A Qualitative Study of Student-Centered Learning Practices in New England High Schools

In early 2015, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation (NMEF) contracted with the UMass Donahue Institute (UMDI) to conduct a qualitative study examining the implementation of student-centered learning (SCL) practices in select public high schools in New England. This study extends lines of inquiry explored through a prior (2014) project that UMDI conducted for NMEF. The 2014 study employed survey methodology to examine the prevalence of student-centered practices in public high schools across New England. The present study builds upon the investigation, using a variety of qualitative methods to further probe the richness and complexity of SCL approaches in use across the region. Specifically, this study was designed to address what student-centered practices "look like" in an array of contexts. The study also addresses the perceived impacts that SCL approaches have on students, staff, and schools. Additionally, it highlights the broad array of factors within and beyond school walls that reportedly foster and challenge the implementation of SCL practices. This study seeks to help NMEF understand the intricacies of SCL and provides strategic considerations for how Nellie Mae can promote the adoption and development of student-centered practices in the region.Nellie Mae organizes student-centered learning by four tenets: (1) learning is personalized; (2) learning is competency-based; (3) learning takes place anytime, anywhere; and (4) students take ownership.Specifically, the study addresses five research questions:What are the characteristics of student-centered practices in relation to the four SCL tenets? How are SCL approaches implemented?What are the salient contextual factors (e.g., systems, structures, policies, procedures) associated with the implementation of SCL practices? How do they support, impede, and otherwise shape the adoption, development, and implementation of SCL approaches?How are schools with moderate and high levels of SCL implementation organized to foster SCL practices? What mechanisms are in place to promote student-centered learning?What is the role of SCL approaches in schools and classrooms? In what ways, if at all, are they embedded in the goals and practices of schools and classrooms?What is the quality of SCL instructional practices in study schools? What relationships, if any, do administrators and educators perceive between these approaches and student learning

Higher Education’s Missing Link: Examining the Gap between Academic and Student Affairs and Implications for the Student Experience

With the expansion of higher education around the turn of the 20th century, the field of student affairs was created to enhance the extra-curriculum and promote student development beyond the classroom. This allowed faculty to focus on scholarship and formal curricular education. Unfortunately, with their different areas of responsibility, student and academic affairs grew in divergent directions and eventually developed contrasting functions, values, cultures, and epistemologies. Today, institutions must address this issue by creating ways for student affairs professionals and professors to gain a better understanding and appreciation for one another’s work; this will facilitate collaboration between these groups in pursuing their shared goal of student education and development

Who Benefits from Deferred Entry to College?: Exploring the Relationships between College Deferment, Postsecondary Academic Success, and Institutional Selectivity

Prior research on delayed entry and gap years have produced conflicting results on the relationships between deferring entry to college and postsecondary academic success. Specifically, studies on delayed entry have linked the phenomenon to lower attainment rates, while the literature on gap years has shown a positive relationship with college GPA. These conflicting findings make it unclear for students, families, counselors, administrators, and policymakers to understand whether deferring entry to college is an opportunity that should be pursued by more individuals or if it is something to be avoided. The focus of this dissertation was to bring prior findings on delayed entry and gap years in concert with one another and illuminate which groups of students, if any, achieve higher levels of postsecondary academic success after deferring entry to college. A key way this study built on prior research was by adjusting for institutional selectivity and examining whether it moderated the relationships between deferment and the two most commonly used outcome variables in the literature: on-time graduation rate and college GPA. Using the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002) as my data source, I conducted OLS and logistic regression to test for significant relationships between variables of interest. Results showed that deferment was associated with lower attainment rates and college GPAs at highly selective colleges and less selective colleges, even when controlling for covariates. These relationships persisted when controlling for institutional selectivity and findings showed that institutional selection did not moderate the relationship between deferment and postsecondary success. Rather, students at highly selective and less selective colleges who deferred entry to college achieved lower levels of postsecondary academic success than their counterparts. These results support prior research on delayed entry and challenge findings from the literature on gap years. The results of this dissertation push gap year scholars to more convincingly demonstrate which students, if any, benefit academically from deferring entry to college and what are the relevant factors that enable these individuals to outperform their peers. Additionally, findings from this dissertation have important implications for stakeholders ranging from high school students to policymakers

Cloud Computing-Based TagSNP Selection Algorithm for Human Genome Data

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) play a fundamental role in human genetic variation and are used in medical diagnostics, phylogeny construction, and drug design. They provide the highest-resolution genetic fingerprint for identifying disease associations and human features. Haplotypes are regions of linked genetic variants that are closely spaced on the genome and tend to be inherited together. Genetics research has revealed SNPs within certain haplotype blocks that introduce few distinct common haplotypes into most of the population. Haplotype block structures are used in association-based methods to map disease genes. In this paper, we propose an efficient algorithm for identifying haplotype blocks in the genome. In chromosomal haplotype data retrieved from the HapMap project website, the proposed algorithm identified longer haplotype blocks than an existing algorithm. To enhance its performance, we extended the proposed algorithm into a parallel algorithm that copies data in parallel via the Hadoop MapReduce framework. The proposed MapReduce-paralleled combinatorial algorithm performed well on real-world data obtained from the HapMap dataset; the improvement in computational efficiency was proportional to the number of processors used

Genetic dissection of agronomic and quality traits based on association mapping and genomic selection approaches in durum wheat grown in Southern Spain

Climatic conditions affect the growth, development and final crop production. As wheat is of paramount importance as a staple crop in the human diet, there is a growing need to study its abiotic stress adaptation through the performance of key breeding traits. New and complementary approaches, such as genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and genomic selection (GS), are used for the dissection of different agronomic traits. The present study focused on the dissection of agronomic and quality traits of interest (initial agronomic score, yield, gluten index, sedimentation index, specific weight, whole grain protein and yellow colour) assessed in a panel of 179 durum wheat lines (Triticum durum Desf.), grown under rainfed conditions in different Mediterranean environments in Southern Spain (Andalusia). The findings show a total of 37 marker-trait associations (MTAs) which affect phenotype expression for three quality traits (specific weight, gluten and sedimentation indexes). MTAs could be mapped on the A and B durum wheat subgenomes (on chromosomes 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B and 3A) through the recently available bread wheat reference assembly (IWGSC RefSeqv1). Two of the MTAs found for quality traits (gluten index and SDS) corresponded to the known Glu-B1 and Glu-A1 loci, for which candidate genes corresponding to high molecular weight glutenin subunits could be located. The GS prediction ability values obtained from the breeding materials analyzed showed promising results for traits as grain protein content, sedimentation and gluten indexes, which can be used in plant breeding programs.Junta de Andalucía (Andalusian Regional Government) P12- AGR-0482FEDER P12- AGR-0482MINECO (Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness) AGL2016-77149-C2-1-

Progranulin Gene Variability and Plasma Levels in Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia

Basing on the assumption that frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (BPD) might share common aetiological mechanisms, we analyzed genetic variation in the FTLD risk gene progranulin (GRN) in a German population of patients with schizophrenia (n = 271) or BPD (n = 237) as compared with 574 age-, gender- and ethnicity-matched controls. Furthermore, we measured plasma progranulin levels in 26 German BPD patients as well as in 61 Italian BPD patients and 29 matched controls

Impact of the AHI1 Gene on the Vulnerability to Schizophrenia: A Case-Control Association Study

BackgroundThe Abelson helper integration-1 (AHI1) gene is required for both cerebellar and cortical development in humans. While the accelerated evolution of AHI1 in the human lineage indicates a role in cognitive (dys)function, a linkage scan in large pedigrees identified AHI1 as a positional candidate for schizophrenia. To further investigate the contribution of AHI1 to the susceptibility of schizophrenia, we evaluated the effect of AHI1 variation on the vulnerability to psychosis in two samples from Spain and Germany.Methodology/Principal Findings29 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located in a genomic region including the AHI1 gene were genotyped in two samples from Spain (280 patients with psychotic disorders; 348 controls) and Germany (247 patients with schizophrenic disorders; 360 controls). Allelic, genotypic and haplotype frequencies were compared between cases and controls in both samples separately, as well as in the combined sample. The effect of genotype on several psychopathological measures (BPRS, KGV, PANSS) assessed in a Spanish subsample was also evaluated. We found several significant associations in the Spanish sample. Particularly, rs7750586 and rs911507, both located upstream of the AHI1 coding region, were found to be associated with schizophrenia in the analysis of genotypic (p = 0.0033, and 0.031, respectively) and allelic frequencies (p = 0.001 in both cases). Moreover, several other risk and protective haplotypes were detected (0.006<p<0.036). Joint analysis also supported the association of rs7750586 and rs911507 with the risk for schizophrenia. The analysis of clinical measures also revealed an effect on symptom severity (minimum P value = 0.0037).Conclusions/SignificanceOur data support, in agreement with previous reports, an effect of AHI1 variation on the susceptibility to schizophrenia in central and southern European populations

A dynamic T cell–limited checkpoint regulates affinity-dependent B cell entry into the germinal center

Entry into the germinal center requires antigen-bearing B cells to compete for cognate T cell help at the T–B border

Efficacy, Retention, and Tolerability of Brivaracetam in Patients With Epileptic Encephalopathies: A Multicenter Cohort Study From Germany

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of brivaracetam (BRV) in a severely drug refractory cohort of patients with epileptic encephalopathies (EE).Method: A multicenter, retrospective cohort study recruiting all patients treated with EE who began treatment with BRV in an enrolling epilepsy center between 2016 and 2017.Results: Forty-four patients (27 male [61%], mean age 29 years, range 6 to 62) were treated with BRV. The retention rate was 65% at 3 months, 52% at 6 months and 41% at 12 months. A mean retention time of 5 months resulted in a cumulative exposure to BRV of 310 months. Three patients were seizure free during the baseline. At 3 months, 20 (45%, 20/44 as per intention-to-treat analysis considering all patients that started BRV including three who were seizure free during baseline) were either seizure free (n = 4; 9%, three of them already seizure-free at baseline) or reported at least 25% (n = 4; 9%) or 50% (n = 12; 27%) reduction in seizures. An increase in seizure frequency was reported in two (5%) patients, while there was no change in the seizure frequency of the other patients. A 50% long-term responder rate was apparent in 19 patients (43%), with two (5%) free from seizures for more than six months and in nine patients (20%, with one [2 %] free from seizures) for more than 12 months. Treatment-emergent adverse events were predominantly of psychobehavioural nature and were observed in 16%.Significance: In this retrospective analysis the rate of patients with a 50% seizure reduction under BRV proofed to be similar to those seen in regulatory trials for focal epilepsies. BRV appears to be safe and relatively well tolerated in EE and might be considered in patients with psychobehavioral adverse events while on levetiracetam

16p11.2 600 kb Duplications confer risk for typical and atypical Rolandic epilepsy

Rolandic epilepsy (RE) is the most common idiopathic focal childhood epilepsy. Its molecular basis is largely unknown and a complex genetic etiology is assumed in the majority of affected individuals. The present study tested whether six large recurrent copy number variants at 1q21, 15q11.2, 15q13.3, 16p11.2, 16p13.11 and 22q11.2 previously associated with neurodevelopmental disorders also increase risk of RE. Our association analyses revealed a significant excess of the 600 kb genomic duplication at the 16p11.2 locus (chr16: 29.5-30.1 Mb) in 393 unrelated patients with typical (n = 339) and atypical (ARE; n = 54) RE compared with the prevalence in 65 046 European population controls (5/393 cases versus 32/65 046 controls; Fisher's exact test P = 2.83 × 10−6, odds ratio = 26.2, 95% confidence interval: 7.9-68.2). In contrast, the 16p11.2 duplication was not detected in 1738 European epilepsy patients with either temporal lobe epilepsy (n = 330) and genetic generalized epilepsies (n = 1408), suggesting a selective enrichment of the 16p11.2 duplication in idiopathic focal childhood epilepsies (Fisher's exact test P = 2.1 × 10−4). In a subsequent screen among children carrying the 16p11.2 600 kb rearrangement we identified three patients with RE-spectrum epilepsies in 117 duplication carriers (2.6%) but none in 202 carriers of the reciprocal deletion. Our results suggest that the 16p11.2 duplication represents a significant genetic risk factor for typical and atypical R