Information Handling Skills, Cognition and New Technologies

Few would dispute the efficacy of multimedia technology and the world wide web in promoting declarative knowledge or the acquisition of facts. It is the argument of this paper however that, apart from assisting a learner in "knowing that", these technologies are underestimated in their capacity to facilitate intellectual skills—procedural knowledge or "knowing how". Via examples from children employing information handling skills with a CD-ROM, this paper attempts to illustrate the ways in which new technologies support and enhance a range of skills associated with deep level processing and meaningful learning such as metacognition, problem solving and critical thinking.     

Regarding the Dead: A Model for Anatomical Gifting Outside the Traditional Medical School Setting

In 2017, Elon University became one of very few universities in the United States without a medical school to have an in-house Anatomical Gift Program (AGP). The program accepts first-person-consenting individuals only and within 2.5 years has become self-sufficient, supporting anatomy curricular needs of its physical therapy, physician assistant, and undergraduate biology and anthropology programs (n = 21 donors annually). This paper describes the timeline, costs, and benefits of developing an in-house AGP at a university without a medical school. Policy development, public outreach, equipment needs, and cost benefits are discussed. Within 2.5 years of program opening, the AGP Director delivered 161 educational outreach presentations at 86 different venues across the state providing information on anatomical gifting. The program registered 320 individuals (60% female, 40% male) and enrolled 41 deceased donors (69% female, 31% male; average age of 74.6 at time of registration and 74.8 at donation). During the first seven months of the program, donor preparation costs (with outsourcing for transport/donor preparation/document filing/serology testing/cremation) averaged US$ 2,100 per donor. Over the past 23 months, donor preparation has been completed on site, lowering the cost per donor to US$ 1,260. Other costs include personnel salaries, legal fees, and outfitting of the anatomy laboratory and preparatory room. Program benefits include support of anatomy education on campus, assurance that all donors have given first-person consent, and faculty/student access to donor-determined health, social, and occupational information. Faculty, staff, and students contribute to the daily operations of the AGP.     

Exploring weighted student formulas as a policy for improving equity for distributing resources to schools: A case study of two California school districts

This paper presents a case study of two California school districts, San Francisco and Oakland, each of which have implemented their own versions of what is popularly known as a weighted student formula (WSF). One primary goal of the WSF policy is to increase the equity with which resources are distributed to schools. With respect to equity, the findings suggest that for particular schooling levels per-pupil spending became more responsive to student poverty and that the increase in responsiveness appears to have coincided with implementation of the WSF in the two districts. Moreover, each district relies on a different mechanism for driving resources to the schools: San Francisco relying to a greater degree on the unrestricted funds, while Oakland relies more heavily on restricted sources which, as directed by law, drive dollars to special need populations. Interestingly, neither district exhibited any significant change in the distribution of teacher experience after implementation of their SBF models; schools serving the highest proportion of students from low-income families continued to employ teachers with the least experience after implementation of the SBF models. While an additional goal of WSF was to drive more resources down to the school level to be spent, our analysis found little substantial change in the proportion of resources expended at the school versus the district level.     

Keeping dissection alive for medical students

Traditional dissection teaching is being reduced in a number of medical schools, particularly in the United Kingdom. In response to this, 12 medical students from Warwick University, UK, traveled to the Island of Grenada for an intensive extracurricular dissection course at St. George's University. This course not only benefited the host university through the creation of prosections for teaching but also allowed the participants to completely immerse themselves in anatomical study, by developing their dissection skills and consolidating anatomical knowledge. We believe that similar courses could be easily implemented by other medical schools, thereby allowing future students to keep traditional dissection alive. Anat Sci Educ 2: 302–303, 2009. © 2009 American Association of Anatomists.     

Multi-informant assessment of treatment integrity in the classroom

Assessing the degree to which interventions are implemented in school settings is critical to making decisions about student outcomes. School psychologists may not be available to regularly conduct observations of intervention implementation, however, their data may be used alongside other methods for multi-informant assessment. Teacher self-report is a commonly used and feasible assessment method. Students have been trained to implement interventions with their peers in instances where traditional adult interventionists were unavailable. This exploratory study investigated the accuracy with which classroom teachers and middle and high school students assessed implementation of the Good Behavior Game and the impact of performance feedback on their accuracy. Results indicated that most students and teachers were able to provide accurate assessments of treatment integrity compared to researcher direct observation; however, some required performance feedback to do so. These findings suggest that multi-informant assessment may be a feasible and accurate way for school psychologists to collect formative treatment-integrity data in the classroom. Limitations and future directions are discussed.