Importance of Exploratory Writing in Critical Thinking and Learning

In recognition of the importance of exploratory writing to improve critical thinking for students, a presentation project that incorporated exploratory writing for two weeks in a course about social, psychological, and cultural aspects of dress in Fall 2014 was developed at a Southern university in the United States. The purpose of this study was (1) to share the curriculum development and content behind the project, and (2) to analyze student reflective essay about exploratory writings after the final presentation to identify students’ learning processes and outcomes in terms of improving critical thinking. Utilizing comparative thematic analysis (Glaser, 1965) of students’ reflective essays regarding exploratory writings for their final presentation, this research analyzed student learning outcomes

Assessing the Social Media Use and Needs of Small Rural Retailers: Implications for Extension Program Support

To assess small rural retailers\u27 use of social media and the role of social media in their business sustainability, we conducted focus group interviews with small business owners/managers from rural communities in a midwestern state. Participants revealed strong interest in social media, especially for use in sales and marketing. However, their engagement in social media was limited due to lack of knowledge and resources (i.e., time, human resources, financial resources, effectiveness measurement) related to developing and updating content. On the basis of these findings, we examine implications for Extension professionals and outreach educators regarding social media needs and programming for small rural businesses

Assessing the Social Media Use and Needs of Small Rural Retailers: Implications for Extension Program Support

To assess small rural retailers\u27 use of social media and the role of social media in their business sustainability, we conducted focus group interviews with small business owners/managers from rural communities in a midwestern state. Participants revealed strong interest in social media, especially for use in sales and marketing. However, their engagement in social media was limited due to lack of knowledge and resources (i.e., time, human resources, financial resources, effectiveness measurement) related to developing and updating content. On the basis of these findings, we examine implications for Extension professionals and outreach educators regarding social media needs and programming for small rural businesses

Privacy-Preserving Federated Model Predicting Bipolar Transition in Patients With Depression:Prediction Model Development Study

BACKGROUND: Mood disorder has emerged as a serious concern for public health; in particular, bipolar disorder has a less favorable prognosis than depression. Although prompt recognition of depression conversion to bipolar disorder is needed, early prediction is challenging due to overlapping symptoms. Recently, there have been attempts to develop a prediction model by using federated learning. Federated learning in medical fields is a method for training multi-institutional machine learning models without patient-level data sharing. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to develop and validate a federated, differentially private multi-institutional bipolar transition prediction model. METHODS: This retrospective study enrolled patients diagnosed with the first depressive episode at 5 tertiary hospitals in South Korea. We developed models for predicting bipolar transition by using data from 17,631 patients in 4 institutions. Further, we used data from 4541 patients for external validation from 1 institution. We created standardized pipelines to extract large-scale clinical features from the 4 institutions without any code modification. Moreover, we performed feature selection in a federated environment for computational efficiency and applied differential privacy to gradient updates. Finally, we compared the federated and the 4 local models developed with each hospital's data on internal and external validation data sets. RESULTS: In the internal data set, 279 out of 17,631 patients showed bipolar disorder transition. In the external data set, 39 out of 4541 patients showed bipolar disorder transition. The average performance of the federated model in the internal test (area under the curve [AUC] 0.726) and external validation (AUC 0.719) data sets was higher than that of the other locally developed models (AUC 0.642-0.707 and AUC 0.642-0.699, respectively). In the federated model, classifications were driven by several predictors such as the Charlson index (low scores were associated with bipolar transition, which may be due to younger age), severe depression, anxiolytics, young age, and visiting months (the bipolar transition was associated with seasonality, especially during the spring and summer months). CONCLUSIONS: We developed and validated a differentially private federated model by using distributed multi-institutional psychiatric data with standardized pipelines in a real-world environment. The federated model performed better than models using local data only.</p

Importance of Exploratory Writing in Critical Thinking and Learning

In recognition of the importance of exploratory writing to improve critical thinking for students, a presentation project that incorporated exploratory writing for two weeks in a course about social, psychological, and cultural aspects of dress in Fall 2014 was developed at a Southern university in the United States. The purpose of this study was (1) to share the curriculum development and content behind the project, and (2) to analyze student reflective essay about exploratory writings after the final presentation to identify students’ learning processes and outcomes in terms of improving critical thinking. Utilizing comparative thematic analysis (Glaser, 1965) of students’ reflective essays regarding exploratory writings for their final presentation, this research analyzed student learning outcomes.</p

Roles of ABA in Protection Against NaCI-induced Photodamage in Arabidopsis thaliana

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Improving global competence in classroom-based experiential learning activities

The purpose of this research was to develop learning activities to improve global competence for a classroom-based course in the field of clothing and textiles and explore how those activities affected the global competence of college students. To achieve this goal, the researchers proposed the following objectives: (a) develop learning activities on global competence and (b) explore the influences of newly proposed learning activities on the global competence of college students. The authors analyzed students’ reflective essays to identify themes through constant comparative analysis. The authors found participants learned about the Japanese culture through diverse aspects of global competence—affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions—throughout the semester via these learning activities. The authors also found informal writing could work as a starting point, where students were slowly exposed to a different culture, and reflective essays worked as a final summarizing phase where students could think further about their learning process related to global competence. This research is significant in terms of providing an empirical example of how to increase global competence in classroom-based courses. Additionally, scholars and teaching practitioners can gain insights from this study on how to improve global competence for the future workforce in a global economy

RbohD behavior regulated by ateca4 under salinity stress condition

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Improving global competence in classroom-based experiential learning activities

The purpose of this research was to develop learning activities to improve global competence for a classroom-based course in the field of clothing and textiles and explore how those activities affected the global competence of college students. To achieve this goal, the researchers proposed the following objectives: (a) develop learning activities on global competence and (b) explore the influences of newly proposed learning activities on the global competence of college students. The authors analyzed students’ reflective essays to identify themes through constant comparative analysis. The authors found participants learned about the Japanese culture through diverse aspects of global competence—affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions—throughout the semester via these learning activities. The authors also found informal writing could work as a starting point, where students were slowly exposed to a different culture, and reflective essays worked as a final summarizing phase where students could think further about their learning process related to global competence. This research is significant in terms of providing an empirical example of how to increase global competence in classroom-based courses. Additionally, scholars and teaching practitioners can gain insights from this study on how to improve global competence for the future workforce in a global economy