The self-directed learning experience of mothers whose child has had a paediatric stroke

This study employed qualitative research methodology to explore the experiences of mothers who self-directed their learning following their child’s stroke diagnosis. Paediatric stroke, although rare, is among the top 10 causes of death in children in the USA, but information about the cause, treatment and long-term impact are difficult to find. Parents struggle to locate resources to help them understand the significance of the stroke, and little research has been conducted to help them identify what to expect as their child grows and develops. Seven women whose children had suffered a stroke participated in individual interviews about their experience for this study. The findings reveal how efforts to learn independently can be challenged by a dearth of information and resources, and how parental roles may change as a result. Mothers shared how they became a subject matter expert and a partner with their physician in terms of decision-making. They also discussed how their learning was continuous, an unremitting process based on each new health challenge that resulted from the stroke. One of the most significant findings is how important facilitators and human resources can be to the success of self-directed learning efforts, especially during a medical crisis.     

New Simulation Methods to Facilitate Achieving a Mechanistic Understanding of Basic Pharmacology Principles in the Classroom

We present a simulation tool to aid the study of basic pharmacology principles. By taking advantage of the properties of agent-based modeling, the tool facilitates taking a mechanistic approach to learning basic concepts, in contrast to the traditional empirical methods. Pharmacodynamics is a particular aspect of pharmacology that can benefit from use of such a tool: students are often taught a list of concepts and a separate list of parameters for mathematical equations. The link between the two can be elusive. While wet-lab experimentation is the proven approach to developing this link, in silico simulation can provide a means of acquiring important insight and understanding within a time frame and at a cost that cannot be achieved otherwise. We suggest that simulations and their representation of laboratory experiments in the classroom can become a key component in student achievement by helping to develop a student’s positive attitude towards science and his or her creativity in scientific inquiry. We present results of two simulation experiments that validate against data taken from current literature. We follow with a classroom example demonstrating how this tool can be seamlessly integrated within the traditional pharmacology learning experience.     

The Organization and Structure of Community Education Offerings in Community Colleges

One of the key services community colleges provide is community education, meaning those programs and activities that are often offered for leisure or self-improvement and not for credit. Programs of this nature are increasingly challenged to be self-financing, whether through user fees or externally funded grants. The current study explored 75 community college community education offerings and found that most offered over 50 distinct community education programs, with less than half of those being self-funded. These colleges typically relied on a professional program director to administer programs; and, most frequently, these individuals reported through a division of academic or student affairs. Among other findings, the majority of community education programs profiled were classified as leisure education, although there were large numbers of programs that related to some distinct element of a community (such a national forest, historic downtown, etc.). Study findings highlighted the need for community college leaders to find balance between community needs and financial responsibility. This includes taking on the responsibility for hosting programs that might be financially unviable, but might meet a strong community need.     

拮抗细菌在生防领域的应用概述

本文论述了拮抗细菌在生物防治各领域的应用现状,总结了拮抗细菌应用存在的主要问题,并对应用前景进行了展望.     

Information transfer in city government

Innovative research addressing information use patterns is needed to test theory which can serve as a conceptual framework for planning and evaluating information delivery systems. The research project reported here uses structured observation to examine information transfer patterns in city government. Results and implications for public libraries are reported.     

The contributions of social learning to language acquisition

Psycholinguists have often lost sight of the functions of language in their search for structural regularities. This paper focuses on three social learning variables whose roles in language development have often been discounted. Feedback or reinforcement has been said to be unrelated to grammatical development since parents tend to reinforce the truth instead of the grammar of their children's utterances. But evidence is presented showing that feedback for the child's comprehension responses can affect production of grammatical forms. Modeling or imitation has been said to be unimportant in grammatical development because most children's utterances are novel and because the frequency of imitation appears unrelated to the rate of language growth. But evidence is presented showing how many utterances can be both imitative and novel and showing that the role of these selective imitations has not been assessed properly in many studies. Contextual constraints on language have been considered unimportant in many psycholinguistic theories. But evidence is presented showing that communicative competence is related critically to the ability to adjust utterances to contextual constraints and that the language of the young child is deficient in this regard. The educational advantages of a functional analysis of language are discussed.     

E-Books as Non-interactive Textual Compositions: An Argument for Simplicity over Complexity in Future E-Book Formats

This paper serves to qualify the present form of the e-book as one of many different kinds of digital compositions, or voluntarily consumed digital media. This paper also aims to show how future e-books, by virtue of its responsive nature and higher text-to-nontext ratio compared to other digital compositions, may only iterate into simpler formats (emphasis on textual components) as opposed to more complicated formats (emphasis on audiovisual components). This is due in part to consumer and market expectations of the e-book as well as limitations for the e-book as a medium. Because of this, I predict the next iteration for the e-book—the web book—will exist almost entirely in web applications.