Examination of Pre-Service and In-Service School-Based Agricultural Educators International Professional Development Experience in Malaysia

Globally competent educators and learners are needed to develop a globally competent workforce and society. To address this need, pre-service and in-service school-based agricultural education teachers from Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin embarked on a four-week international professional development experience in Malaysia (i.e. #AgEd2Malaysia) learning and interacting with Malaysian life skills pre-service educators. Three institutions: Pennsylvania State University, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, and Hawkeye Community College engaged six pre-service and six in-service school-based agricultural education teachers from the United States with their counterparts in Malaysia. #AgEd2Malaysia participants were exposed to agricultural education, production agriculture, policy, religion, and culture in Malaysia. While experiences are important, reflection on those experiences is when true growth occurs. United States pre-service and in-service school-based agricultural education teachers utilized the TIPS (Thing, Idea, People, and Self) reflective journaling method to gain insight into the theme of each day. Journal entries were coded and themes were analyzed. The primary purpose of this study was to describe daily experiences of pre-service and in-service SBAE teachers from the United States participating in a four-week professional development experience in Malaysia. United States pre-service and in-service school-based agricultural education teachers identified growth in pedagogy, curriculum content, cultural awareness, self-awareness, and more as a result of the international professional development experience

Results From a Trial of an Online Diabetes Prevention Program Intervention

IntroductionOnline Diabetes Prevention Programs (DPPs) can be scaled up and delivered broadly. However, little is known about real-world effectiveness and how outcomes compare with in-person DPP. This study examined online DPP weight loss and participation outcomes and secondarily compared outcomes among participating individuals with parallel in-person interventions.Study designA large non-randomized trial supplemented by a comparative analysis of participating individuals from a concurrent trial of two parallel in-person programs: in-person DPP and the Veterans Administration's standard of care weight loss program (MOVE!).Setting/participantsObese/overweight Veterans with prediabetes enrolled in online DPP (n = 268) between 2013 and 2014. Similar eligibility criteria were used to enroll in-person participants between 2012 and 2014 (n = 273 in-person DPP, n = 114 MOVE!) within a separate trial.InterventionOnline DPP included a virtual group format, live e-coach, weekly modules delivered asynchronously, and wireless home scales. In-person programs included eight to 22 group-based, face-to-face sessions.Main outcomes measuresWeight change at 6 and 12 months using wirelessly uploaded home scale data or electronic medical record weights from clinical in-person visits. Outcomes were analyzed between 2015 and 2017.ResultsFrom 1,182 invitations, 268 (23%) participants enrolled in online DPP. Among these, 158 (56%) completed eight or more modules; mean weight change was -4.7kg at 6 months and -4.0kg at 12 months. In a supplemental analysis of participants completing one or more sessions/modules, online DPP participants were most likely to complete eight or more sessions/modules (87% online DPP vs 59% in-person DPP vs 55% MOVE!, p < 0.001). Online and in-person DPP participants lost significantly more weight than MOVE! participants at 6 and 12 months; there was no significant difference in weight change between online and in-person DPP.ConclusionsAn intensive, multifaceted online DPP intervention had higher participation but similar weight loss compared to in-person DPP. An intensive, multifaceted online DPP intervention may be as effective as in-person DPP and help expand reach to those at risk

Targeted peptide measurements in biology and medicine: best practices for mass spectrometry-based assay development using a fit-for-purpose approach.

Adoption of targeted mass spectrometry (MS) approaches such as multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) to study biological and biomedical questions is well underway in the proteomics community. Successful application depends on the ability to generate reliable assays that uniquely and confidently identify target peptides in a sample. Unfortunately, there is a wide range of criteria being applied to say that an assay has been successfully developed. There is no consensus on what criteria are acceptable and little understanding of the impact of variable criteria on the quality of the results generated. Publications describing targeted MS assays for peptides frequently do not contain sufficient information for readers to establish confidence that the tests work as intended or to be able to apply the tests described in their own labs. Guidance must be developed so that targeted MS assays with established performance can be made widely distributed and applied by many labs worldwide. To begin to address the problems and their solutions, a workshop was held at the National Institutes of Health with representatives from the multiple communities developing and employing targeted MS assays. Participants discussed the analytical goals of their experiments and the experimental evidence needed to establish that the assays they develop work as intended and are achieving the required levels of performance. Using this "fit-for-purpose" approach, the group defined three tiers of assays distinguished by their performance and extent of analytical characterization. Computational and statistical tools useful for the analysis of targeted MS results were described. Participants also detailed the information that authors need to provide in their manuscripts to enable reviewers and readers to clearly understand what procedures were performed and to evaluate the reliability of the peptide or protein quantification measurements reported. This paper presents a summary of the meeting and recommendations