Evaluation of Interventions in Blended Learning Using a Communication Skills Serious Game

Serious games often employ a scripted dialogue for player interaction with a virtual character. In our serious game Communicate, a domain expert develops a structured, scripted scenario as a sequence of potential interactions in an authoring tool. A player is often a student learning communication skills and a virtual character represents a person that a student talks to. In the original version of Communicate, a player `converses' with a virtual character by clicking on one of the multiple statement options. Since 2018, we perform blended learning sessions for final year computer science students using Communicate. Our goal is to improve these sessions and in this paper, we apply the action research method over three semesters to iteratively improve these blended learning sessions. In the first semester, our baseline, we conduct sessions where students play a scenario in multiple choice format. In the second semester, we enhance Communicate by enabling a student to enter open text input in an improved scenario. In the third semester, we enhance a session by incorporating peer teaching. Students fill in an evaluation survey after a session and we compare the evaluation of students from the three semesters. Results show that student ratings are significantly higher in sessions incorporating peer teaching compared to the baseline

Incorporating Genomics and Bioinformatics across the Life Sciences Curriculum

Undergraduate life sciences education needs an overhaul, as clearly described in the National Research Council of the National Academies’ publication BIO 2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists. Among BIO 2010’s top recommendations is the need to involve students in working with real data and tools that reflect the nature of life sciences research in the 21st century [1]. Education research studies support the importance of utilizing primary literature, designing and implementing experiments, and analyzing results in the context of a bona fide scientific question [1–12] in cultivating the analytical skills necessary to become a scientist. Incorporating these basic scientific methodologies in undergraduate education leads to increased undergraduate and post-graduate retention in the sciences [13–16]. Toward this end, many undergraduate teaching organizations offer training and suggestions for faculty to update and improve their teaching approaches to help students learn as scientists, through design and discovery (e.g., Council of Undergraduate Research [www.cur.org] and Project Kaleidoscope [ www.pkal.org])

Psychological mindedness and abstract reasoning in late childhood and adolescence: An exploration using new instruments

This study introduces two new measures of psychological mindedness, applying them in a study of the growth of abstract thinking in children and adolescents in a developmental design. The capacity to achieve psychological understanding of the self and of others involves comprehension of the motives, attitudes, and characteristics of the self and others. Psychological mindedness toward the self (PS) and toward others (PO) may be seen as complex cognitive capacities that should show a pattern of related development in childhood. Three groups of 60 fifth, eighth, and twelfth graders completed two measures of formal operations and two instruments to assess the two components of psychological mindedness. We find that psychological mindedness and abstract thinking both increase significantly with age, although the relationship between them is complex and varies with gender and age. Because the development of abstract reasoning skills does not correlate with the development of psychological mindedness in a simple way, a more complex model is necessary, taking age and gender differences into account. Performance on the two measures of psychological mindedness is found to be largely unrelated, suggesting that these are two different psychological skills. Implications of these findings are discussed, with special reference to education, peer counseling, and psychotherapy .Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45274/1/10964_2005_Article_BF01537075.pd

Rationale for, and design of, a clinical trial targeting polyamine metabolism for colon cancer chemoprevention.

Polyamine metabolic genes are downstream targets of several genes commonly mutated in colon adenomas and cancers. Inhibitors of ornithine decarboxylase, such as difluoromethylornithine (DFMO), and agents that stimulate polyamine acetylation and export, such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS), act at least additively to arrest growth in human cell models and suppress intestinal carcinogenesis in mice. These preclinical studies provided the rationale for colon cancer prevention trials in humans. A Phase IIb clinical study comparing the combination of DFMO and the NSAID sulindac versus placebo was conducted. Endpoints were colorectal tissue polyamine and prostaglandin E2 contents and overall toxicity to participants. Participants in the Phase IIb study served as a vanguard for a randomized, placebo-controlled prospective Phase III trial of the combination of DFMO and sulindac with the primary study endpoint the prevention of colon polyps. Seventy percent of participants will have completed the three years of treatment in December 2006