Delivering Food Safety Education to Middle School Students Using a Web-Based, Interactive, Multimedia, Computer Program

ABSTRACT:  More than 76 million persons become ill from foodborne pathogens in the United States each year. To reduce these numbers, food safety education efforts need to be targeted at not only adults, but school children as well. The middle school grades are ideal for integrating food safety education into the curriculum while simultaneously contributing to national and state education standards in science, technology, and family and consumer sciences. For this project, a multimedia, self-paced online resource for delivering a food safety curriculum to middle school children was developed. Animated characters were used to deliver the lesson content. The application also included video segments, quiz feedback, and interactive games and activities. The effectiveness of the Web site was evaluated using validated cognitive and attitudinal assessment tools, and by comparing student cognitive gains to individual student learning styles. Participants were recruited from 6 middle schools in 5 states, totaling 217 students (20 sixth graders, 157 seventh graders, and 40 eighth graders). The results show that students had statistically significant modest gains in pretest to posttest knowledge and enjoyed using the Web site. The 6th grade students had significantly lower pretest to posttest improvement compared to 7th and 8th grade students, suggesting that this program may not be appropriate for this grade level. Furthermore, the results indicate that this Web-based computer application meets the needs of varying individual student learning styles.     

Let the Questions Be Your Guide: MBE as Interdisciplinary Science

From its inception, the field of Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) has been conceived as an interdisciplinary science, and with good reason: The phenomena the field aims to understand often arise from interactions among multiple factors, span levels of analysis, and are context dependent. In this article, we argue that to reach its potential as an interdisciplinary science—and in order to explain such complex phenomena—MBE must be fundamentally organized around meaningful, discipline‐spanning questions, and the questions must determine tools and research methods (not the other way around). Using examples from three central questions in MBE—“who,”“when,” and “how”—we highlight the limits of single disciplines, and the value of a question‐driven interdisciplinary approach in MBE, with respect to questions that can be asked, the perspectives that can be considered, and the array of methods, tools, and models that can be made available. We believe that the future is bright for MBE, and that the field has a unique opportunity to provide meaningful answers to some of the most difficult questions in education today. However, realizing this potential depends on, as a first step, allowing the questions themselves to drive the field's work moving forward.     

When antecedents diverge: Exploring novelty and value as dimensions of creativity

Though an ongoing debate exists concerning how creativity should be defined and measured, it is generally agreed upon that creativity is the generation of ideas that are novel and of value ( [Amabile, 1996] and [Hennessey and Amabile, 2010] ). Yet most studies treat creativity as a black box in regards to the nature of the relationships between some commonly known antecedents of creativity and its two prime components, namely novelty and value. This is the issue we address in this exploratory paper as we look at antecedents that are similarly related and differentially related to novelty and value. We propose that such relationships could have an impact on creative outcomes in organizations. We also discuss potential implications for broader application to practitioners interested in learning how to boost their employee creativity and organizational innovativeness.     

Parent Involvement with Their Children's Schools: Perceptions of Saudi Parents of Elementary School Students with Learning Disabilities

This exploratory, qualitative study investigated the perceptions of Saudi Arabian parents of elementary school-aged children with learning disabilities with regard to their involvement in their children's education. Guided by results of previous research conducted primarily with Western samples, and using a semistructured interview methodology followed by thematic phenomenological analyses, specific interview topics included parental perceptions of (a) the importance of parent–school partnerships, (b) the means of encouraging a parent–school relationship, and (c) how school practices may affect parental participation. The study involved 13 parents of children in elementary education (ages 7–12 years) diagnosed with learning disabilities. The results suggest several ways to overcome the involvement barriers reported by parents.     

The role of spatial ability in mixed reality learning with the HoloLens

The use of mixed reality in science education has been increasing and as such it has become more important to understand how information is learned in these virtual environments. Spatial ability is important in many learning contexts, but especially in neuroanatomy education where learning the locations and spatial relationships between brain regions is paramount. It is currently unclear what role spatial ability plays in mixed reality learning environments, and whether it is different compared to traditional physical environments. To test this, a learning experiment was conducted where students learned neuroanatomy using both mixed reality and a physical plastic model of a brain (N = 27). Spatial ability was assessed and analyzed to determine its effect on performance across the two learning modalities. The results showed that spatial ability facilitated learning in mixed reality (β = 0.21, P = 0.003), but not when using a plastic model (β = 0.08, P = 0.318). A non-significant difference was observed between the modalities in terms of knowledge test performance (d = 0.39, P = 0.052); however, mixed reality was more engaging (d = 0.59, P = 0.005) and learners were more confident in the information they learned compared to using a physical model (d = 0.56, P = 0.007). Overall, these findings suggest that spatial ability is more relevant in virtual learning environments, where the ability to manipulate and interact with an object is diminished or abstracted through a virtual user interface.     

Development of Instruments to Assess Teacher and Student Perceptions of Inquiry Experiences in Science Classrooms

This study describes the development of two instruments to investigate the extent to which students are engaged in scientific inquiry. As a result of the instrument development process employed, each finalized instrument consisted of 20-items separated into five categories. Both instruments were found to be internally consistent, with high reliability estimates. Factor analysis showed two factors for each instrument that, while not clustering the items into the five categories, did show item clustering that is consistent with research literature about students’ engagement in inquiry experiences. Based on the analyses completed, the instruments appear to be useful instruments for use in comprehensive assessment packages for assessing the extent to which students are experiencing inquiry in science classrooms.