Staff/Student Partnership to Encourage Active and Blended Learning

This poster and GASTA talk are a reflective commentary on the steps and collaboration undertaken to redevelop the VLE pages of the University of Glasgow Dental Programme. There are two primary aims of this project, the first is to improve the usability of Moodle by altering the structure and layout. The secondary aim is to facilitate creativity from academic staff by removing barriers that are present in the confines of the current platform and enabling them with a more tailored and functional Moodle. Staff will receive support in the development of more interactive teaching methods, such as interactive videos, flipped classroom, active and blended learning techniques. Moodle is currently primarily used as a repository for lecture slides and lacks a sense of cohesion as each lecturer formats their folders in different ways. Staff experience confusion over what they are responsible for and which files belong to which academic, resulting in increased clutter over many years. For some time, students – through staff/student liaison committees – and staff have complained about the difficulty of navigating and finding resources within our Moodle section. Also, as the current layout does not lend itself well to enabling staff wishing to try innovative active or use blended learning approaches only a few early adopters have tried. So, at the beginning of academic year 2018/19 a decision was made to consider a full redevelopment of programme Moodle structures with a ‘blank slate’ philosophy. Utilising Adekola et al’s (2017) framework for guiding transitions into blended and online education we identified the key factors, stakeholders, and barriers & enablers to making this scale of change. As part of engaging stakeholders, the project would initially be carried out as a collaboration between early innovator academics, technical support, and students. The Dental School already has many years of experience in engaging students in e-learning development (McKerlie et al, 2016) so could engage with the student experience through our established Technology Enhanced Learning & Teaching Partnership staff/student forum. As we also already had extensive School experience in the use of flipped classroom techniques (Crothers et al, 2017) we could use these structures and lessons learned as a starting point from which to develop templates. Using the ABC Learning Design technique (Young & Perovic, 2016) to support lecturers to build their content around the Biggs (2003) model of Constructive Alignment the aim was to utilise the Clinical Dentistry course to create Moodle pages organised both chronologically and by subject, with active and blended learning elements embedded throughout. With the development of these structures and templates we expect more lecturers will find it easier to engage with and utilise TELT techniques. This poster and session will reflect on the journey and experience of collaborating to redevelop the Clinical Dentistry section into the new model and offer insights into how to support academic staff to utilise creative approaches through online and blended learning

Staff/Student Partnership to Encourage Active and Blended Learning

This poster and GASTA talk are a reflective commentary on the steps and collaboration undertaken to redevelop the VLE pages of the University of Glasgow Dental Programme. There are two primary aims of this project, the first is to improve the usability of Moodle by altering the structure and layout. The secondary aim is to facilitate creativity from academic staff by removing barriers that are present in the confines of the current platform and enabling them with a more tailored and functional Moodle. Staff will receive support in the development of more interactive teaching methods, such as interactive videos, flipped classroom, active and blended learning techniques. Moodle is currently primarily used as a repository for lecture slides and lacks a sense of cohesion as each lecturer formats their folders in different ways. Staff experience confusion over what they are responsible for and which files belong to which academic, resulting in increased clutter over many years. For some time, students – through staff/student liaison committees – and staff have complained about the difficulty of navigating and finding resources within our Moodle section. Also, as the current layout does not lend itself well to enabling staff wishing to try innovative active or use blended learning approaches only a few early adopters have tried. So, at the beginning of academic year 2018/19 a decision was made to consider a full redevelopment of programme Moodle structures with a ‘blank slate’ philosophy. Utilising Adekola et al’s (2017) framework for guiding transitions into blended and online education we identified the key factors, stakeholders, and barriers & enablers to making this scale of change. As part of engaging stakeholders, the project would initially be carried out as a collaboration between early innovator academics, technical support, and students. The Dental School already has many years of experience in engaging students in e-learning development (McKerlie et al, 2016) so could engage with the student experience through our established Technology Enhanced Learning & Teaching Partnership staff/student forum. As we also already had extensive School experience in the use of flipped classroom techniques (Crothers et al, 2017) we could use these structures and lessons learned as a starting point from which to develop templates. Using the ABC Learning Design technique (Young & Perovic, 2016) to support lecturers to build their content around the Biggs (2003) model of Constructive Alignment the aim was to utilise the Clinical Dentistry course to create Moodle pages organised both chronologically and by subject, with active and blended learning elements embedded throughout. With the development of these structures and templates we expect more lecturers will find it easier to engage with and utilise TELT techniques. This poster and session will reflect on the journey and experience of collaborating to redevelop the Clinical Dentistry section into the new model and offer insights into how to support academic staff to utilise creative approaches through online and blended learning

Analyses of Parental Interaction Behaviors and Young Children\u27s Language Skills

The Preschool Language Scale-5 (PLS) and samples of spontaneous speech from 20-30-minute play interactions between toddlers and parents, were used to examine children’s emerging language abilities. The speech samples were used to compute children’s rate of words, utterances and different words per minute, and mean length of utterances for a full transcript or simply the three longest utterances. Parents’ comments and directives were noted in five-minutes of toy play with their children. The proportion of parental comments to directives was found to be significantly related to all spontaneous speech measures, but not PLS scores. Spanish-speaking parents were found to have statistically more directives than English-speaking parents. There were no significant differences noted between Spanish- and English-speaking parents’ use of comments, or the proportion of comments to directives

Psychotherapy Process and Relationship in the Context of a Brief, Attachment-Based, Mother-Infant Intervention

©American Psychological Association, 2015. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. The final article is available, upon publication, at: https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037335The present study investigated links between the observer-rated process of psychotherapy and 2 key psychotherapy relationship constructs (i.e., working alliance and attachment to the therapist) in the context of a brief, attachment-based, home-visiting, mother–infant intervention that aimed to promote later secure infant attachment. Additionally, links between observer ratings of intervener and mother contributions to process were examined. Participants included 85 economically stressed mothers of first-born, 5.5-month-old, temperamentally irritable infants. Therapists included 2 doctoral-level and 4 master’s-level home visitors. Observer-rated therapist psychotherapy process variables (i.e., warmth, exploration, and negative attitude) were not linked to maternal ratings of working alliance. Therapist warmth, however, was positively associated with maternal ratings of security of attachment to the therapist, and therapist negative attitude was positively related to maternal ratings of preoccupied-merger attachment to the therapist. As expected, both therapist warmth and exploration were positively associated with both maternal participation and exploration. Therapist negative attitude was inversely related to maternal exploration, but not to maternal participation. Results support the idea that attention to the psychotherapy process and relationship may be important in the context of a brief home-visiting parenting intervention with a nonclinical sample. (APA PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)https://doi.org/10.1037/a003733

The parenting experience of those with borderline personality disorder traits: practitioner and parent perspectives

Background: Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is associated with challenges around emotional intensity and interpersonal difficulties. The children of parents with BPD are at risk of poorer outcomes in terms of their own mental health, educational outcomes and wellbeing. The challenges of being a parent can also exacerbate the symptoms of those with BPD traits. There is a pressing need to understand the experience of these parents and to determine what support would be appropriate and useful. Aim: To explore and compare the experiences and support needs of parents with BPD traits with the experiences and understanding of practitioners who work with them. Methods: Interviews with 12 parents with BPD traits and 21 practitioners with experience of working with individuals with BPD. The two strands of interviews were analyzed independently using a thematic framework approach, after which the superordinate and subordinate themes were subject to comparison. Results: Parents with BPD traits represent themselves as experiencing considerable challenges in their role as a parent. These included the impact of emotional intensity, social isolation and lack of a positive parenting models to draw upon. Practitioners demonstrated a strong degree of shared understanding into these difficulties. Both groups highlighted a lack of appropriate support for these parents. Conclusion: This research highlights the clinical need for parenting-focused support for individuals with BPD traits. Preliminary suggestions for format and content are given

Dissociating Profiles of Social Cognitive Disturbances Between Mixed Personality and Anxiety Disorder.

Background:An emerging body of research has begun to elucidate disturbances to social cognition in specific personality disorders (PDs). No research has been conducted on patients with Mixed Personality Disorder (MPD), however, who meet multiple diagnostic criteria. Further, very few studies have compared social cognition between patients with PD and those presenting with symptomatic diagnoses that co-occur with personality pathologies, such as anxiety disorder (AD). The aim of this study was to provide a detailed characterization of deficits to various aspects of social cognition in MPD and dissociate impairments specific to MPD from those exhibited by patients with AD who differ in the severity of personality pathology. Method:Building on our previous research, we administered a large battery of self-report and performance-based measures of social cognition to age-, sex- and education-matched groups of patients with MPD or AD, and healthy control participants (HCs; n = 29, 23, and 54, respectively). This permitted a detailed profiling of these clinical groups according to impairments in emotion recognition and regulation, imitative control, low-level visual perspective taking, and empathic awareness and expression. Results:The MPD group demonstrated poorer emotion recognition for negative facial expressions relative to both HCs and AD. Compared with HCs, both clinical groups also performed significantly worse in visual perspective taking and interference resolution, and reported higher personal distress when empathizing and more state-oriented emotion regulation. Conclusion:We interpret our results to reflect dysfunctional cognitive control that is common to patients with both MPD and AD. Given the patterns of affective dispositions that characterize these two diagnostic groups, we suggest that prolonged negative affectivity is associated with inflexible styles of emotion regulation and attribution. This might potentiate the interpersonal dysfunction exhibited in MPD, particularly in negatively valenced and challenging social situations

The role of simulation in intertemporal choices

One route to understanding the thoughts and feelings of others is by mentally putting one's self in their shoes and seeing the world from their perspective, i.e., by simulation. Simulation is potentially used not only for inferring how others feel, but also for predicting how we ourselves will feel in the future. For instance, one might judge the worth of a future reward by simulating how much it will eventually be enjoyed. In intertemporal choices between smaller immediate and larger delayed rewards, it is observed that as the length of delay increases, delayed rewards lose subjective value; a phenomenon known as temporal discounting. In this article, we develop a theoretical framework for the proposition that simulation mechanisms involved in empathizing with others also underlie intertemporal choices. This framework yields a testable psychological account of temporal discounting based on simulation. Such an account, if experimentally validated, could have important implications for how simulation mechanisms are investigated, and makes predictions about special populations characterized by putative deficits in simulating others