Use, updating and integration of ICT in higher education: Linking purpose, people and pedagogy

In this article the use, updating and integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for teaching and learning purposes is discussed. Based on an empirical study using interviews and document analysis of the implementation of ICT in five Norwegian universities and colleges, the article analyse a number of factors that are of importance for the implementation of ICT in higher education. The analysis discloses that Norwegian higher education institutions often have adequate economic resources and a rather well developed technical infrastructure and support structure related to the use of ICT. However, attempts to link ICT initiatives to organisational development issues and to human resource management have not been very successful. In the conclusion it is argued that pedagogical issues and organisational and human development aspects must be better linked if ICT is to play a more effective role in teaching and learning in Norwegian higher education.     

Updated generic search filters for finding studies of adverse drug effects in Ovid medline and Embase may retrieve up to 90% of relevant studies

Background

The most current objectively derived search filters for adverse drug effects are 15 years old and other strategies have not been developed and tested empirically.

Objective

To develop and validate search filters to retrieve evidence on adverse drug effects from Ovid medline and Ovid Embase.

Methods

We identified systematic reviews of adverse drug effects in Epistemonikos. From these reviews, we collated their included studies which we then randomly divided into three tests and one validation set of records. We constructed a search strategy to maximise relative recall using word frequency analysis with test set one. This search strategy was then refined using test sets two and three and validated on the final set of records.

Results

Of 107 systematic reviews which met our inclusion criteria, 1948 unique included studies were available from medline and 1980 from Embase. Generic adverse drug effects searches in medline and Embase achieved 90% and 89% relative recall, respectively. When specific adverse effects terms were added recall was improved.

Conclusion

We have derived and validated search filters that retrieve around 90% of records with adverse drug effects data in medline and Embase. The addition of specific adverse effects terms is required to achieve higher recall.     

Computer-based learning of spelling skills in children with and without dyslexia

Our spelling training software recodes words into multisensory representations comprising visual and auditory codes. These codes represent information about letters and syllables of a word. An enhanced version, developed for this study, contains an additional phonological code and an improved word selection controller relying on a phoneme-based student model. We investigated the spelling behavior of children by means of learning curves based on log-file data of the previous and the enhanced software version. First, we compared the learning progress of children with dyslexia working either with the previous software (n = 28) or the adapted version (n = 37). Second, we investigated the spelling behavior of children with dyslexia (n = 37) and matched children without dyslexia (n = 25). To gain deeper insight into which factors are relevant for acquiring spelling skills, we analyzed the influence of cognitive abilities, such as attention functions and verbal memory skills, on the learning behavior. All investigations of the learning process are based on learning curve analyses of the collected log-file data. The results evidenced that those children with dyslexia benefit significantly from the additional phonological cue and the corresponding phoneme-based student model. Actually, children with dyslexia improve their spelling skills to the same extent as children without dyslexia and were able to memorize phoneme to grapheme correspondence when given the correct support and adequate training. In addition, children with low attention functions benefit from the structured learning environment. Generally, our data showed that memory sources are supportive cognitive functions for acquiring spelling skills and for using the information cues of a multi-modal learning environment.     

Predicting and explaining students’ stress with the Demand–Control Model: does neuroticism also matter?

University students often report high stress levels, and studies even suggest a recent increase. However, there is a lack of theoretically based research on the structural conditions that influence students’ perceived stress. The current study compared the effects of Karasek’s demand–control dimensions with the influence of neuroticism to address environmental and individual characteristics related to stress. Two points of measurement were included: T1 in the middle of the term and T2 during the examination period. Participants were 146 psychology students at two German universities (M_age = 22.6 years). We applied an adapted version of Karasek’s Job Content Questionnaire, a self-developed stress scale, and the 21-item Big-Five-Inventory. At T1, both neuroticism and demands significantly predicted stress (total adjusted R² = .40), although relative weights analyses indicated that the contribution of demands was more pronounced (relative importance: 63%). Longitudinally, controlling for stress at T1, the demand–control dimensions explained additional variance in the increased stress level at T2, whereas neuroticism did not contribute additionally (R² = .52). Results indicate that self-reports on stress among university students are not only a reflection of underlying negative affectivity. We conclude that perceived stress can be explained by structural conditions rather than personality, providing opportunities to reduce stress among students.     

INTELLECTUAL VERSUS WISDOM-RELATED KNOWLEDGE: THE CASE FOR A DIFFERENT KIND OF LEARNING IN THE LATER YEARS OF LIFE

Lifelong learning and continued education are essential for older people who want to stay involved in a rapidly changing world. However, in the later years of life, it may be even more important to acquire the timeless and universal knowledge of wisdom. Whereas intellectual knowledge enables elderly people to stay involved in worldly affairs, wisdom-related knowledge helps them to prepare for the physical and social decline of old age and ultimately their own death. Moreover, while intellectual knowledge tends to decrease with advancing age, the relationship between wisdom and aging is potentially positive, provided that cognitive deterioration does not become pathological. By illustrating the difference between intellectual and wisdom-related knowledge in the areas of goals, approach, range, acquisition, effects on the knower, and relation to aging, it is argued that wisdom rather than intellectual knowledge is crucial for aging well.     

A pragmatic critical appraisal instrument for search filters: introducing the CADTH CAI

Objective: To identify or develop a critical appraisal instrument (CAI) to aid in the selection of search filters for use in systematic review searching. The CAI is to be used by experienced searchers without specialized training in statistics or search filter design. Methods: Through extensive searching and consultation, one candidate instrument was identified. Through expert consultation and several rounds of testing, the instrument was extensively revised to become the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) CAI. Results: The CADTH CAI consists of ten questions and can be applied by experienced searchers with a moderate knowledge of search filter methodology. Conclusion: The CADTH CAI provides experienced searchers with a means of selecting the search filter that is most methodologically sound.     

Generating gene summaries from biomedical literature: A study of semi-structured summarization

Most knowledge accumulated through scientific discoveries in genomics and related biomedical disciplines is buried in the vast amount of biomedical literature. Since understanding gene regulations is fundamental to biomedical research, summarizing all the existing knowledge about a gene based on literature is highly desirable to help biologists digest the literature. In this paper, we present a study of methods for automatically generating gene summaries from biomedical literature. Unlike most existing work on automatic text summarization, in which the generated summary is often a list of extracted sentences, we propose to generate a semi-structured summary which consists of sentences covering specific semantic aspects of a gene. Such a semi-structured summary is more appropriate for describing genes and poses special challenges for automatic text summarization. We propose a two-stage approach to generate such a summary for a given gene – first retrieving articles about a gene and then extracting sentences for each specified semantic aspect. We address the issue of gene name variation in the first stage and propose several different methods for sentence extraction in the second stage. We evaluate the proposed methods using a test set with 20 genes. Experiment results show that the proposed methods can generate useful semi-structured gene summaries automatically from biomedical literature, and our proposed methods outperform general purpose summarization methods. Among all the proposed methods for sentence extraction, a probabilistic language modeling approach that models gene context performs the best.