Do Assessment for Learning practices act as a Springboard or Straitjacket for Educationally Worthwhile Learning? A Case Study in an Irish Higher Education Institue

This study examines lecturers’ and students’ views about assessment for learning practices, within a Business School in Ireland, and investigates if these practices contribute to educationally worthwhile learning. The literature details the practices of assessment for learning, and how enactment of these promote educationally worthwhile learning, a term alluded to in the literature, yet not defined. This mixed-methods study collected quantitative data by distributing a survey instrument to all third year undergraduate students in the Business School. The qualitative data was gathered from classroom observations of two cohorts of those third year students, some of whom volunteered to participate in a focus group. Lecturers’ were interviewed following observation of their classroom practices. The findings revealed that students do not distinguish between AfL and non-AfL environments, yet classroom observations and focus group data depicted a different reality. While students perceive grade attainment as success, the thesis argues that this does not equate to educationally worthwhile learning. Lecturers regard the practices associated with AfL as good practice and not attributable to any particular environment. They perceive success in educational terms as getting the student ‘work-ready’ which they equate with educationally worthwhile learning. In conclusion, the practices of questioning, feedback, sharing criteria and peer- and self-assessment are not exclusive to AfL. It is the enactment of these practices, in any classroom environment within particular institutional learning cultures that determine if they act as a springboard or straitjacket to educationally worthwhile learning

Neurocognitive Enhancement: what can we do and what should we do?

Our growing ability to alter brain function can be used to enhance the mental processes of normal individuals as well as to treat mental dysfunction in people who are ill. The prospect of neurocognitive enhancement raises many issues about what is safe, fair and otherwise morally acceptable. This article resulted from a meeting on neurocognitive enhancement that was held by the authors. Our goal is to review the state of the art in neurocognitive enhancement, its attendant social and ethical problems, and the ways in which society can address these problems

Continue, Adjust, or Stop Antipsychotic Medication: Developing and User Testing an Encounter Decision Aid for People with First-Episode and Long-Term Psychosis

Background: People with psychosis struggle with decisions about their use of antipsychotics. They often want to reduce the dose or stop, while facing uncertainty regarding the effects these decisions will have on their treatment and recovery. They may also fear raising this issue with clinicians. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a shared decision making (SDM) tool to support patients and clinicians in making decisions about antipsychotics. Methods: A diverse editorial research team developed an Encounter Decision Aid (EDA) for patients and clinicians to use as part of the psychiatric consultation. The EDA was tested using 24 semistructured interviews with participants representing six stakeholder groups: patients with first-episode psychosis, patients with long-term psychosis, family members, psychiatrists, mental health counselors, and administrators. We used inductive and deductive coding of interview transcripts to identify points to revise within three domains: general impression and purpose of the EDA; suggested changes to the content, wording, and appearance; and usability and potential contribution to the psychiatric consultation. Results: An EDA was developed in an iterative process that yielded evidence-based answers to five frequently asked questions about antipsychotic medications. Patients with long-term psychosis and mental health counselors suggested more changes and revisions than patients with first-episode psychosis and psychiatrists. Family members suggested more revisions to the answers about potential risks of stopping or adjusting antipsychotics than other respondents. Conclusions: The EDA was perceived as potentially useful and feasible in psychiatric routine care, especially if presented during the consultation

Barriers to clinical adoption of next generation sequencing: Perspectives of a policy Delphi panel

AbstractThis research aims to inform policymakers by engaging expert stakeholders to identify, prioritize, and deliberate the most important and tractable policy barriers to the clinical adoption of next generation sequencing (NGS). A 4-round Delphi policy study was done with a multi-stakeholder panel of 48 experts. The first 2 rounds of online questionnaires (reported here) assessed the importance and tractability of 28 potential barriers to clinical adoption of NGS across 3 major policy domains: intellectual property, coverage and reimbursement, and FDA regulation. We found that: 1) proprietary variant databases are seen as a key challenge, and a potentially intractable one; 2) payer policies were seen as a frequent barrier, especially a perceived inconsistency in standards for coverage; 3) relative to other challenges considered, FDA regulation was not strongly perceived as a barrier to clinical use of NGS. Overall the results indicate a perceived need for policies to promote data-sharing, and a desire for consistent payer coverage policies that maintain reasonably high standards of evidence for clinical utility, limit testing to that needed for clinical care decisions, and yet also flexibly allow for clinician discretion to use genomic testing in uncertain circumstances of high medical need

Self-Management of Unpleasant Auditory Hallucinations: A Tested Practice Model

Individuals who experience auditory hallucinations (AH) frequently report hearing unpleasant voices saying disturbing things to them, making derogatory remarks about them, or commanding them to do something, including harming themselves or someone else. The Self-Management of Unpleasant Auditory Hallucinations Practice Model was developed to help psychiatric-mental health nurses in both inpatient and outpatient settings implement evidence-based nursing care for voice hearers who are distressed by unpleasant voices. The model\u27s utility extends to nursing education, administration, and research. The model is comprised of three parts: (a) Assessment of Voice Hearer\u27s Experience, (b) Nursing Interventions, and (c) Voice Hearer\u27s Expected Positive Outcomes. These three parts of the model describe nursing assessments conducted with an interview guide and two self-report tools, nursing interventions that teach strategies to manage unpleasant AH in a 10-session course or individually, and evaluation of voice hearer outcomes with two self-report tools

An open toolkit for tracking open science partnership implementation and impact.

Serious concerns about the way research is organized collectively are increasingly being raised. They include the escalating costs of research and lower research productivity, low public trust in researchers to report the truth, lack of diversity, poor community engagement, ethical concerns over research practices, and irreproducibility. Open science (OS) collaborations comprise of a set of practices including open access publication, open data sharing and the absence of restrictive intellectual property rights with which institutions, firms, governments and communities are experimenting in order to overcome these concerns. We gathered two groups of international representatives from a large variety of stakeholders to construct a toolkit to guide and facilitate data collection about OS and non-OS collaborations. Ultimately, the toolkit will be used to assess and study the impact of OS collaborations on research and innovation. The toolkit contains the following four elements: 1) an annual report form of quantitative data to be completed by OS partnership administrators; 2) a series of semi-structured interview guides of stakeholders; 3) a survey form of participants in OS collaborations; and 4) a set of other quantitative measures best collected by other organizations, such as research foundations and governmental or intergovernmental agencies. We opened our toolkit to community comment and input. We present the resulting toolkit for use by government and philanthropic grantors, institutions, researchers and community organizations with the aim of measuring the implementation and impact of OS partnership across these organizations. We invite these and other stakeholders to not only measure, but to share the resulting data so that social scientists and policy makers can analyse the data across projects

Creating a data resource: what will it take to build a medical information commons?

National and international public–private partnerships, consortia, and government initiatives are underway to collect and share genomic, personal, and healthcare data on a massive scale. Ideally, these efforts will contribute to the creation of a medical information commons (MIC), a comprehensive data resource that is widely available for both research and clinical uses. Stakeholder participation is essential in clarifying goals, deepening understanding of areas of complexity, and addressing long-standing policy concerns such as privacy and security and data ownership. This article describes eight core principles proposed by a diverse group of expert stakeholders to guide the formation of a successful, sustainable MIC. These principles promote formation of an ethically sound, inclusive, participant-centric MIC and provide a framework for advancing the policy response to data-sharing opportunities and challenges

Controls on explosive-effusive volcanic eruption styles

One of the biggest challenges in volcanic hazard assessment is to understand how and why eruptive style changes within the same eruptive period or even from one eruption to the next at a given volcano. This review evaluates the competing processes that lead to explosive and effusive eruptions of silicic magmas. Eruptive style depends on a set of feedbacks involving interrelated magmatic properties and processes. Foremost of these are magma viscosity, gas loss, and external properties such as conduit geometry. Ultimately, these parameters control the speed at which magmas ascend, decompress and outgas en route to the surface, and thus determine eruptive style and evolution