Use of Role-play and Gamification in a Software Project Course

Soft skills are increasingly important to the engineering profession and course modifications are often needed to ensure students have opportunities to practice them prior to graduation. This suggests that engineering programs need to go beyond simply offering industry-based capstone courses and internships. Role-play has a long history as a tool for learning. It can be used to simulate real world practices in environments where consequences can be mitigated safely. In this paper, we discuss the use of team role-play activities to simulate the experience of working in a professional, game development studio as a means of enhancing an advanced undergraduate game design course. In conjunction with the role-play, a gamification framework was used within the course to allow students to customize their course participation. Gamification was used to reward students for compliance with software process steps and for taking the initiative to improve their “soft skills”. In this project, allowing students to negotiate the nature of their activities and rewards helped them develop those skills. We are using student feedback and our own lessons learned to plan the next iteration of this course

Maternal Vitamin D Status and Delivery by Cesarean

We examined the association of vitamin D deficiency to risk of cesarean delivery using prospective data in a cohort of 1153 low income and minority gravidae. Circulating maternal 25-hydroxyvitamin D and intact parathyroid hormone were measured at entry to care 13.73 ± 5.6 weeks (mean ± SD). Intake of vitamin D and calcium was assessed at three time points during pregnancy. Using recent Institute of Medicine guidelines, 10.8% of the gravidae were at risk of vitamin D deficiency, and 23.8% at risk of insufficiency. Maternal 25-hydroxyvitamin D was related positively to vitamin D and calcium intakes and negatively to circulating concentrations of parathyroid hormone. Risk for cesarean delivery was increased significantly for vitamin D deficient women; there was no increased risk for gravidae at risk of insufficiency. When specific indications were examined, vitamin D deficiency was linked to a 2-fold increased risk of cesarean for prolonged labor. Results were the similar when prior guidelines for vitamin D deficiency (25(OH)D < 37.5nmol/L) and insufficiency (37.5–80 nmol/L) were utilized

Investigating the impact of the availability of scaffolds on preservice teacher noticing and learning from video.

This is a study investigating how the presentation of scaffolds impacts what preservice teachers are able to learn and notice from video. A mixed method approach was utilized to study the change in teacher knowledge and ability to notice content from assigned treatment videos. The sample (n=41) was drawn from three randomly distributed sections of a science methods course designed to teach preservice teachers how to plan for and carry-out project-based science lessons by working with an inquiry-based unit on simple machines. The focus of this research was a lever investigation from that unit and a collection of videos that were produced showing a classroom enactment of that investigation. Subjects were placed into one of three conditions, the Available Scaffolds (AS) group, Integrated Scaffolds (IS) group and comparison group based on the course section in which they enrolled. During the treatment period members from the AS and IS groups viewed a set of videos designed to help prepare teachers to enact the lever investigation. The same classroom footage was used for each set of videos but the arrangement of scaffolds differed for each group. The AS group had access to scaffolds such as static text summaries and introductory teacher commentary while the IS group was presented with scaffolds such as hyperlinks to specific sections of the videos, onscreen text and titles and voice-over narration that were more explicitly integrated within the video. The comparison group did not watch any videos as part of their treatment experience. They participated in an enactment of the lever investigation with the methods course instructor in order to learn more about facilitating the lesson in their own classrooms. Findings from this research indicate that the impact of scaffolds is dependent on their presentation and alignment with the stated learning objectives of the video they are designed to support. Scaffolds such as onscreen text and teacher commentary can be used effectively to draw attention to specific content and prompt preservice teachers to notice pre-identified classroom interactions. The use and purpose of scaffolds is not always apparent to preservice teachers and therefore may require explicit instructions in order to be used effectively. As the use of video in teacher education has become more prevalent it is imperative that we have an empirically sound understanding of how scaffolds can be used effectively to support learning from videos. The main purpose of this research is to provide that empirical foundation and inform the design of video-based materials.Ph.D.EducationEducational technologyTeacher educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/125308/2/3192588.pd

Moving Professional Development Online: Meeting the Needs and Expectations of All Teachers

This paper is about a program of empirical research to examine the needs, expectations, and experiences that teachers who are engaged in systemic reform have for online PD. The goal of this research is to understand how to design online PD environments that are useful for and usable by broad populations of teachers, as part of the design of Knowledge Networks On the Web (KNOW) (Fishman, in press), an online PD tool developed for use by the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools (Blumenfeld, Fishman, Krajcik, Marx, &amp; Soloway, 2000). Chief among the factors motivating this study is the fact that research on PD in general does not link directly to outcomes and there is little evidence that PD has an effect on classroom practice, and less evidence linking PD to student learning (Frechtling, Sharp, Carey, &amp; VadenKiernan, 1995; Wilson &amp; Berne, 1999). This is also true of research about online PD where most available studies have focused on issues such as community formation and online discourse patterns (Bautista, 1998; Hammond, 1998), not on teacher learning or the impact of online PD on student learning. This link between PD and student learning is an important connection to make if we are to determine the worth of any PD opportunity. This study is the first in a series of studies on the design and use of online PD tools (we plan to explore the connection between PD and student learning in future work). Another important factor motivating this proposal is that most PD research, both online and traditional, has been conducted with &quot;volunteer&quot; populations of teachers (Bobrowsky, Marx, &amp; Fishman, 2001). Without claiming that there are necessarily differences in terms of professional development needs between volunteer and other populations of teachers, it does seem ..

Professional development and teacher learning: Using concept maps in inquiry classrooms

Two urban middle school science teachers used concept maps as a form of assessment in their inquiry-oriented teaching. Critical steps in this learning process included adapting curriculum materials to a specific school context, adjusting and re-evaluating strategies, contextualizing concept mapping for students, and finding time and structures for peer collaboration. The two teachers in this study used professional development as an opportunity to interact with other teachers in similar teaching contexts with similar learning outcome goals

Thrombin-receptor antagonist vorapaxar in acute coronary syndromes

BACKGROUND Vorapaxar is a new oral protease-activated–receptor 1 (PAR-1) antagonist that inhibits thrombin-induced platelet activation. METHODS In this multinational, double-blind, randomized trial, we compared vorapaxar with placebo in 12,944 patients who had acute coronary syndromes without ST-segment elevation. The primary end point was a composite of death from cardiovascular causes, myocardial infarction, stroke, recurrent ischemia with rehospitalization, or urgent coronary revascularization. RESULTS Follow-up in the trial was terminated early after a safety review. After a median follow-up of 502 days (interquartile range, 349 to 667), the primary end point occurred in 1031 of 6473 patients receiving vorapaxar versus 1102 of 6471 patients receiving placebo (Kaplan–Meier 2-year rate, 18.5% vs. 19.9%; hazard ratio, 0.92; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.85 to 1.01; P = 0.07). A composite of death from cardiovascular causes, myocardial infarction, or stroke occurred in 822 patients in the vorapaxar group versus 910 in the placebo group (14.7% and 16.4%, respectively; hazard ratio, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.81 to 0.98; P = 0.02). Rates of moderate and severe bleeding were 7.2% in the vorapaxar group and 5.2% in the placebo group (hazard ratio, 1.35; 95% CI, 1.16 to 1.58; P<0.001). Intracranial hemorrhage rates were 1.1% and 0.2%, respectively (hazard ratio, 3.39; 95% CI, 1.78 to 6.45; P<0.001). Rates of nonhemorrhagic adverse events were similar in the two groups. CONCLUSIONS In patients with acute coronary syndromes, the addition of vorapaxar to standard therapy did not significantly reduce the primary composite end point but significantly increased the risk of major bleeding, including intracranial hemorrhage