Creating a learner performance dashboard for programmatic assessment

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/155457/1/tct13106_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/155457/2/tct13106.pd

EEG sensorimotor correlates of translating sounds into actions

Understanding the actions of others is a necessary foundational cornerstone for effective and affective social interactions. Such understanding may result from a mapping of observed actions as well as heard sounds onto one's own motor representations of those events. To examine the electrophysiological basis of action-related sounds, EEG data were collected in two studies from adults who were exposed to auditory events in one of three categories: action (either hand- or mouth-based sounds), non-action (environmental sounds), and control sounds (scrambled versions of action sounds). In both studies, triplets of sounds of the same category were typically presented, although occasionally, to ensure an attentive state, trials containing a sound from a different category were presented within the triplet and participants were asked to respond to this oddball event either covertly in one study or overtly in another. Additionally, participants in both studies were asked to mimic hand- and mouth-based motor actions associated with the sounds (motor task). Action sounds elicited larger EEG mu rhythm (8–13 Hz) suppression, relative to control sounds, primarily over left hemisphere, while non-action sounds showed larger mu suppression primarily over right hemisphere. Furthermore, hand-based sounds elicited greater mu suppression over the hand area in sensorimotor cortex compared to mouth-based sounds. These patterns of mu suppression across cortical regions to different categories of sounds and to effector-specific sounds suggest differential engagement of a mirroring system in the human brain when processing sounds

Affiliative behavior in Williams syndrome: Social perception and real-life social behavior

A frequently noted but largely anecdotal behavioral observation in Williams syndrome (WS) is an increased tendency to approach strangers, yet the basis for this behavior remains unknown. We examined the relationship between affect identification ability and affiliative behavior in participants with WS relative to a neurotypical comparison group. We quantified social behavior from self-judgments of approachability for faces, and from parent/other evaluations of real life. Relative to typical individuals, participants with WS were perceived as more sociable by others, exhibited perceptual deficits in affect identification, and judged faces of strangers as more approachable. In WS, high self-rated willingness to approach strangers was correlated with poor affect identification ability, suggesting that these two findings may be causally related. We suggest that the real-life hypersociability in WS may arise at least in part from abnormal perceptual processing of other people's faces, rather than from an overall bias at the level of behavior. While this did not achieve statistical significance, it provides preliminary evidence to suggest that impaired social-perceptual ability may play a role in increased approachability in WS

The Effects of Collaborative Critical Thinking Training on Trust Development and Effectiveness in Virtual Teams

Workers in modern teams that perform tasks over computer-mediated communication channels encounter challenges in building trust and performing effectively. Finding interventions to mitigate such losses could improve team performance. Collaborative critical thinking (CCT) training has the potential to improve trust, monitoring, and effectiveness in virtual teams. Using a simulated search-and-rescue task, the effects of CCT training, as compared with a control training, were evaluated in 105 three-member teams. No effects of CCT training were found on team positive or negative monitoring, team cognitive or affective trust, team efficacy, or team viability. However, teams trained in CCT reported consistently higher levels of team cooperation. Directions for future research are discussed so as to maximize the possibility that CCT might yet be an effective intervention

The Effects of Collaborative Critical Thinking Training on Trust Development and Effectiveness in Virtual Teams

Workers in modern teams that perform tasks over computer-mediated communication channels encounter challenges in building trust and performing effectively. Finding interventions to mitigate such losses could improve team performance. Collaborative critical thinking (CCT) training has the potential to improve trust, monitoring, and effectiveness in virtual teams. Using a simulated search-and-rescue task, the effects of CCT training, as compared with a control training, were evaluated in 105 three-member teams. No effects of CCT training were found on team positive or negative monitoring, team cognitive or affective trust, team efficacy, or team viability. However, teams trained in CCT reported consistently higher levels of team cooperation. Directions for future research are discussed so as to maximize the possibility that CCT might yet be an effective intervention

Many Hands Make Light Work: Crowdsourced Ratings of Medical Student OSCE Performance

Clinical skills are often measured using objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) in healthcare professions education programs. As with assessment centers, it is challenging to provide learners with effective feedback due to burdensome human capital demands. The aim of this dissertation was to evaluate the viability of using a crowdsourced system to gather OSCE ratings and feedback. Aggregating evaluations of student performance from a crowd of patient proxies has the potential to mitigate biases associated with single-rater evaluations, allow the patient a voice as the consumer of physician behavior, improve reliability, reduce costs, improve feedback latency, and help learners develop a mental model of the diversity of patient preferences. Crowd raters, recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, evaluated a set of video-recorded performance episodes designed to measure interpersonal and communication (ICS) and physical exam (PE) skills. Compared to standardized patient (SP) and faculty raters, crowd raters were more lenient and less reliable, when holding the number of raters and spending constant. However, small groups of crowd raters were able to reach acceptable levels of reliability. Crowd ratings were collected within a matter of hours whereas SP and faculty ratings were returned in over 10 days. Learner reactions to crowdsourced ratings were also measured. Blind to the rater source, a majority of learners preferred the crowdsourced feedback packages over the SP and faculty packages. After learning about the potential value of crowdsourced ratings, learners were positive about crowd ratings as a complement to SP and faculty ratings, but only for evaluations of ICS (not PE) and only for formative (not summative) applications. In particular, students valued the volume and diversity of the crowdsourced feedback and the opportunity to better understand the patient perspective. Students expressed their concerns about privacy as well as the accuracy and quality of crowd ratings. A discussion of practical implications considers future best-practices for a crowdsourced OSCE rating and feedback system

Many Hands Make Light Work: Crowdsourced Ratings of Medical Student OSCE Performance

Clinical skills are often measured using objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) in healthcare professions education programs. As with assessment centers, it is challenging to provide learners with effective feedback due to burdensome human capital demands. The aim of this dissertation was to evaluate the viability of using a crowdsourced system to gather OSCE ratings and feedback. Aggregating evaluations of student performance from a crowd of patient proxies has the potential to mitigate biases associated with single-rater evaluations, allow the patient a voice as the consumer of physician behavior, improve reliability, reduce costs, improve feedback latency, and help learners develop a mental model of the diversity of patient preferences. Crowd raters, recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, evaluated a set of video-recorded performance episodes designed to measure interpersonal and communication (ICS) and physical exam (PE) skills. Compared to standardized patient (SP) and faculty raters, crowd raters were more lenient and less reliable, when holding the number of raters and spending constant. However, small groups of crowd raters were able to reach acceptable levels of reliability. Crowd ratings were collected within a matter of hours whereas SP and faculty ratings were returned in over 10 days. Learner reactions to crowdsourced ratings were also measured. Blind to the rater source, a majority of learners preferred the crowdsourced feedback packages over the SP and faculty packages. After learning about the potential value of crowdsourced ratings, learners were positive about crowd ratings as a complement to SP and faculty ratings, but only for evaluations of ICS (not PE) and only for formative (not summative) applications. In particular, students valued the volume and diversity of the crowdsourced feedback and the opportunity to better understand the patient perspective. Students expressed their concerns about privacy as well as the accuracy and quality of crowd ratings. A discussion of practical implications considers future best-practices for a crowdsourced OSCE rating and feedback system

EEG sensorimotor correlates of translating sounds into actions.

Understanding the actions of others is a necessary foundational cornerstone for effective and affective social interactions. Such understanding may result from a mapping of observed actions as well as heard sounds onto one's own motor representations of those events. To examine the electrophysiological basis of action-related sounds, EEG data were collected in two studies from adults who were exposed to auditory events in one of three categories: action (either hand- or mouth-based sounds), non-action (environmental sounds), and control sounds (scrambled versions of action sounds). In both studies, triplets of sounds of the same category were typically presented, although occasionally, to ensure an attentive state, trials containing a sound from a different category were presented within the triplet and participants were asked to respond to this oddball event either covertly in one study or overtly in another. Additionally, participants in both studies were asked to mimic hand- and mouth-based motor actions associated with the sounds (motor task). Action sounds elicited larger EEG mu rhythm (8-13 Hz) suppression, relative to control sounds, primarily over left hemisphere, while non-action sounds showed larger mu suppression primarily over right hemisphere. Furthermore, hand-based sounds elicited greater mu suppression over the hand area in sensorimotor cortex compared to mouth-based sounds. These patterns of mu suppression across cortical regions to different categories of sounds and to effector-specific sounds suggest differential engagement of a mirroring system in the human brain when processing sounds

Patterns of Sensitivity to Emotion in Children with Williams Syndrome and Autism: Relations Between Autonomic Nervous System Reactivity and Social Functioning

Williams syndrome (WS) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are associated with atypical social-emotional functioning. Affective visual stimuli were used to assess autonomic reactivity and emotion identification, and the social responsiveness scale was used to determine the level social functioning in children with WS and ASD contrasted with typical development (TD), to examine syndrome-specific and syndrome-general features. Children with ASD exhibited the highest arousal in response to faces, with a lack of difference in autonomic sensitivity across different emotional expressions, unlike in WS and TD. The WS group demonstrated unique deficits in identifying neutral stimuli. While autonomic responsivity to neutral faces was associated with social functioning in all children, converging profiles characterized children with WS contrasted with TD and ASD