REVIEW: The Monster Who Did My Math

Review of the children\u27s book The Monster Who Did My Math, written by Danny Schnitzlein and illustrated by Bill Mayer

Sharon\u27s Story: Pave the Way

A first-person narrative about life in Dayton, Ohio, composed as part of the Facing Project, a nationwide storytelling initiative

Simulation Enhances Soft Skills Among Inter-Professionals Participating in an International Service-Learning Experience to a Resource-Limited Country

Soft skills are the hallmark of a master healthcare provider. One of the most effective ways to teach soft skills is through service-learning. Evidence suggests that adding simulation as part of a service-learning team’s pre-departure training (PDT) will better prepare them to resolve ethical and cultural dilemmas plus facilitate soft skills. We hypothesized that simulation could improve soft skills of healthcare providers delivering rehabilitation services on a one-week service-learning experience in Guatemala A convenience sample of 21 physical and occupational therapy students and clinicians who participated in four 1-hour PDTs were included in this qualitative study using grounded-theory methods. Training consisted of didactic, reflective and simulation components designed to introduce self-awareness, team-building, cultural knowledge, and to support trip preparations. Four debriefings were recorded using open-ended questions with a thematic approach around the concept of preparedness and cultural adaptability. Six themes emerged: confidence, empathy, communication, mentorship, self-knowledge, and cultural competency. Themes described embodied elements of empowering students towards advocacy and process improvement. Providers reported that the simulation experience better enabled them to respond to distressing situations and utilize their soft skills. Simulation for enhancement of international service-learning experiences is recommended to prepare for the ethical and cultural demands of resource-limited countries

Simulation Enhances Soft Skills Among Inter-Professionals Participating in an International Service-Learning Experience to a Resource-Limited Country

Introduction: Soft skills are the hallmark of a master healthcare provider. One of the most effective ways to teach soft skills to healthcare providers is through service-learning. Evidence suggests that adding simulation as part of a service-learning team’s pre-departure training (PDT) will better prepare them to resolve ethical and cultural dilemmas often encountered in resource-limited countries, plus facilitate soft skills. We hypothesized that simulation could improve soft skills of physical and occupational therapy students and clinicians providing rehabilitation services on a one-week service-learning experience in Guatemala. Methods: A convenience sample of 21 physical and occupational therapy students and clinicians who participated in four 1-hour PDTs were included in this qualitative study using grounded-theory methods. Training consisted of didactic, reflective and simulation components designed to introduce self-awareness, team-building, cultural knowledge, and to support trip preparations. Four debriefings were recorded using open-ended questions with a thematic approach around the concepts of preparedness and cultural adaptability, which represented the dependent variables. The independent variable was a 20-minute simulation emphasizing cultural and socio-emotional challenges of the host community. Results: Six themes emerged: confidence, empathy, communication, mentorship, self-knowledge, and cultural competency. The themes described were core elements of empowering the participants towards advocacy and process improvement. As a result of the simulation experience, participants in this study were better able to respond to distressing situations encountered on site, and they expressed the service-learning experience, supported by the PDT simulation, stirred significant maturation. Discussion and Conclusion: Simulation is useful for developing self-regulatory skills, especially in response to culturally novel, emotionally-charged situations. Simulation for enriching international service-learning experiences is recommended as best practice to prepare healthcare providers in facing ethical and cultural demands of resource-limited countries

Introduction - Exploring Foundations: Languages of Disability, Identity, and Culture

Produced by Hawai'i University Affiliated Program on Disabilities, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawai'i, Frank Sawyer School of Management, Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts, and School of Social Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas for The Society for Disability Studies

Community-based post-editing of machine-translated content: monolingual vs. bilingual

We carried out a machine-translation postediting pilot study with users of an IT support forum community. For both language pairs (English to German, English to French), 4 native speakers for each language were recruited. They performed monolingual and bilingual postediting tasks on machine-translated forum content. The post-edited content was evaluated using human evaluation (fluency, comprehensibility, fidelity). We found that monolingual post-editing can lead to improved fluency and comprehensibility scores similar to those achieved through bilingual post-editing, while we found that fidelity improved considerably more for the bilingual set-up. Furthermore, the performance across post-editors varied greatly and it was found that some post-editors are able to produce better quality in a monolingual set-up than others

Energy balance and the sphingosine-1-phosphate/ceramide axis

Peer reviewedPublisher PD