Professional learning for academics and the scholarship of teaching and learning

As a rule, new university lecturers are not qualified to teach, nor or they prepared for teaching when they take up their first appointment.Three years of research training during a PhD, possibly with some part-time demonstrating or tutoring, is an inadequate preparation for such an important part of a lecturer’s job.In times past when higher education was elite and reserved for the very best minds (or those with a privileged background), ‘teaching’ students was seen as unnecessary.Students would come to university and learn, either with or despite their lecturers.However, the neoliberal expansion to mass higher education of recent decades has altered this position and teaching has taken on new significance for the academic profession.At the same time as having to teach many more students with a greater range of abilities, the meaning of higher education itself has been challenged and its role in society questioned.Teaching now has to have an outcome beyond subject, and the university lecturer is faced with the double task of working out how to teach disciplinary knowledge and then how to align student learning with a range of possible outcomes. The question is how do teachers meet these challenges when there is no pre-service training (typical of high school education) for the university lecturer? A range of in-service academic development opportunities have been introduced in many institutions and lecturers can take part in teaching workshops, attend formal courses with a teaching qualification, or engage in what has been termed the ‘Scholarship of Teaching and Learning’ (SoTL).SoTL is predicated on two questions: ‘how can I improve my teaching? and ‘what am I trying to achieve with my teaching?’ In this keynote I will explain why SoTL is a worthwhile option for academic professional formation and argue that to be successful, it requires a critical focus on teaching skills in the context of a reasoned argument about the purposes of a higher education

Contrasting views of induction

This article focuses on the induction experiences of new academic staff and the role of their head of department in this process. Respondents reflected on personal experiences and their narratives give a fine-grained account of the same event from two contrasting perspectives. We expected to find that the heads would be key figures in the induction process, but we discovered a more complex situation in which contributions were largely hidden or indirect. We encountered many contradictions as each party recalled events. Meaningful communication had been sporadic at best, and professional and personal relationships were left undeveloped. In all cases, there was little genuine understanding of the potential of induction, and this was particularly evident in the lack of personal action displayed by the new academics. Some heads had developed a deeper theoretical position on induction but few of their ideas were realized in practice. We propose that this was mainly due to the heads’ lack of experience and because induction outcomes were not systematically evaluated

Higher education teachers’ experiences of becoming research active: striving for university status in the Global South

Higher education institutions are seen as pivotal for fostering national economic growth in a globalised knowledge economy. Conducting research is an important aspect of that role, and there is pressure on institutions to increase their knowledge production, as well as to ofer advanced research degrees. This requires academics with doctoral level qualifcation who research in their feld. Research productivity is important for institutions because it contributes to prestige and better rankings in league tables, which result in more or better resources. This qualitative study examines the notion of ‘turning teachers into academics’ through the experiences of lecturers in a teaching-focused institution in Malaysia seeking university status. Becoming research active requires resources and a supportive environment that were largely unavailable, and so participants experienced an unhealthy intensifcation of their academic work and struggled to do research or complete their PhD qualifcations. The study showed that a successful transition required teachers to be genuinely motivated to do research and the institutions to provide adequate support. Under current circumstances of ferce competition between institutions and the inability to compromise teaching allocations, it is not clear how, or if, such a transition can happen without adversely afecting staf wellbeing

Educational development between faculty and administration

This essay employs Identity Theory to explore the professional identities of educational developers, arguing that it is important to pay attention to the different saliences, or weights, that developers attach to the faculty and administrative sides of their identities

Identification of a novel susceptibility locus at 13q34 and refinement of the 20p12.2 region as a multi-signal locus associated with bladder cancer risk in individuals of european ancestry

Candidate gene and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified 15 independent genomic regions associated with bladder cancer risk. In search for additional susceptibility variants, we followed up on four promising single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that had not achieved genome-wide significance in 6911 cases and 11 814 controls (rs6104690, rs4510656, rs5003154 and rs4907479, P < 1 7 10(-6)), using additional data from existing GWAS datasets and targeted genotyping for studies that did not have GWAS data. In a combined analysis, which included data on up to 15 058 cases and 286 270 controls, two SNPs achieved genome-wide statistical significance: rs6104690 in a gene desert at 20p12.2 (P = 2.19 7 10(-11)) and rs4907479 within the MCF2L gene at 13q34 (P = 3.3 7 10(-10)). Imputation and fine-mapping analyses were performed in these two regions for a subset of 5551 bladder cancer cases and 10 242 controls. Analyses at the 13q34 region suggest a single signal marked by rs4907479. In contrast, we detected two signals in the 20p12.2 region-the first signal is marked by rs6104690, and the second signal is marked by two moderately correlated SNPs (r(2) = 0.53), rs6108803 and the previously reported rs62185668. The second 20p12.2 signal is more strongly associated with the risk of muscle-invasive (T2-T4 stage) compared with non-muscle-invasive (Ta, T1 stage) bladder cancer (case-case P 64 0.02 for both rs62185668 and rs6108803). Functional analyses are needed to explore the biological mechanisms underlying these novel genetic associations with risk for bladder cancer

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Effect of Hydrocortisone on Mortality and Organ Support in Patients With Severe COVID-19: The REMAP-CAP COVID-19 Corticosteroid Domain Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Evidence regarding corticosteroid use for severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is limited. Objective: To determine whether hydrocortisone improves outcome for patients with severe COVID-19. Design, Setting, and Participants: An ongoing adaptive platform trial testing multiple interventions within multiple therapeutic domains, for example, antiviral agents, corticosteroids, or immunoglobulin. Between March 9 and June 17, 2020, 614 adult patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 were enrolled and randomized within at least 1 domain following admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) for respiratory or cardiovascular organ support at 121 sites in 8 countries. Of these, 403 were randomized to open-label interventions within the corticosteroid domain. The domain was halted after results from another trial were released. Follow-up ended August 12, 2020. Interventions: The corticosteroid domain randomized participants to a fixed 7-day course of intravenous hydrocortisone (50 mg or 100 mg every 6 hours) (n = 143), a shock-dependent course (50 mg every 6 hours when shock was clinically evident) (n = 152), or no hydrocortisone (n = 108). Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary end point was organ support-free days (days alive and free of ICU-based respiratory or cardiovascular support) within 21 days, where patients who died were assigned -1 day. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model that included all patients enrolled with severe COVID-19, adjusting for age, sex, site, region, time, assignment to interventions within other domains, and domain and intervention eligibility. Superiority was defined as the posterior probability of an odds ratio greater than 1 (threshold for trial conclusion of superiority >99%). Results: After excluding 19 participants who withdrew consent, there were 384 patients (mean age, 60 years; 29% female) randomized to the fixed-dose (n = 137), shock-dependent (n = 146), and no (n = 101) hydrocortisone groups; 379 (99%) completed the study and were included in the analysis. The mean age for the 3 groups ranged between 59.5 and 60.4 years; most patients were male (range, 70.6%-71.5%); mean body mass index ranged between 29.7 and 30.9; and patients receiving mechanical ventilation ranged between 50.0% and 63.5%. For the fixed-dose, shock-dependent, and no hydrocortisone groups, respectively, the median organ support-free days were 0 (IQR, -1 to 15), 0 (IQR, -1 to 13), and 0 (-1 to 11) days (composed of 30%, 26%, and 33% mortality rates and 11.5, 9.5, and 6 median organ support-free days among survivors). The median adjusted odds ratio and bayesian probability of superiority were 1.43 (95% credible interval, 0.91-2.27) and 93% for fixed-dose hydrocortisone, respectively, and were 1.22 (95% credible interval, 0.76-1.94) and 80% for shock-dependent hydrocortisone compared with no hydrocortisone. Serious adverse events were reported in 4 (3%), 5 (3%), and 1 (1%) patients in the fixed-dose, shock-dependent, and no hydrocortisone groups, respectively. Conclusions and Relevance: Among patients with severe COVID-19, treatment with a 7-day fixed-dose course of hydrocortisone or shock-dependent dosing of hydrocortisone, compared with no hydrocortisone, resulted in 93% and 80% probabilities of superiority with regard to the odds of improvement in organ support-free days within 21 days. However, the trial was stopped early and no treatment strategy met prespecified criteria for statistical superiority, precluding definitive conclusions. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02735707