E-Learning: From A Pedagogical Perspective

The steady growing innovations in the area of information and communication technology have raised new concepts and possibilities in different life aspects. In the field of further education and professional training, electronic learning and Web-based education are perhaps the most prominent ones. Proponents of this technology claim that e-learning courses are at least as effective as corresponding traditional ones, and therefore sometimes a very good substitute for it. Although there are so many similarities between traditional and e-learning systems, confronting the extended range of e-learning users -with very different prior knowledge of the domain, backgrounds, learning styles, interests and preferences- is no more possible with the “one-size-fits-all” approach. Hence, creation and management of instructional content would be the major hazard in e-learning industry. Contents should be provided considering social, cultural and pedagogical characteristics of the learners. E-learning covers a wide set of applications and processes. With such an extended scope, covering number of available e-learning tools is extensive. Though, in recent years, features and capabilities of authoring tools have been drastically improved. Concepts such as “adapting to the needs of learners” and “personalized content” make authoring tools play a more prominent role in the process of creating learning contents. In this paper, we propose a new pedagogical perspective in web-based learning environments. This perspective explores the most prominent opportunities of the information technology era, in order to ensure a more meaningful learning. Advantages, limitations and particularly deficiencies of e-learning systems are investigated based on this perspective. Also, in order to cover the importance of authoring tools in the performance of e-learning systems, capabilities and limitations of current available authoring tools are comparatively studied. These comparisons are based on criteria such as compatibility with e-learning standards, the amount of time and cost needed for the instructional design and potential features. Outcomes of the study emphasize on the importance of the learning variables such as cognitive, social and affective learners’ characteristics, which play a critical role in the design and implementation of web-based learning systems. These outcomes would certainly be of significant help with enhancing the decision making procedure for managers and presidents of learning areas, which may be overwhelmed by all the technology decisions they have to make, the number of choices available, and the terminology they may not be familiar with. These outcomes would basically lead to determining basic factors of learner satisfaction and therefore improving educational performance

Geographic bias related to geocoding in epidemiologic studies

BACKGROUND: This article describes geographic bias in GIS analyses with unrepresentative data owing to missing geocodes, using as an example a spatial analysis of prostate cancer incidence among whites and African Americans in Virginia, 1990–1999. Statistical tests for clustering were performed and such clusters mapped. The patterns of missing census tract identifiers for the cases were examined by generalized linear regression models. RESULTS: The county of residency for all cases was known, and 26,338 (74%) of these cases were geocoded successfully to census tracts. Cluster maps showed patterns that appeared markedly different, depending upon whether one used all cases or those geocoded to the census tract. Multivariate regression analysis showed that, in the most rural counties (where the missing data were concentrated), the percent of a county's population over age 64 and with less than a high school education were both independently associated with a higher percent of missing geocodes. CONCLUSION: We found statistically significant pattern differences resulting from spatially non-random differences in geocoding completeness across Virginia. Appropriate interpretation of maps, therefore, requires an understanding of this phenomenon, which we call "cartographic confounding.

Air Travel and Venous Thromboembolism: A Systematic Review

CONTEXT: Despite multiple attempts to document and quantify the danger of venous thromboembolism (VTE) following prolonged travel, there is still uncertainty about the magnitude of risk and what can be done to lower it. OBJECTIVES: To review the methodologic strength of the literature, estimate the risk of travel-related VTE, evaluate the efficacy of preventive treatments, and develop evidence-based recommendations for practice. DATA SOURCES: Studies identified from MEDLINE from 1966 through December 2005, supplemented by a review of the Cochrane Central Registry of Controlled Trials, the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, and relevant bibliographies. STUDY SELECTION: We included all clinical studies that either reported primary data concerning travel as a risk factor for VTE or tested preventive measures for travel-related VTE. DATA EXTRACTION AND ANALYSIS: Two reviewers reviewed each study independently to assess inclusion criteria, classify research design, and rate methodologic features. The effect of methodologic differences, VTE risk, and travel duration on VTE rate was evaluated using a logistic regression model. DATA SYNTHESIS: Twenty-four published reports, totaling 25 studies, met inclusion criteria (6 case-control studies, 10 cohort studies, and 9 randomized controlled trials). Method of screening for VTE [screening ultrasound compared to usual clinical care, odds ratio (OR) 390], outcome measure [all VTE compared to pulmonary embolism (PE) only, OR 21], duration of travel (<6 hours compared to 6–8 hours, OR 0.011), and clinical risk (“higher” risk travelers compared to “lower,” OR 3.6) were significantly related to VTE rate. Clinical VTE after prolonged travel is rare [27 PE per million flights diagnosed through usual clinical care, 0.05% symptomatic deep venous thrombosis (DVT) diagnosed through screening ultrasounds], but asymptomatic thrombi of uncertain clinical significance are more common. Graduated compression stockings prevented travel-related VTE (P < 0.05 in 4 of 6 studies), aspirin did not, and low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH) showed a trend toward efficacy in one study. CONCLUSIONS: All travelers, regardless of VTE risk, should avoid dehydration and frequently exercise leg muscles. Travelers on a flight of less than 6 hours and those with no known risk factors for VTE, regardless of the duration of the flight, do not need DVT prophylaxis. Travelers with 1 or more risk factors for VTE should consider graduated compression stockings and/or LMWH for flights longer than 6 hours

MedlineRanker: flexible ranking of biomedical literature

The biomedical literature is represented by millions of abstracts available in the Medline database. These abstracts can be queried with the PubMed interface, which provides a keyword-based Boolean search engine. This approach shows limitations in the retrieval of abstracts related to very specific topics, as it is difficult for a non-expert user to find all of the most relevant keywords related to a biomedical topic. Additionally, when searching for more general topics, the same approach may return hundreds of unranked references. To address these issues, text mining tools have been developed to help scientists focus on relevant abstracts. We have implemented the MedlineRanker webserver, which allows a flexible ranking of Medline for a topic of interest without expert knowledge. Given some abstracts related to a topic, the program deduces automatically the most discriminative words in comparison to a random selection. These words are used to score other abstracts, including those from not yet annotated recent publications, which can be then ranked by relevance. We show that our tool can be highly accurate and that it is able to process millions of abstracts in a practical amount of time. MedlineRanker is free for use and is available at http://cbdm.mdc-berlin.de/tools/medlineranker

Enabling multi-level relevance feedback on PubMed by integrating rank learning into DBMS

Background: Finding relevant articles from PubMed is challenging because it is hard to express the user&apos;s specific intention in the given query interface, and a keyword query typically retrieves a large number of results. Researchers have applied machine learning techniques to find relevant articles by ranking the articles according to the learned relevance function. However, the process of learning and ranking is usually done offline without integrated with the keyword queries, and the users have to provide a large amount of training documents to get a reasonable learning accuracy. This paper proposes a novel multi-level relevance feedback system for PubMed, called RefMed, which supports both ad-hoc keyword queries and a multi-level relevance feedback in real time on PubMed. Results: RefMed supports a multi-level relevance feedback by using the RankSVM as the learning method, and thus it achieves higher accuracy with less feedback. RefMed "tightly" integrates the RankSVM into RDBMS to support both keyword queries and the multi-level relevance feedback in real time; the tight coupling of the RankSVM and DBMS substantially improves the processing time. An efficient parameter selection method for the RankSVM is also proposed, which tunes the RankSVM parameter without performing validation. Thereby, RefMed achieves a high learning accuracy in real time without performing a validation process. RefMed is accessible at http://dm.postech.ac.kr/refmed. Conclusions: RefMed is the first multi-level relevance feedback system for PubMed, which achieves a high accuracy with less feedback. It effectively learns an accurate relevance function from the user&apos;s feedback and efficiently processes the function to return relevant articles in real time.1114Nsciescopu

Biomedical informatics and translational medicine

Biomedical informatics involves a core set of methodologies that can provide a foundation for crossing the "translational barriers" associated with translational medicine. To this end, the fundamental aspects of biomedical informatics (e.g., bioinformatics, imaging informatics, clinical informatics, and public health informatics) may be essential in helping improve the ability to bring basic research findings to the bedside, evaluate the efficacy of interventions across communities, and enable the assessment of the eventual impact of translational medicine innovations on health policies. Here, a brief description is provided for a selection of key biomedical informatics topics (Decision Support, Natural Language Processing, Standards, Information Retrieval, and Electronic Health Records) and their relevance to translational medicine. Based on contributions and advancements in each of these topic areas, the article proposes that biomedical informatics practitioners ("biomedical informaticians") can be essential members of translational medicine teams