Enhancing the Educational Environment: Improving Student Outcome Using Visual Supports

Students in varying educational settings are supplied with varying levels of academic support. While it is well known that academic supports assist students in learning academic content, visual supports are proven to improve and develop academic language and improve academic proficiency. Visual supports assist students in becoming more knowledgeable of academic content by increasing student engagement and the implementation of classroom structure. The overall focus of this research project was to determine the effectiveness of visual academic supports within primary education, specifically the behavioral and academic impacts of visual aids in a Communication and Social Skills (CSS) classroom at Willow Grove Elementary School within the Duval County School District. The preliminary conclusions of the study are that the visual supports made more consistent academic impacts than behavioral impacts on the students observed

MICELLE TO LAMELLAR AGGREGATE TRANSITION OF AN ANIONIC SURFACTANT IN DILUTE AQUEOUS-SOLUTION INDUCED BY ALKALI-METAL CHLORIDE AND TETRAALKYLAMMONIUM CHLORIDE SALTS

Micelles of the anionic surfactant sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (NaDoBS) in dilute aqueous solution can be transformed into lamellar aggregates by the addition of alkali metal chloride (LiCl to CsCl) and tetraalkylammonium chloride (alkyl is methyl or n-butyl) salts. Depending on the type of cation, concentration of salt, and isomeric purity of the alkyl chain of the surfactant, different types of phases are observed: large unilamellar vesicles, multivesicular vesicles, and flocculated multilamellar vesicles (lamellar droplets). Over limited concentration ranges, some salts induce phase separation in a surfactant-rich and a surfactant-lean phase. The formation of the different phases was monitored by turbidity and fluorescence depolarization measurements, whereas the phases were characterized by light microscopy, freeze-fracture electron microscopy, and confocal scanning laser microscopy. Thermodynamic aspects of aggregation, in particular the counterion binding characteristics, were studied by microcalorimetry and conductivity. On a molecular level, the packing in a lamellar array can be explained largely in terms of a change in counterion binding and, to a lesser extent, by a decrease of the hydration of the headgroup and the. counterion. A better counterion binding is facilitated by a less hydrated cation or by an increase of the electrolyte concentration. The formation of different types of lamellar aggregates is due to different types of interactions between lamellar layers or between aggregates: largely repulsive for stable dispersions of unilamellar vesicles to attractive down to short distances for the flocculated lamellar droplets

TEEM17. Track: Educational innovation

The track Educational Innovation1 of the International Conference Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality (TEEM), brings together, under the covering of the innovation, a diversity of themes from the tracks of the conference. The analysis of the educational innovation should be seen from three types: innovation in the classroom, institutional innovation and innovation in R+D+i projects. This paper presents a grouping of papers, accepted in this track of TEEM''17, under the two first types and classified in three lines of work: information and communication technologies, contents, methodologies and new services

Fasting Reduces the Incidence of Delayed-Type Vomiting Associated with Doxorubicin Treatment in Dogs with Lymphoma.

Fasting reduces gastrointestinal cellular proliferation rates through G1 cycle blockade and can promote cellular protection of normal but not cancer cells through altered cell signaling including down-regulation of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). Consequently, the purpose of this study was to determine the effects of fasting on delayed-type chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting in dogs receiving doxorubicin. This prospective randomized crossover study involved intended administration of two doses of doxorubicin. Cancer-bearing dogs were randomized to be fasted for 24 hours beginning at 6 P.M. the night before the first or second doxorubicin administration, and all treatments were administered within an hour before or after 12 P.M. Dogs were fed normally before the alternate dose. Circulating IGF-1 concentrations were determined from serum samples obtained immediately before each doxorubicin treatment. Data from 35 doses were available from 20 dogs enrolled. Dogs that were fasted exhibited a significantly lower incidence of vomiting, when compared to fed dogs (10% compared to 67%, P = .020). Furthermore, among the 15 dogs that completed crossover dosing, vomiting was abrogated in four of five dogs that experienced doxorubicin-induced vomiting when fed normally (P = .050). No differences in other gastrointestinal, constitutional, or bone marrow toxicities or serum IGF-1 levels were observed

Making decisions for effective humanitarian actions: a conceptual framework for relief distribution

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Enhancing the Main Characteristics of Active Methodologies: A Case with Micro Flip Teaching and Teamwork

All active methodologies have common objectives and processes. Their mission is to ensure that students participate actively in the learning process, cooperating with other students, reflecting, making decisions and creating knowledge. For this purpose, groups that work in a timely manner to carry out an activity or in a more stable way through work teams are usually formed. In both cases, active learning takes place within the groups. This work proposes fostering an active inter-team learning; that is, forming a meta-team where active learning takes place. The aim is checking if students who follow an active methodology, have the active habit; that is, if the work teams share knowledge among themselves and use it to improve their own knowledge. The proposed model contains a virtual layer that all teams can access, making possible the cooperation, the creation of new knowledge, reflection and decision making. This model is applicable to any active methodology and the proposed model has been applied to the Micro Flip Teaching methodology. This quasi experimental research methodology, based on quantitative and qualitative assessment, shows how the work teams, in an Engineering context, in this case, use this virtual layer and how that use impacts the academic performance of their members. Another conclusion of this work is that feedback must be included in active methodologies

APFT: Active peer-based Flip Teaching

The Flip Teaching model1 (the lesson at home, the homework in class) has been used to actively engage students in their learning process during the lectures. In this method, passive learning (the lesson) is transferred to homework and the activity (exercises, debates, collaborative learning, etc.) to the class. More advanced Flip Teaching models carry out an intermediate phase in which the students can actively participate "at home", such as Micro Flip Teaching model. This model proposes an on-line activity composed by the learning of the lesson and the realization of an individual micro-activity on the same and then, in class, work on the obtained results in the micro-activity. In this work, the Micro Flip Teaching model has been adapted to carry out the online activity in a collaborative way in work teams. The main novelty of this proposal is that the active participation of the students generates resources that can be used as didactic material in future editions of the subject. To evaluate the impact of this proposal, an experimental group has been established that used resources generated by students from previous subject editions, while the control group used only resources generated by the teacher. The research shows that the resources generated by students are equally effective than those generated by teachers

Students' knowledge sharing to improve learning in academic engineering courses

This paper presents an example of scaffolding during the development of an engineering course, in which students are supported by teachers and other students. This proposal covers the benefits of the use of shared knowledge repositories in which content was created by students. Teamwork is the transversal competence that is considered to be the central knowledge topic. The cooperation among students through teamwork methodology has generated more than 500 learning resources and a knowledge management system, BRACO, which has been created with these resources to manage information and conduct searches according to each student''s profile and needs. The generated knowledge spiral is composed of knowledge circles that increase during each iteration of the action-research implementation. The reflection phase of this research consists of the evaluation of the impact on learning for students in the experimental group after using the knowledge resources generated by students in relation with teamwork competence, in contrast with the control group that does not experience this intervention. With regard to the assessments, several surveys and a learning analytics system, this paper explains the underlying methodological foundations and the empirical study. In comparison to the control group, the experimental group obtained better results in relation to indicators of positive learning results, such as studentstudent interaction, teamwork development and final grades during the teamwork process

Physicians’ Perspective From a Survey

Background: As a result of demographic changes, physicians are required to deliver needed services with limited resources. Research suggests that tablet PCs with access to patient data may streamline clinical workflow. A recent study found tablets with mobile electronic medical records (EMRs) can facilitate data retrieval and produce time savings across the clinical routine within hospital settings. However, the reasons for these time savings, including details on how tablets were being used, remain unclear. The same applies to physicians’ perceptions of this tool within an inpatient setting. Objective: This study examined physicians’ perception of tablets with EMRs in an inpatient setting. The rationale was to identify both subjective and objective factors that impacted the successful implementation and use of tablets running an EMR. Methods: We developed a 57-item survey questionnaire designed to examine users’ perception of and attitude toward tablets, which was administered to 14 participating physicians following 7 weeks of tablet use. Five participants volunteered to participate in a second study that investigated physicians’ patterns of tablet use within the EMR environment by digitally tracking and storing usage behavior. Statistical analyses of questionnaire results included mean values with their bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals and multivariate analysis of variance to identify predictors of tablet use. Results: Physicians reported high degrees of satisfaction with the tablets. There was a general consensus among physicians that tablet use streamlined clinical workflow through optimized data retrieval (rated 0.69, 0.23-1.15 points better than control) and improved communication with patients and other physicians (rated 0.85, 0.54-1.15 and 0.77, 0.38-1.15 points better than control, respectively). Age (F3,11=3.54, P=.04), occupational group (F1,11=7.17, P=.04), and attitude toward novel technologies (F1,11=10.54, P=.02) predicted physicians’ satisfaction with the devices and their motivation regarding their further use. Tracking data yielded that only a few of the available functions were used frequently. Conclusions: Although tablet PCs were consistently perceived as beneficial, several factors contributed to the fact that their full potential was not fully exploited. Training in functionality and providing a reliable infrastructure might foster successful tablet implementation

The learning improvement of engineering students using peer-created complementary resources

In any organization, the individual is considered an issuer of knowledge who can improve corporate knowledge, and learning is considered to be a key factor in promoting the creation of knowledge. As the knowledge of the individual increases, the organization''s knowledge also increases. The same happens in educational institutions, but there is a tendencyinmost educational methodologies to consider the studentasamere recipient of knowledge. Thispaper presents a model where the student is shown as a knowledge issuer both for their own benefit and for their peers. The key idea is the transfer of knowledge produced by students to organizational knowledge through the knowledge management system the Collaborative Academic Resources Finder (BRACO, for its acronym in Spanish). At the same time, certain quantitative measurement instruments provide insight into student perception of the use of this knowledge in a particular subject in their engineering degree studies as well as the measure of BRACO impact on their learning outcomes. The results of this workshow that an experimental group obtained higher scores in tests than a control group. Results alsoshow that BRACO had a significant impact on learning, and students promoted, organized and used the resources generated by fellow students