Quantified Bodies – A Design Practice

Self-trackers are a diffuse and diverse group that quantify their lives. From the ordinary to the extraordinary, intimate and vital happenings that occur on (infra)-empirical planes are cast as legible events. Blood pressure, heartbeat rate, testosterone levels, posture, diet, muscle tension, social activity, geographical position. These are now happenings to be intervened upon and rendered as units of measurement and comparable variables. These measurements may give insight to help rebuild a re-cognition of oneself (Catani 2015), or allow a brooding recall of lost moments (Kalina 2012) – this is the manifest quantified body, a body read and a body written. Yet the quantified body is a veneer, it is the outward appearance of control, awareness and care-for-self: we were cynical subjects (Sloterdijk 1987) long before we were quantified bodies. However, self-tracking intrinsically disassociates from the ubiquitous cynical condition. The cynical self-tracker gropes for independence whilst submitting to a life of mediated self-discovery, it is a renunciation of independent vitality so as to act “as if”, to appear to be whilst never being – to fall short of realising difference. It is argued here that the quantified body allocates us all to be designers – reading and writing in culture. And as such, our actions must be critiqued as a symptom of a design practice, where the condition of subjectivity is at the forefront of value-making in taste, style and fashion. How does the cynic self-track? What is the value of design in the field of new media and digital culture

Evaluation of a web-based ECG-interpretation programme for undergraduate medical students

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Most clinicians and teachers agree that knowledge about ECG is of importance in the medical curriculum. Students at Karolinska Institutet have asked for more training in ECG-interpretation during their undergraduate studies. Clinical tutors, however, have difficulties in meeting these demands due to shortage of time. Thus, alternative ways to learn and practice ECG-interpretation are needed. Education offered via the Internet is readily available, geographically independent and flexible. Furthermore, the quality of education may increase and become more effective through a superior educational approach, improved visualization and interactivity.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A Web-based comprehensive ECG-interpretation programme has been evaluated. Medical students from the sixth semester were given an optional opportunity to access the programme from the start of their course. Usage logs and an initial evaluation survey were obtained from each student. A diagnostic test was performed in order to assess the effect on skills in ECG interpretation. Students from the corresponding course, at another teaching hospital and without access to the ECG-programme but with conventional teaching of ECG served as a control group.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>20 of the 32 students in the intervention group had tested the programme after 2 months. On a five-graded scale (1- bad to 5 – very good) they ranked the utility of a web-based programme for this purpose as 4.1 and the quality of the programme software as 3.9. At the diagnostic test (maximal points 16) by the end of the 5-month course at the 6th semester the mean result for the students in the intervention group was 9.7 compared with 8.1 for the control group (p = 0.03).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Students ranked the Web-based ECG-interpretation programme as a useful instrument to learn ECG. Furthermore, Internet-delivered education may be more effective than traditional teaching methods due to greater immediacy, improved visualisation and interactivity.</p

A Review on Research and Evaluation Methods for Investigating Self-Transcendence

Self-transcendence has been characterized as a decrease in self-saliency (ego disillusionment) and increased connection, and has been growing in research interest in the past decade. Several measures have been developed and published with some degree of psychometric validity and reliability. However, to date, there has been no review systematically describing, contrasting, and evaluating the different methodological approaches toward measuring self-transcendence including questionnaires, neurological and physiological measures, and qualitative methods. To address this gap, we conducted a review to describe existing methods of measuring self-transcendence, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these methods, and discuss research avenues to advance assessment of self-transcendence, including recommendations for suitability of methods given research contexts