Income Tax Workshop for Child Care Providers: A University-Community Partnership

A community agency in Southeastern Kentucky partnered with a credit union and an income tax class to address the needs of child care providers in its service region. The agency provided training and a financial literacy curriculum for constituent child care centers. With the credit union, it provided financial literacy support for families served by the child care centers. With the income tax class, it provided an income tax workshop tailored for child care providers. The tax workshop for child care providers is the focus of this article. Background information on the region is given, followed by a review of service-learning literature as it relates to the class project. Then the workshop itself is described, followed by a discussion of the feedback received. Challenges faced by students and by the community agency are addressed

Agile Teaching and the Agile Manifesto

The Agile framework and its principles were originally created for software development, not for higher education. The software development environment in which they were created holds many parallels with the environment of higher education today, including the adaptiveness required, increased consumer focus, and pace and complexity of change. Principles outlined in the Agile Manifesto provide a way of dealing with uncertainties and turbulence, and ultimately succeeding in the midst of them. Agile principles can be applied to support and facilitate effective teaching and learning in today’s rapidly changing environment

Take Your Program to the Next Level

This article focuses on the Institute of Management Accountants\u27 Higher Education Endorsement Program. Its value to an accounting program is highlighted, and the process of submitting an application for endorsement is provided. The article offers perspectives of both the applicant and the reviewer

Applying the Agile Manifesto to Teaching and Learning: Best Practices and Lessons Learned

Principles outlined in the Agile Manifesto provide a way of dealing with, and ultimately succeeding, in the midst of uncertainties and turbulence. The Agile framework and its principles, originally created for software development, can also be applied to support and facilitate effective teaching and learning in today’s rapidly changing environment.https://encompass.eku.edu/pedagogicon_presentations/1009/thumbnail.jp

Incorporating authentic learning experiences within a university course

Current approaches to understanding learning imply that authentic learning experiences assist students to develop appropriate and effective understandings. Authentic learning experiences are those that are personally relevant from the learner's perspective and situated within appropriate social contexts. In planning for authentic learning to occur, tensions can emerge between providing real-world 'natural' experiences and the nature of experiences that are possible to offer within institutions, which can often be 'artificial' or 'staged', and seen as inauthentic by students. Bridging the gap between the learning taking place within formal institutions and learning within real-life communities of practice can be difficult for university teachers. This article reports the efforts of a university teacher who, through a one-semester course, endeavoured to bridge this gap between university study and learning about the world of business management. Data sources included the teacher's plans, diary and written reflections on his activities related to his teaching during the semester; course materials; teacher and student interviews; and classroom observations undertaken by the researchers. The various strategies the teacher used to develop authenticity in students' learning experiences are discussed, as well as the teacher's reflections on how he tried to capitalize on the formal structures possible in a university setting to support his students as they developed their understandings about what it is like to be practising members of the business management community. Implications for teaching and learning in general, and for university staff development, are outline

Incorporating Authentic Learning Experiences within a University Course

Current approaches to understanding learning imply that authentic learning experiences assist students to develop appropriate and effective understandings. Authentic learning experiences are those that are personally relevant from the learner's perspective and situated within appropriate social contexts. In planning for authentic learning to occur, tensions can emerge between providing real-world 'natural' experiences and the nature of experiences that are possible to offer within institutions, which can often be 'artificial' or 'staged', and seen as inauthentic by students. Bridging the gap between the learning taking place within formal institutions and learning within real-life communities of practice can be difficult for university teachers. This article reports the efforts of a university teacher who, through a one-semester course, endeavoured to bridge this gap between university study and learning about the world of business management. Data sources included the teacher's plans, diary and written reflections on his activities related to his teaching during the semester; course materials; teacher and student interviews; and classroom observations undertaken by the researchers. The various strategies the teacher used to develop authenticity in students' learning experiences are discussed, as well as the teacher's reflections on how he tried to capitalize on the formal structures possible in a university setting to support his students as they developed their understandings about what it is like to be practising members of the business management community. Implications for teaching and learning in general, and for university staff development, are outlined

Health-status outcomes with invasive or conservative care in coronary disease

BACKGROUND In the ISCHEMIA trial, an invasive strategy with angiographic assessment and revascularization did not reduce clinical events among patients with stable ischemic heart disease and moderate or severe ischemia. A secondary objective of the trial was to assess angina-related health status among these patients. METHODS We assessed angina-related symptoms, function, and quality of life with the Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ) at randomization, at months 1.5, 3, and 6, and every 6 months thereafter in participants who had been randomly assigned to an invasive treatment strategy (2295 participants) or a conservative strategy (2322). Mixed-effects cumulative probability models within a Bayesian framework were used to estimate differences between the treatment groups. The primary outcome of this health-status analysis was the SAQ summary score (scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating better health status). All analyses were performed in the overall population and according to baseline angina frequency. RESULTS At baseline, 35% of patients reported having no angina in the previous month. SAQ summary scores increased in both treatment groups, with increases at 3, 12, and 36 months that were 4.1 points (95% credible interval, 3.2 to 5.0), 4.2 points (95% credible interval, 3.3 to 5.1), and 2.9 points (95% credible interval, 2.2 to 3.7) higher with the invasive strategy than with the conservative strategy. Differences were larger among participants who had more frequent angina at baseline (8.5 vs. 0.1 points at 3 months and 5.3 vs. 1.2 points at 36 months among participants with daily or weekly angina as compared with no angina). CONCLUSIONS In the overall trial population with moderate or severe ischemia, which included 35% of participants without angina at baseline, patients randomly assigned to the invasive strategy had greater improvement in angina-related health status than those assigned to the conservative strategy. The modest mean differences favoring the invasive strategy in the overall group reflected minimal differences among asymptomatic patients and larger differences among patients who had had angina at baseline

Initial invasive or conservative strategy for stable coronary disease

BACKGROUND Among patients with stable coronary disease and moderate or severe ischemia, whether clinical outcomes are better in those who receive an invasive intervention plus medical therapy than in those who receive medical therapy alone is uncertain. METHODS We randomly assigned 5179 patients with moderate or severe ischemia to an initial invasive strategy (angiography and revascularization when feasible) and medical therapy or to an initial conservative strategy of medical therapy alone and angiography if medical therapy failed. The primary outcome was a composite of death from cardiovascular causes, myocardial infarction, or hospitalization for unstable angina, heart failure, or resuscitated cardiac arrest. A key secondary outcome was death from cardiovascular causes or myocardial infarction. RESULTS Over a median of 3.2 years, 318 primary outcome events occurred in the invasive-strategy group and 352 occurred in the conservative-strategy group. At 6 months, the cumulative event rate was 5.3% in the invasive-strategy group and 3.4% in the conservative-strategy group (difference, 1.9 percentage points; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.8 to 3.0); at 5 years, the cumulative event rate was 16.4% and 18.2%, respectively (difference, 121.8 percentage points; 95% CI, 124.7 to 1.0). Results were similar with respect to the key secondary outcome. The incidence of the primary outcome was sensitive to the definition of myocardial infarction; a secondary analysis yielded more procedural myocardial infarctions of uncertain clinical importance. There were 145 deaths in the invasive-strategy group and 144 deaths in the conservative-strategy group (hazard ratio, 1.05; 95% CI, 0.83 to 1.32). CONCLUSIONS Among patients with stable coronary disease and moderate or severe ischemia, we did not find evidence that an initial invasive strategy, as compared with an initial conservative strategy, reduced the risk of ischemic cardiovascular events or death from any cause over a median of 3.2 years. The trial findings were sensitive to the definition of myocardial infarction that was used