Developing Active Learning Exercises for Any Content

Teaching and learning both should be fun, engaging, and impactful in lasting ways. Studies show that student engagement and information retention increases when students are immersed in active learning - hands-on usage of the information. Modern faculty members are seeking methods of incorporating active learning into their teaching, but may not know where to start when creating their own active learning materials. This paper will outline a process for creating new activities. Included are appendices full of creative active-learning formats (hot topics borrowed from primary and secondary education), as well as guidelines on when to use them that will make teaching and learning fun and practical. These media are also useful for developing transferable skills that students will bring into the workplace

Adapting a Kidney Exchange Algorithm to Align with Human Values

The efficient and fair allocation of limited resources is a classical problem in economics and computer science. In kidney exchanges, a central market maker allocates living kidney donors to patients in need of an organ. Patients and donors in kidney exchanges are prioritized using ad-hoc weights decided on by committee and then fed into an allocation algorithm that determines who gets what--and who does not. In this paper, we provide an end-to-end methodology for estimating weights of individual participant profiles in a kidney exchange. We first elicit from human subjects a list of patient attributes they consider acceptable for the purpose of prioritizing patients (e.g., medical characteristics, lifestyle choices, and so on). Then, we ask subjects comparison queries between patient profiles and estimate weights in a principled way from their responses. We show how to use these weights in kidney exchange market clearing algorithms. We then evaluate the impact of the weights in simulations and find that the precise numerical values of the weights we computed matter little, other than the ordering of profiles that they imply. However, compared to not prioritizing patients at all, there is a significant effect, with certain classes of patients being (de)prioritized based on the human-elicited value judgments

Do semantic contextual cues facilitate transfer learning from video in toddlers?

Young children typically demonstrate a transfer deficit, learning less from video than live presentations. Semantically meaningful context has been demonstrated to enhance learning in young children. We examined the effect of a semantically meaningful context on toddlers\u27 imitation performance. Two- and 2.5-year-olds participated in a puzzle imitation task to examine learning from either a live or televised model. The model demonstrated how to assemble a three-piece puzzle to make a fish or a boat, with the puzzle demonstration occurring against a semantically meaningful background context (ocean) or a yellow background (no context). Participants in the video condition performed significantly worse than participants in the live condition, demonstrating the typical transfer deficit effect. While the context helped improve overall levels of imitation, especially for the boat puzzle, only individual differences in the ability to self-generate a stimulus label were associated with a reduction in the transfer deficit

Doctoral Students’ Perceived Barriers that Slow the Progress toward Completing a Doctoral Dissertation: A Mixed Analysis

The non-completion of doctoral degrees has been a concern due to its economic, social, and personal consequences. In the current study, the researchers investigated perceived barriers of select doctoral students in completing their doctoral degrees by utilizing a fully mixed sequential mixed research design. The quantitative and qualitative data were concurrently collected using identical samples (n = 205) via a Reading Interest Survey questionnaire. A sequential mixed analysis revealed 6 emergent themes: external obligations (36%), challenges to doctoral-level researchers (34%), practical/logistical constraints (23%), emotional concerns (15%), program structure (9%), and support for completion (8%). Also, 3 meta-themes were identified (i.e., dissociation, external/internal barriers, and institutional/personal barriers), which aided in explaining the relationships among the 6 primary themes. Implications of the findings are discussed

Arm posture influences on regional supraspinatus and infraspinatus activation in isometric arm elevation efforts

The final publication is available at Elsevier via https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jelekin.2018.12.005. © 2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This study aimed to evaluate the effect of arm posture on activation of the anterior and posterior regions of supraspinatus and the superior and middle regions of infraspinatus during resisted isometric arm elevations. Thirty-one healthy participants performed 18 isometric resistance exertions against a force cube in three elevation planes (flexion, scaption, abduction) and three elevation angles (30°, 90°, 150°) in maximal and sub-maximal resistance conditions. EMG data were obtained using four pairs of fine wire electrodes. The mean activation of each region and the activation ratios were compared across postures using ANOVAs. Supraspinatus anterior was significantly more active during abduction and scaption, and in higher elevation angles, while the posterior region showed similar activation levels across postures. Infraspinatus regions were more active during flexion with more relative activation of the infraspinatus superior at 90° flexion. The results suggest that regional activation of supraspinatus and infraspinatus should be considered for assessment and rehabilitation purposes. In any clinical setting where it is important to reduce the stress on the supraspinatus anterior, isometric flexion exercises performed with arm in low elevation angles could provide the opportunity to strengthen the posterior region of supraspinatus with limited stress on the anterior region. Beside external rotation exertions, resisted flexion tests may be useful for evaluation of infraspinatus regions.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council [311895-2016]Canada Foundation for InnovationOntario Research FundCanada Research Chair in Shoulder Mechanic

Maximal voluntary isometric contraction tests for normalizing electromyographic data from different regions of supraspinatus and infraspinatus muscles: Identifying reliable combinations

The final publication is available at Elsevier via https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jelekin.2018.04.007 © 2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This study aimed to identify optimal sets of maximal voluntary isometric contractions (MVICs) for normalizing EMG data from anterior and posterior regions of the supraspinatus, and superior, middle and inferior regions of the infraspinatus. 31 right-handed young healthy individuals (15 males, 16 females) participated. EMG activity was obtained from two regions of supraspinatus and three regions of infraspinatus muscles via fine wire electrodes. Participants performed 15 MVIC tests against manual resistance. The EMG data were normalized to the maximum values. Optimal sets of MVIC combinations, defined as those which elicited >90% MVIC activation in the muscles of interest in >80% and >90% of the population, were obtained. EMG data from the inferior region of infraspinatus were removed from analysis due to technical problem. No single test achieved maximal activation of both regions of either the supraspinatus or infraspinatus. Instead, a combination of 6–8 MVICs were required to reach >90% MVIC activation in both parts of those muscles. In all regions of the rotator cuff muscles, the optimal combination was obtained with 8–10 MVICs. The proposed combinations can reduce inter-participant variability in generating maximal activation from different regions of the supraspinatus and infraspinatus muscles.NSERC Discovery Grant (311895-2016)Canada Foundation for InnovationOntario Research FundNSERC Canada Research Chai

ANIA:ANnotation and Integrated Analysis of the 14-3-3 interactome

The dimeric 14-3-3 proteins dock onto pairs of phosphorylated Ser and Thr residues on hundreds of proteins, and thereby regulate many events in mammalian cells. To facilitate global analyses of these interactions, we developed a web resource named ANIA: ANnotation and Integrated Analysis of the 14-3-3 interactome, which integrates multiple data sets on 14-3-3-binding phosphoproteins. ANIA also pinpoints candidate 14-3-3-binding phosphosites using predictor algorithms, assisted by our recent discovery that the human 14-3-3-interactome is highly enriched in 2R-ohnologues. 2R-ohnologues are proteins in families of two to four, generated by two rounds of whole genome duplication at the origin of the vertebrate animals. ANIA identifies candidate ‘lynchpins’, which are 14-3-3-binding phosphosites that are conserved across members of a given 2R-ohnologue protein family. Other features of ANIA include a link to the catalogue of somatic mutations in cancer database to find cancer polymorphisms that map to 14-3-3-binding phosphosites, which would be expected to interfere with 14-3-3 interactions. We used ANIA to map known and candidate 14-3-3-binding enzymes within the 2R-ohnologue complement of the human kinome. Our projections indicate that 14-3-3s dock onto many more human kinases than has been realized. Guided by ANIA, PAK4, 6 and 7 (p21-activated kinases 4, 6 and 7) were experimentally validated as a 2R-ohnologue family of 14-3-3-binding phosphoproteins. PAK4 binding to 14-3-3 is stimulated by phorbol ester, and involves the ‘lynchpin’ site phosphoSer99 and a major contribution from Ser181. In contrast, PAK6 and PAK7 display strong phorbol ester-independent binding to 14-3-3, with Ser113 critical for the interaction with PAK6. These data point to differential 14-3-3 regulation of PAKs in control of cell morphology. Database URL: https://ania-1433.lifesci.dundee.ac.uk/prediction/webserver/index.p