV cure research: a qualitative evaluation of facilitators and barriers of participation.

BACKGROUND: As HIV cure research advances, there is an increasing need for community engagement in health research, especially in low- and middle-income countries with ongoing clinical trials. Crowdsourcing contests provide an innovative bottom-up way to solicit community feedback on clinical trials in order to enhance community engagement. The objective of this study was to identify facilitators and barriers to participating in crowdsourcing contests about HIV cure research in a city with ongoing HIV cure clinical trials. METHODS: We conducted in-depth interviews to evaluate facilitators and barriers to participating in crowdsourcing contests in Guangzhou, China. Contests included the following activities: organizing a call for entries, promoting the call, evaluating entries, celebrating exceptional entries, and sharing entries. We interviewed 31 individuals, including nine HIV cure clinical trial participants, 17 contest participants, and five contest organizers. Our sample included men who have sex with men (20), people living with HIV (14), and people who inject drugs (5). We audio-recorded, transcribed, and thematically analyzed the data using inductive and deductive coding techniques. RESULTS: Facilitators of crowdsourcing contest participation included responsiveness to lived experiences, strong community interest in HIV research, and community trust in medical professionals and related groups. Contests had more participants if they responded to the lived experiences, challenges, and opportunities of living with HIV in China. Strong community interest in HIV research helped to drive the formulation and execution of HIV cure contests, building support and momentum for these activities. Finally, participant trust in medical professionals and related groups (community-based organizations and contest organizers) further strengthened the ties between community members and researchers. Barriers to participating in crowdsourcing contests included persistent HIV stigma and myths about HIV. Stigma associated with discussing HIV made promotion difficult in certain contexts (e.g., city squares and schools). Myths and misperceptions about HIV science confused participants. CONCLUSIONS: Our data identified facilitators and barriers of participation in HIV cure crowdsourcing contests in China. Our findings could complement existing HIV community engagement strategies and help to design HIV contests for community engagement in other settings, particularly in low- and middle-income countries

Supporting a Culture of Patient Safety: Resident-Led Patient Safety Event Reviews in a Pathology Residency Training Program

Patient safety is a critical component of quality patient care at any healthcare institution. In order to support a culture of patient safety, and in the context of a hospital-wide patient safety initiative at our institution, we have created and implemented a new patient safety curriculum within our training program. The curriculum is embedded in an introductory course for first-year residents, in which residents gain an understanding of the multifaceted role of the pathologist in patient care. The patient safety curriculum is a resident-centered event review process and includes 1) identification and reporting of a patient safety event, 2) event investigation and review, and 3) presentation of findings to the residency program including core faculty and safety champions for the consideration of implementation of the identified systems solution. Here we discuss the development of our patient safety curriculum, which was trialed over a series of seven event reviews conducted between January 2021 and June 2022. Resident involvement in patient safety event reporting and patient safety event review outcomes were measured. All event reviews conducted thus far have resulted in the implementation of the solutions discussed during event review presentations based on cause analysis and identification of strong action items. Ultimately this pilot will serve as the basis by which we implement a sustainable curriculum in our pathology residency training program centered on supporting a culture of patient safety, and in line with ACGME requirements

"Meet people where they are": a qualitative study of community barriers and facilitators to HIV testing and HIV self-testing among African Americans in urban and rural areas in North Carolina.

BACKGROUND: HIV testing programs in the United States aim to reach ethnic minority populations who experience high incidence of HIV, yet 40% of African Americans have never been tested for HIV. The objective of this study is to identify community-based strategies to increase testing among African Americans in both urban and rural areas. METHODS: This study conducted focus group discussions (FGDs) informed by community-based participatory research principles to examine African American's concerns and ideas around HIV testing and HIV self-testing. Participants included highly affected (i.e., PLWH, MSM, PWID, low-income, teens and young adults) populations from African American communities in North Carolina, aged 15 years and older. We digitally transcribed and analyzed qualitative data using MAXQDA and axial coding to identify emergent themes. RESULTS: Fifty-two men and women between 15 to 60 years old living in urban (n=41) and rural (n=11) areas of North Carolina participated in focus group discussions. HIV testing barriers differed by HIV testing setting: facility-based, community-based, and HIV self-testing. In community-based settings, barriers included confidentiality concerns. In facility-based settings (e.g., clinics), barriers included negative treatment by healthcare workers. With HIV self-testing, barriers included improper use of self-testing kits and lack of post-test support. HIV testing facilitators included partnering with community leaders, decentralizing testing beyond facility-based sites, and protecting confidentiality. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that HIV testing concerns among African Americans vary by HIV testing setting. African Americans may be willing to test for HIV at community events in public locations if client confidentiality is preserved and use HIV self-testing kits in private if post-test social support and services are provided. These community-identified facilitators may improve African American testing rates and uptake of HIV self-testing kits