Is life living? Defining death in a technological age

Historically, humanity has assigned death to evil spirits, malevolent gods, and other supernatural agents; but by the eighteenth century, the scientific spirit began to manifest itself through more precise biologic definitions of death. Thanks to modern medical technology, these early scientific views, with their considerable margin for error, gave way in the twentieth century to criteria based on such diverse factors as total lack of response to external stimuli, absence of spontaneous muscular movements, absence of all reflexes, total collapse of the arterial blood pressure, flat electrocardiogram, and flat electroencephalograph tracings. Undoubtedly such difficult matters as organ transplants, wills, homicide, euthanasia, and abortion demand precise definitions of death; but modern medical advances have engendered visions of physical immortality with doctors as the arbiters who often define and determine death. Even so, such one-dimensional, scientific views fail to capture those nebulous social, religious, or spiritual definitions that pervade humanity's definition of death. Humanistic views of death resist the movement of death from the moral realm to a technological order that places people in a system, theory, or chart, where they are thus absolved from fear of freedom. Rather, humanistic definitions demand that humanity step beyond mechanistic definitions of death into a transcendent world of moral choices that guarantee human dignity and worth by ascribing meaning to life and death. These meanings counter the desiccating fear that something like biologic human might, through something called medical technology, defeat something called fate.     

Want to Improve Undergraduate Thesis Writing? Engage Students and Their Faculty Readers in Scientific Peer Review

One of the best opportunities that undergraduates have to learn to write like a scientist is to write a thesis after participating in faculty-mentored undergraduate research. But developing writing skills doesn't happen automatically, and there are significant challenges associated with offering writing courses and with individualized mentoring. We present a hybrid model in which students have the structural support of a course plus the personalized benefits of working one-on-one with faculty. To optimize these one-on-one interactions, the course uses BioTAP, the Biology Thesis Assessment Protocol, to structure engagement in scientific peer review. By assessing theses written by students who took this course and comparable students who did not, we found that our approach not only improved student writing but also helped faculty members across the department--not only those teaching the course--to work more effectively and efficiently with student writers. Students who enrolled in this course were more likely to earn highest honors than students who only worked one-on-one with faculty. Further, students in the course scored significantly better on all higher-order writing and critical-thinking skills assessed.     

Is undergraduate debt an impediment to postgraduate enrolment in England?

Changes to undergraduate student funding arrangements in England have prompted concerns that increased indebtedness will deter graduates from postgraduate study. While it is clear that student debt has increased substantially in recent years, international evidence is equivocal on whether such debt is a deterrent to further study and there is hardly any prior research on this topic in the UK context. Using a large‐scale survey of 2009 and 2012 graduates from six selective English universities, we investigate the association between undergraduate debt, other graduate characteristics and progression to postgraduate study. We find some association of higher debt levels with lower rates of progression to postgraduate study, although this reduces when controlling for other factors, such as degree‐level attainment and subject discipline. Within a multivariate logistic regression model predicting progression to postgraduate study we find that debt is not a statistically significant predictor, although other characteristics are important. This indicates, we suggest, that underlying financial resources, rather than debt per se, are critical in enabling access to postgraduate study. We consider the implications of recently announced loans for postgraduate study in England given these findings.     

Squishing Circuits: Circuitry Learning with Electronics and Playdough in Early Childhood

While circuitry lessons have traditionally been first introduced in late elementary school, they remain challenging conceptually for undergraduates in physics and engineering courses. Seeking to provide a higher quality and earlier introduction to circuitry learning for young children (ages 3–5), this paper investigates the affordances of utilizing the Squishy Circuits toolkit, a circuitry kit that combines circuit components and playdough, as a first introduction. Our study engaged 45 children across three nursery school classrooms in open-ended play with Squishy Circuits toolkits for seven sessions over a period of 2 weeks. Here, we focus on six children in one focal classroom in order to illustrate the concepts that children are developing during play and open exploration with the kits and a range of crafting materials. Findings indicated that the Squishy Circuits toolkit enabled children to explore concepts important to circuitry learning, including current flow, polarity, and connections. Additionally, analysis of whole class conversations before and after the circuitry explorations indicated significant gains in children’s ability to discuss circuitry concepts over the course of the study. Through individual case studies, we illustrate how children enacted these concepts through their play and how the transparency afforded by the toolkit make the big ideas of circuitry visible. This work serves to illustrate how very young children can successfully begin to engage with science topics commonly introduced in later elementary school when those topics are framed through play and discovery with transparent and malleable materials.

     

An examination of major IS planning problems

Knowing what problems to expect in an IS planning exercise enhances the probability of a successful outcome. This study identifies the major IS planning problems associated with the three phases of IS planning: the launching phase, the plan development phase, and the implementation phase. Data were collected using a questionnaire survey mailed to senior IS executives in 600 firms. Of the 175 responses received, 138 responses (comprising firms practising IS planning) were used for data analysis. In all the three phases, failing to secure top management support for the IS planning effort is the most serious problem. Not having free communication flow, and not being able to obtain sufficiently qualified personnel are the other two major problems in the planning phase. In the plan development phase, respondents reported ignoring business goals and failing to translate these goals/strategies into action plans as major problems as well. Neglecting to adjust the IS plan to reflect major environmental changes is the other major problem in the implementation phase. Probable explanations were provided for these and other problems.     

Cadaveric Dissection in Relation to Problem-Based Learning Case Sequencing: A Report of Medical Student Musculoskeletal Examination Performances and Self-Confidence

Mercer University School of Medicine utilizes a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum for educating medical students in the basic clinical sciences. In 2014, an adjustment was piloted that enabled PBL cases to align with their corresponding cadaver dissection that reviewed the content of anatomy contained in the PBL cases. Faculty had the option of giving PBL cases in sequence with the cadaveric dissection schedule (sequential group) or maintaining PBL cases out of sequence with dissections (traditional group). During this adjustment, students’ academic performances were compared. Students’ perception of their own preparedness for cadaveric dissection, their perceived utility of the cadaver dissections, and free-response comments were solicited via an online survey. There were no statistically significant differences when comparing student mean examination score values between the sequential and traditional groups on both multidisciplinary examinations (79.39 ± 7.63 vs. 79.88 ± 7.31, P = 0.738) and gross anatomy questions alone (78.15 ± 10.31 vs. 79.98 ± 9.31, P = 0.314). A statistically significant difference was found between the sequential group's and traditional group's (63% vs. 29%; P = 0.005) self-perceived preparedness for cadaveric dissections in the 2017 class. Analysis of free-response comments found that students in the traditional group believed their performance in PBL group, participation in PBL group and examination performance was adversely affected when compared to students with the sequential schedule. This study provides evidence that cadaveric dissections scheduled in sequence with PBL cases can lead to increased student self-confidence with learning anatomy but may not lead to improved examination scores.     

Complex patterns for kindergartners

Knowing what kinds of patterns are easy for children to recognize early in their kindergarten year, and what kinds are difficult, can be a useful guide for patterning instruction. Hence, the ability of children to recognize complex patterns early in their kindergarten year was assessed in two experiments. One experiment showed that the children were significantly less accurate on patterns made of progressively higher numbers or of letters that came progressively later in the alphabet than on patterns made of clock faces that showed increasing amounts of time or were made of rotating objects. There was an interaction between the type of element of which the pattern was composed and the pattern’s orientation. A second experiment showed that symmetric patterns were easier than growing patterns, and there were effects of orientation and the elements of which a pattern was composed, as well as interactions. This research indicates that instruction on clock faces and rotating objects should precede instruction on letters and numbers, and that symmetric patterns can also be easily understood.     

Preservice teacher education

Conclusion Responsible educators find the need for continual renewal. The rapid advance of technology requires teachers learn new strategies and techniques for the productive use of these tools. The projects described above provided preservice faculty, students, and inservice educators with opportunities to learn about new technologies and to explore innovative uses of the technology. Opportunities to utilize distance education systems, such as the Iowa Communications Network, are numerous throughout the entire teacher preparation process. Iowa teacher educators have the opportunity to prepare their students to be capable classroom teachers who have the knowledge and skills to facilitate learning in an array of educational environments.