Teaching skills to promote clinical reasoning in early basic science courses

Basic and superior reasoning skills are woven into the clinical reasoning process just as they are used to solve any problem. As clinical reasoning is the central competence of medical education, development of these reasoning skills should occur throughout the undergraduate medical curriculum. The authors describe here a method of teaching reasoning skills in a clinical context during a human anatomy course. Anat Sci Educ 3:267–271, 2010. © 2010 American Association of Anatomists.     

The visualization of spatial transformations in diagrams of molecular structures

Summaries

English

The investigation sets out to determine in absolute terms the average level of performance of English and Portuguese students in visualizing how diagrams of molecules should be drawn after performing a rotation, reflection or inversion on the molecule itself. A second aim was to determine the factor structure of these tasks. Both aims were investigated using tests comprising samples of items randomly selected from domains of items which operationally defined each task. The results showed that for the students in both countries, the average level of performance on each of these tests was far from satisfactory. The factor structure separated items corresponding to the rotations, reflections and inversions. Within the categories of items corresponding to rotations and reflections, the students from the two different countries give rise to different patterns of loadings for the three different types of rotations and three different types of reflection.     

Sexualities,teenage pregnancy and educational life histories in Portugal: experiencing sexual citizenship?

This article focuses on Portuguese working-class teenage girls’ voices and experiences concerning sexuality and pregnancy. Within a sociological, feminist and educational framework, it explores the girls’ perspective on sexual and intimate citizenship as evidence of fairer forms of regulation of teenage sexualities. Through building life histories of three pregnant and teenage mothers, this article aims to understand how girls rehearse and live out their sexualities and pregnancies as well as listen to their voices and recognise their demand for inclusion and respect. Gender power relations emerge as central in configuring girls’ pathways and shed light on youth pregnancy.     

Mimicking Web search engines for expert search

Many enterprise employees may publish content outside their corporate intranet, making the Web a valuable source for identifying company experts. In this article, we thoroughly investigate the usefulness of Web search engines (WSEs) for expert search. In particular, we claim that the ranking of documentary expertise evidence provided by a WSE should also give an indication of the importance of such evidence. To investigate this, we mimic the rankings of seven different WSEs by trying to reproduce their underlying ranking mechanisms in order to search for candidate experts in the TREC CERC collection. Experimental results show that our approach is effective for expert search, and can significantly improve an intranet-based expert search engine. Moreover, when the mimicking of WSEs is further improved by training, expert search performance is also generally enhanced. Finally, we show that WSEs can be mimicked as effectively using only titles and snippets instead of the full content of WSEs’ results, while drastically reducing network costs.     

Enhanced Finite Spectrum Assignment with disturbance compensation for LTI systems with input delay

This paper presents a Finite Spectrum Assignment (FSA) with a generalized feedforward control for Linear Time-Invariant (LTI) systems with input delay and bounded unmeasured disturbances. A novel two-layer feedforward strategy is proposed in order to deal with matched and unmatched disturbances. The proposed control law is based on a filtered disturbance estimator and a generalized feedforward compensation which can be applied to any Artstein based predictor. An optimization design procedure is presented to improve disturbance attenuation properties in the presence of band-limited disturbances. The conditions to achieve disturbance rejection are also shown to deal with deterministic disturbance models. Furthermore, the proposed solution can be used to define either continuous-time or discrete-time control algorithms. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the benefits of the new approach.     

English language learning difficulty of korean students in a Philippine Multidisciplinary University

This qualitative study analyzed the English language learning difficulties of 13 purposively chosen Korean students relative to their sociolinguistic competence, motivation in using the English language, and cultural factors. Interview responses were transcribed, categorized and thematised according to saliency, meaning and homogeneity. The findings of the study disclosed that, on the whole, while the subjects never had the opportunity to use the English language in Korea, they use it almost everywhere in the Philippines. Their difficulties exist both in daily conversation and in the academic setting. Such difficulties are attributable to both the subjects’ and the Filipinos’ different entry points in the learning and use of English. Despite cultural barriers in communication, however, the Koreans studying in the Philippines are instrumentally motivated to learn the English language.     

Psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of the Éxamen Geronto-Psychomoteur (P-EGP)

ABSTRACT

Aging involves concomitant and interrelated changes in sensory, motor, and cognitive function. There is a decrease in psychomotor skills—such as balance, spatial orientation, mobility, and motor coordination—visible in increased difficulties performing daily instrumental activities (e.g., self care and domestic activities). The absence of valid psychomotor instruments for the elderly population to be used by psychomotor therapists can be identified as one of the reasons why there is a scarce research in this area. Currently, in Portugal, psychomotor therapists do not have any specific, validated scale within the psychomotor domain built and/or adapted to guide psychomotor interventions with the elderly population. Therefore, the aim of this study was the translation, adaptation, and validation of the Portuguese version of the Éxamen Geronto-Psychomoteur (P-EGP) in a population of 497 elders, aged between 60 and 99 years, with and without dementia. Results of the study are presented and discussed in terms of the reliability and validity of P-EGP. The results demonstrate that P-EGP appears to be a valid and reliable assessment of psychomotor skills for the elderly population in Portugal. Practical implications and future directions of research are also discussed.     

Medical Simulation in the Community College Health Science Curriculum: A Matrix for Future Implementation

As the nation's healthcare education system struggles to keep pace with the demand for its services, educators are seeking creative and innovative solutions to meet the needs of a growing number of students. The integration of medical simulation technology into the community college health science curriculum is a creative solution that can meet the needs of healthcare educators and the students they serve, as well as of the healthcare community. This article provides a comprehensive overview of medical simulation, beginning with a review of literature regarding its history and efficacy, continuing with the current state of medical simulation usage, and concluding with implications for practice by offering a matrix for simulation integration and implementation. While Iowa's community colleges are the focus of the current state of usage, the implications for practice are useful to all comprehensive community colleges offering health science education programs.     

The pathways to higher education: lexical availability in adult candidate students and in young first-year students

In the past few years there has been an increase in the number of adult students in higher education courses, many of whom have returned to school after a break. Most of these students do not intend to continue their studies from the point where they stopped; rather, they want to prepare for specific tests in order to have direct access to higher education courses, which in Portugal is a legal option for students over the age of 23. In response to this new cohort, higher education institutions need to find out what kind of students these are, determining their characteristics, capabilities and major problems, if they are to provide them with successful learning opportunities alongside younger students. This article presents a comparative study of lexical competence, focusing on lexical availability, contrasting those adult applicants to higher education who are attending a course preparatory to higher education with first-year students who have just entered higher education. The results show significant differences between the two groups, the adult group in general showing poorer results. Their withdrawal from schooling is clearly reflected in their vocabulary activation with regard to transversal themes. The most salient contrasts are related to the number of words mentioned and the frequency of words in the group, as well as the greater or lesser proximity to the topic of the terms mentioned.