Towards a Set of Design Principles for Computer-Mediated Feedback Fostering Teachers’ Pedagogical Skills: a Synthesis of the Literature

Developing pedagogical skills of teachers is an essential objective in teacher education. Although feedback from workplace supervisors is considered crucial for encouraging these skills in the first stages of teachers’ careers, delivering effective and just-in-time feedback is under pressure due to a teacher shortage in secondary education. Recent technological developments allow alternative sources to deliver feedback provided by innovative technologies. However, a comprehensive picture of effective characteristics of computer-mediated feedback (CMF) is lacking. Therefore, this review identifies studies with the aim of deducing a set of design principles for CMF fostering pedagogical skills. Subsequently, all studies were categorized with respect to learning environment characteristics, learning processes and learning outcomes. The synthesis is a set of principles including personalized, immediate and delayed feedback. Finally, a future research agenda focuses on how these principles could optimize innovative technologies to deliver feedback for teachers in daily practice

Applying Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development to understand autonomy development in children and youths with deafblindness:a systematic literature review

This systematic review revealed how children and youths with congenital deafblindness (CDB) exhibit autonomy characteristics and how caregivers perform autonomy support, which Erikson described as part of the first three stages of psychosocial development. This review comprises 22 studies that explicitly addressed one or more autonomy characteristics or autonomy support tasks. The results demonstrated that children and youths with CDB exhibited most characteristics of Erikson’s first stage (e.g., explorative behavior in their nearby environment and with objects within reach) and caregivers predominantly fulfilled autonomy tasks in the first stage (e.g., being present and near the child). In addition, children and youths with CDB exhibited independent acts at the second stage, although these were often limited to asking for or refusing concrete objects in the here-and-now situation. The limited degree to which the children with CDB exhibited autonomy characteristics from the second and third stages seems to co-occur with their struggle to develop symbolic communication. Additionally, the review revealed that caregivers supported autonomy by remaining present and nearby, even when autonomy support tasks from the second and third stages might be more appropriate in supporting the autonomy of children and youths with CDB (e.g., the second stage’s autonomy support task to balance between offering the child protection and encouragement, and the third stage’s task to support the child in taking initiative and setting goals). We recommend the use of a longitudinal video-feedback intervention that both supports the children’s and youths symbolic communication skills and supports caregivers in finding a balance between being present and nearby and fostering the autonomy characteristics of children and youths with CDB

High-salt intake affects retinal vascular tortuosity in healthy males: an exploratory randomized cross-over trial.

The retinal microcirculation is increasingly receiving credit as a relatively easily accessible microcirculatory bed that correlates closely with clinical cardiovascular outcomes. The effect of high salt (NaCl) intake on the retinal microcirculation is currently unknown. Therefore, we performed an exploratory randomized cross-over dietary intervention study in 18 healthy males. All subjects adhered to a two-week high-salt diet and low-salt diet, in randomized order, after which fundus photographs were taken and assessed using a semi-automated computer-assisted program (SIVA, version 4.0). Outcome parameters involved retinal venular and arteriolar tortuosity, vessel diameter, branching angle and fractal dimension. At baseline, participants had a mean (SD) age of 29.8 (4.4) years and blood pressure of 117 (9)/73 (5) mmHg. Overall, high-salt diet significantly increased venular tortuosity (12.2%, p = 0.001). Other retinal parameters were not significantly different between diets. Changes in arteriolar tortuosity correlated with changes in ambulatory systolic blood pressure (r = - 0.513; p = 0.04). In conclusion, high-salt diet increases retinal venular tortuosity, and salt-induced increases in ambulatory systolic blood pressure associate with decreases in retinal arteriolar tortuosity. Besides potential eye-specific consequences, both phenomena have previously been associated with hypertension and other cardiovascular risk factors, underlining the deleterious microcirculatory effects of high salt intake

ZZS similarity tool: the online tool for similarity screening to identify chemicals of potential concern

Screening and prioritization of chemicals is essential to ensure that available evaluation capacity is invested in those substances that are of highest concern. We, therefore, recently developed structural similarity models that evaluate the structural similarity of substances with unknown properties to known Substances of Very High Concern (SVHC), which could be an indication of comparable effects. In the current study the performance of these models is improved by (1) separating known SVHCs in more specific subgroups, (2) (re-)optimizing similarity models for the various SVHC-subgroups, and (3) improving interpretability of the predicted outcomes by providing a confidence score. The improvements are directly incorporated in a freely accessible web-based tool, named the ZZS similarity tool: . Accordingly, this tool can be used by risk assessors, academia and industrial partners to screen and prioritize chemicals for further action and evaluation within varying frameworks, and could support the identification of tomorrow's substances of concern.Environmental Biolog