Gaining ‘Raw Insider Knowledge’: The Benefits and Challenges of International Study Tours for Creative Industries Students

International short‐term study tours are a fast‐growing format for outbound education and provide exciting experiential learning opportunities for students in the creative industries disciplines. This success has encouraged researchers to seek a comprehensive view of the various concrete experiences that contribute to student learning during study tours. To that end, this article presents evidence from a qualitative online post‐tour questionnaire administered with students studying various art and design disciplines who participated in short‐term international study tours at a large Australian university in 2015. Using Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory as a framework, data collected explored student perceptions of which concrete experiences on a study tour are most impactful and which may actually hinder learning. Findings revealed: experiencing key industry venues are the most significant aspects of a study tour, rather than networking or personal growth; poor itinerary planning and travel issues are the least liked aspects of a tour, yet are often the most easily addressed with better tour management and planning; and students were positively impacted by unexpected gains in knowledge about their creative industries discipline. This study, therefore, provides unique insights into which concrete experiences may be most impactful as part of the experiential learning cycle within an international study tour for creative industries students.     

Report of a trial with lyophilised QC sera in the CMCH/ACBI EQAS programmes in India

2000 vials of lyophilized QC of two different levels (low and high) were donated by Roche Diagnostics GmbH, through the IFCC and received by CMCH in June 2001. A total of 240 la boratories were enrolled for this 6 month pilot study. In addition to the 12 analytes in the liquid QC programme, six additional analytes, LDH, triglyceride, urate, total bilirubin, phosphate and amylase were included. It was also possible to measure sodium and potassium by ion selective electrode (ISE) methods in the QC for the first time. The performance of the laboratories for the existing 12 analytes using liquid stabilized QC was compared to the performance using lyophilized QC. Using a statistical comparison of the methodwise mean variance index score (MVIS) values, five assays viz glucose, albumin, cholesterol, and SGOT and SGPT performance was the same in liquid QC and lyophilized QC. Three assays viz urea, calcium and creatinine were significantly better, and 4 assays total protein, sodium, potassium and ALP were significantly worse. However the overall VIS (OMVIS) for the laboratories was the same and the ranking pattern of this 6 month OMVIS was also unaltered. The lyophilized QC scheme highlighted a negative bias between flame and ISE methods for sodium and potassium, and a definite standardization problem in reporting LDH and amylase results, but triglyceride, urate and total bilirubin assays were performing well. It was concluded that the introduction of lyophilized QCs will not cause any deterioration of performance to participating laboratories. Stability of the material seems to be good and the laboratories are generally using a good reconstitution technique.     

Interference in autoanalyzer analysis

This paper presents certain simple procedures for assessing the most common types of interference, due to haemolysis, icterus or lipaemic serum in 19 routine Clinical Chemistry tests and suggests steps to overcome the problem in some tests. A change in the measured concentration, to be analytically significant, had to exceed 2.8 X % coefficient of variation (cv) of the intra-assay analytical variation of each assay. Haemolysis caused interference in 10 of the 19 assays investigated. A haemolysate haemoglobin concentration of 0.29 g/dl, visible to the eye, caused an analytically significant increase in creatinine kinase MB subunit (CKMB), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), total protein, triglyceride, uric acid and urea, and a significant decrease in alkaline phosphatase (ALP), and total bilirubin. A higher concentration of haemoglobin (0.68 g/ dl) caused an additional significant increase in CK, and a decrease in direct bilirubin. Addition of bilirubin caused interference in all the peroxidase linked reactions as well as in the creatinine assay. At a serum concentration of 5.2 mg/dl it caused a decrease in creatinine, glucose, triglyceride and uric acid. At a higher concentration (15.9 mg/dl) it also decreased cholesterol. Lipaemia interference affected the least number of assays. An added triglyceride of 537–561 mg/dl caused an increase in glucose, uric acid, and amylase. At a level of 1122 mg/dl it also increased CKMB, and at a value of 2244 mg/dl it increased total and direct bilirubin. At the highest levels of haemolysis and lipaemia, the serum glutamate oxaloacetate transaminase (GOT) and giutamate pyruvate transaminase (GPT) gave erratic results. Overall uric acid and CKMB were the analytes most susceptible to interference, while serum caicium and phosphate did not suffer from any. The interference depends on the exact assay conditions used and the susceptibility of each individual laboratory's tests should be determined by them. The reasons for the interferences described are discussed.     

The Developing Bodily Self: How Posture Constrains Body Representation in Childhood

Adults’ body representation is constrained by multisensory information and knowledge of the body such as its possible postures. This study (N = 180) tested for similar constraints in children. Using the rubber hand illusion with adults and 6- to 7-year olds, we measured proprioceptive drift (an index of hand localization) and ratings of felt hand ownership. The fake hand was either congruent or incongruent with the participant’s own. Across ages, congruency of posture and visual–tactile congruency yielded greater drift toward the fake hand. Ownership ratings were higher with congruent visual–tactile information, but unaffected by posture. Posture constrains body representation similarly in children and adults, suggesting that children have sensitive, robust mechanisms for maintaining a sense of bodily self.     

Early Intervention for Behaviour Problems in Young Children with Developmental Disabilities

This article reviews research on intervention for young children with dual developmental and behavioural problems. It makes a case for intervention to include family variables and to occur in the preschool years. Behaviour problems are common in young children with developmental disabilities. If untreated these problems are likely to persist and become more challenging and severe in adulthood. Behaviour problems interfere with cognitive, social and emotional development, create additional family stress, often lead to exclusion from community services, and result in additional financial costs to the community. Intervention research provides some support for the effectiveness of parent management training and interventions based upon applied behaviour analysis. However, randomised controlled trials with adequate follow-up periods are required, along with the measurement of outcomes for the family as a whole.     

Emotional Feeding and Emotional Eating: Reciprocal Processes and the Influence of Negative Affectivity

Emotional eating, that is, eating more in response to negative mood, is often seen in children. But the origins of emotional eating remain unclear. In a representative community sample of Norwegian 4‐year‐olds followed up at ages 6, 8, and 10 years (analysis sample: n = 801), one potential developmental pathway was examined: a reciprocal relation between parental emotional feeding and child emotional eating. The results revealed that higher levels of emotional feeding predicted higher levels of emotional eating and vice versa, adjusting for body mass index and initial levels of feeding and eating. Higher levels of temperamental negative affectivity (at age 4) increased the risk for future emotional eating and feeding.     

Agents of aspiration: the (often unintended) benefits to university students working in outreach programmes

Background: Universities in many countries increasingly deliver outreach programmes to raise aspirations and encourage participation in higher education. At the University of Canberra in Australia, these programmes target schools that have been identified as having a large number of students from rural/regional, financially disadvantaged and/or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds – groups that continue to be underrepresented in higher education. Involved in the delivery of these programmes are current university students – at the University of Canberra termed ‘Aspiration Agents’ – many of whom come from similar backgrounds to the students with whom they work. Although not the focus of the outreach programmes, the Aspiration Agents themselves also derive benefits from the experience.

Purpose: This research aimed to explore the reasons why students choose to become Aspiration Agents, and the perceived benefits of the mentoring/ambassador role.

Sample, Design and Methods: The data collection comprised two small-scale exploratory questionnaire studies (N = 12; N = 20). Qualitative methods were used to investigate participants’ self-reported motivations for, and experiences of being Aspiration Agents.

Findings: Findings suggest that students perceived benefits in personal, student-related and future professional domains. Dominating all these areas, however, was the recurring theme that the students were both motivated to, and derived satisfaction from, helping others. These findings are discussed in terms of the specific role of the Aspiration Agent and how this form of employment can positively, rather than negatively, impact on the student’s own university experience.     

Using item response theory to describe the Nonverbal Literacy Assessment (NVLA)

The Nonverbal Literacy Assessment (NVLA) is a literacy assessment designed for students with significant intellectual disabilities. The 218‐item test was initially examined using confirmatory factor analysis. This method showed that the test worked as expected, but the items loaded onto a single factor. This article uses item response theory to investigate the NVLA using Rasch models. First, we reduced the number of items using a unidimensional model, which resulted in high levels of test reliability despite decreasing the number of questions, providing the same information about student abilities in less time. Second, the multidimensional analysis indicated that it is possible to view the NVLA as a test with four dimensions, resulting in more detailed information about student abilities. Finally, we combined these approaches to obtain both specificity and brevity, with a four‐dimensional model using 133 items from the original NVLA.     

Prosodic awareness and children’s multisyllabic word reading

Prosodic awareness (the rhythmic patterning of speech) accounts for unique variance in reading development. However, studies have thus far focused on early readers and utilised literacy measures which fail to distinguish between monosyllabic and multisyllabic words. The current study investigated the factors that are specifically associated with multisyllabic word reading in a sample of 50 children aged between 7 and 8 years. Prosodic awareness was the strongest predictor of multisyllabic word reading accuracy, after controlling for phoneme awareness, morphological awareness, vocabulary and short-term memory. Children also made surprisingly few phonemic errors while, in contrast, errors of stress assignment were commonplace. Prosodic awareness was also the strongest predictor of stress placement errors, although this finding was not significant. Prosodic skills may play an increasingly important role in literacy performance as children encounter more complex reading materials. Once phoneme-level skills are mastered, prosodic awareness is arguably the strongest predictor of single word reading.