Team-based Learning in Intensive Course Format for First-year Medical Students

Aim To examine the impact of team-based learning (TBL) on educational outcomes in the first year of the curriculum of the Medical University of Vienna. Methods TBL was first offered to students as a singlegroup exercise to illustrate the value and dynamics of a learning team. In a second step, TBL was provided in an intensive course format with six 2-hour sessions over a 3- day period as an elective course covering the material of a critical teaching block. Students’ responses to the program and the impact on the final exam were analyzed. Results Out of 1417 eligible students, 386 participated in 8 parallel courses offered in the TBL block. The reaction of students to TBL was highly positive. Using the final exam as an outcome measure, 220 students who completed the intensive courses had a 25.3% higher score (non-TBL vs TBL students: 22 ± 9 vs 28 ± 9 points) in the TBL block. They also had a 16.5% higher score (non-TBL vs TBL students: 94 ± 29 vs 109 ± 26 points) in the remaining 5 non-TBL blocks of the year. Conclusions TBL in an intensive course format seems to be especially attractive for the best students of the year, making them even more successful in the key exam. Even the students who usually learned alone highly appreciated learning in teams, thereby developing the understanding and skills needed to work productively in task-groups

Training National Park Service Concession Specialists

In recent years, the Internet has become the medium of choice in distance education, and a prominent delivery tool in many hospitality management programs. When students cannot be educated on site, web-based education has proven to be the next best thing to in-person instruction. The authors describe a project in which the Internet is used to educate National Park Service concession specialists, exploring the reasons the project was instigated, its development and funding, and educational challenges and solutions. Such web-based instruction can be used as a means to attract outside grants and revenues for hospitality management programs

Web-Based Training for Native American Tribes

The authors describe a project undertaken at the School of Hotel and Restaurant Management at Northern Arizona University in which the internet is used to present Native American tribes in Arizona with customer service training. It discusses why the project was instigated looks at its development and funding, and highlights the educational and technological challenges that had to be overcome. This is the second in a series of articles on the uses of the internet in educating non-university student constituencies interested in hospitality management.\u2

Governing in the Anthropocene: What Future Systems Thinking in Practice?

The revealing and concealing features of the metaphor ‘earth as Anthropocene’ are explored in an inquiry that asks: In the Anthropocene what possible futures emerge for systems thinking in practice? Framing choice, so important yet so poorly realised, is the starting point of the inquiry. Three extant conceptual pathway-dependencies are unpacked: governance or governing; practice or practising and ‘system’. New data on the organisational complexity within the field of cybersystemics is presented; new ‘imaginaries’ including systemic co-inquiry and institutional recovery are proposed as novel institutions and practices to facilitate systemic transformations within an Anthropocene setting. The arguments of the paper are illustrated through a research case study based on attempts to transform water and/or river situations towards systemic water governance. It is concluded that future systems research can be understood as the search for effective ‘imaginaries’ that offer fresh possibilities within an Anthropocene framing