Approaches to Studying: A Cross-Sectional Comparison of Occupational Therapy Students in Six Education Programs in Norway

Students’ approaches to studying have been associated with their academic performance. Although previous research suggests that the cultural and educational context may influence approaches to studying, few studies have investigated differences in study approaches across education programs. The aim of this study was to examine whether approaches to studying differed among occupational therapy students enrolled in six different educational programs in Norway. From a population of 308 students, 187 first-year occupational therapy students in six educational programs in Norway were recruited. The students provided their sociodemographic information and completed the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST), and group differences were analyzed with Chi-square tests and one-way analyses of variance. Scores on the deep and surface approach scales did not differ significantly among the students in the six educational programs, while there was an overall difference in scores on the strategic approach scale. Group differences regarding the subscales were minor, and only a few of the pairwise differences reached statistical significance. Differences at the education program level appear not to be important for the interpretation of differences in study approaches among students

Perceptions of Assessment in Norwegian Occupational Therapy Students

In addition to securing minimum standards of learning among students, assessment is increasingly used as a tool to improve students’ learning. Assessment quality is measured as part of the Course Experience Questionnaire; however, the original ‘appropriate assessment’ scale has demonstrated ambiguous psychometric properties. The current study aimed to gain knowledge about occupational therapy students’ perceptions of assessment, and this was achieved by examining the factor structure and internal consistency of the six items on the ‘appropriate assessment’ scale. Students from six Norwegian universities (n = 187, response rate 61.3 %) completed the scale and reported demographic information. The factor structure of the scale was assessed with Principal Components Analysis and Parallel Analysis, and internal consistency was assessed with Cronbach’s α and mean inter-item correlations. Three factors were extracted from the data: Factor 1 (three items, α = 0.51) is concerned with the content of assessment. Factor 2 (two items, α = 0.62) is concerned with the context of assessment. Finally, Factor 3 (one item) is concerned with the feedback to students following assessment. In view of the item mean scores, feedback in particular appears to be an area of improvement for the occupational therapy programs, as well as a venue for further research

Microscopic theory of phonon-induced effects on semiconductor quantum dot decay dynamics in cavity QED

We investigate the influence of the electron-phonon interaction on the decay dynamics of a quantum dot coupled to an optical microcavity. We show that the electron-phonon interaction has important consequences on the dynamics, especially when the quantum dot and cavity are tuned out of resonance, in which case the phonons may add or remove energy leading to an effective non-resonant coupling between quantum dot and cavity. The system is investigated using two different theoretical approaches: (i) a second-order expansion in the bare phonon coupling constant, and (ii) an expansion in a polaron-photon coupling constant, arising from the polaron transformation which allows an accurate description at high temperatures. In the low temperature regime we find excellent agreement between the two approaches. An extensive study of the quantum dot decay dynamics is performed, where important parameter dependencies are covered. We find that in general the electron-phonon interaction gives rise to a greatly increased bandwidth of the coupling between quantum dot and cavity. At low temperature an asymmetry in the quantum dot decay rate is observed, leading to a faster decay when the quantum dot has a larger energy than to the cavity. We explain this as due to the absence of phonon absorption processes. Furthermore, we derive approximate analytical expressions for the quantum dot decay rate, applicable when the cavity can be adiabatically eliminated. The expressions lead to a clear interpretation of the physics and emphasizes the important role played by the effective phonon density, describing the availability of phonons for scattering, in quantum dot decay dynamics. Based on the analytical expressions we present the parameter regimes where phonon effects are expected to be important. Also, we include all technical developments in appendices.Comment: published PRB version, comments are very welcom

Experimental Demonstration of Nanolaser with sub-μ\muA Threshold Current

We demonstrate a photonic crystal nanolaser exhibiting an ultra-low threshold of 730 nA at telecom wavelengths. The laser can be directly modulated at 3 GHz at an energy cost of 1 fJ/bit. This is the lowest threshold reported for any laser operating at room temperature and facilitates low-energy on-chip links.Comment: 3 pages with 2 figure