Podcasts on Mobile Devices as a Read-Aloud Testing Accommodation in Middle School Science Assessment

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a digitized podcast to deliver read-aloud testing accommodations on mobile devices to students with disabilities and reading difficulties. The total sample for this study included 47 middle school students with reading difficulties. Of the 47 students, 16 were identified as students with disabilities who received special education services. Participants were randomly assigned to three experimental testing conditions, standard administration, teacher-controlled read-aloud in traditional group delivery format, and student-controlled read-aloud delivered as a podcast and accessed on a mobile device, and given sample end-of-year science assessments. Based on a factorial analysis of variances, with test conditions and student status as the fixed factors, both student groups demonstrated statistically significant gains based on their testing conditions. Results support the use of podcast delivery as a viable alternative to the traditional teacher-delivered read-aloud test accommodation. Conclusions are discussed in the context of universal design for learning testing accommodations for future research and practice.     

Integrating e-Learning into the workplace

The significance of e-Learning and knowledge management at the workplace cannot be overemphasized. With the rapid change in all types of working environments, especially medical and healthcare environments, there is a constant need to rapidly train and retrain people in new technologies, products, and services found within the environment. There is also a constant and unrelenting need for appropriate management and leveraging of the knowledge base so that it is readily available and accessible to all stakeholders within the workplace environment. In addition, within the medical and healthcare setting, certain other factors reinforce this need for constant refreshing, training, and retraining of its workers. These factors are outlined below:

• Heightened expectations for improved quality of healthcare services from an increasingly aware and empowered public,

• Acute shortage of doctors and other healthcare professionals (requiring “multitasking” efforts from individuals and thus “forced” learning of new skill sets),

• Heterogeneous standards of healthcare as practised by medical practitioners necessitating policies designed to audit and streamline medical and healthcare practices as per enforcement of minimal credit points to be tied up to issuance/renewal of annual practicing certificates (APC),

• Increased complexity of healthcare services, technologies and products, and,

• Accelerated technological changes.

Our TeleHealth Initiative intends to implement this integration into the healthcare setting workplace via the following applications, namely:

• Just-in-time Continuing Medical Education (CME), which refers to significant and relevant information that can value-add to patient management at the appropriate time and appropriate segment of encounter,

• Formal Distant Education (FDE), which refers to electronic courses delivered online resulting in award of certificates conferred by accredited academic institutions or agencies,

• Modular Distance Learning (MDL), which refers to packaged learning modules designed to maintain competencies and to excel at relevant knowledge and skills which are tied in to issuance/renewal of practising licenses of the healthcare professionals, and,

• Personalised CME, which refers to knowledge, information, and skill sets pushed to healthcare professionals tailored to their areas of expertise, interest, and need.

The solutions as outlined above will be delivered via Internet-based content accredited by relevant authorities. This paper describes our mission to integrate e-Learning into health-related settings and into the routine daily life of medical and healthcare professionals.     

The Laser Academy: An After-School Program to Promote Interest in Technology Careers

We present a review of an after-school program that has been running at Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York for the past 5 years. The program is unique among after-school activities for high school students in several ways. First, it deliberately focuses on students who do not excel in science and math courses and students who are unsure about a college career. Second, it targets typically underrepresented minorities in the technology fields, namely blacks, Hispanics, and women. Third, it introduces these students to high-tech career options which do not require 4 years of college. The goal of the program is to make the students aware of technician-level careers and to give them a chance to learn the skills needed for such careers in order to help them make an informed decision about their future.     

Active social policy meets the discipline of the Australian marketplace: the outcomes of mobile policies

Many advanced market democracies pursue social justice by bundling together a range of programmes represented as active social policy. Northern European exemplars sanction employment as an economic and social citizen’s civic obligation, promote lifelong learning and place welfare payments as a last resort. In the United States, market-based post-school education financed by guaranteed student loans was developed as a policy alternative. Australian politicians have embraced elements of both, resulting in a massive reduction in public delivery of vocational education and training in favour of multimillion dollar, stock exchange-listed private providers. The resultant amalgam of active labour market policy and free market principles positions standard setting as a regulatory mechanism and in support of cross-jurisdictional market operations. This paper explores the interaction between active policy and demands of the market while speaking to wider issues that arise when a government first creates and then intervenes in markets.     

Education and poverty reduction in the periphery: Can the new development assistance model achieve its goals in lao peoples democratic republic?

Although there has been dramatic economic development in parts of Asia approximately one-third of the Asian population live in poverty. In response to the persistence of poverty a new international development assistance model supported by the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and many other international agencies is emerging with a major focus on alleviation of po paper will examine educational implications of the new model in one of Asia’s poorest countries, Lao Peoples Democratic Republic. Attention is given to: (1) the changing social, economic and policy contexts within which Lao education functions; (2) the strategic concepts associated with the model of poverty reduction; (3) two potential scenarios of propoor educational change; and (4) assessment of the feasibility of each scenario in increasing the equality of educational and social opportunities for the poor.     

Examining the Exam: A Critical Look at The California Critical Thinking Skills Test

This paper examines the content of The California Critical Thinking Skills Test (1990). This report is not a statistical review. Instead it brings under scrutiny the content of the exam. This content will be of interest to the general reader, because the issues range from logic to ethics to pedagogy, and to questions of evidential and epistemological support. Anyone interested in clear thought and expression will find these issues of significance. Although the exam has a number of strengths and has the clearest instructions of all the presently available Critical Thinking exams, the content of 9 of the exams 34 questions is defective, namely the content of questions 6, 7, 8, 19, 21, 23, 24, 29, and 33. These questions make errors in critical thinking. Hence, no statistical results pertaining to the administration of these questions to students can be acceptable. The remaining questions are acceptable as to content. But until the problems are corrected, those who may use the exam should remove the defective questions from test administration or from data collection and reporting.The scope of the exam also is quite limited, but this may be unavoidable for any instrument designed to be completed in about an hour. Further, the scores resulting from any such testing can be understood only as a measure of minimal competency (below which remediation likely is needed) for the skills tested, but not as an adequate measure of critical thinking.Disclosure: Three of the authors are engaged in producing and marketing a critical thinking test. Though this paper was written before any of us considered developing such a test, the reader should be informed. Each of the writers has exercised considerable care to avoid any bias, and we thank our independent reviewers for helping us in this regard as well.     

Changing balances in Dutch higher education

Like many other higher education systems in the Western world, Dutch higher education underwent profound changes during the last decade. In this article we will present an overview of these changes, and try to formulate an analytical framework that might be suited to analyze this process. In order to set the stage, we will begin with an overview of the Dutch higher education system, in which the broad structure is described, and some trends are presented. Next, an overview is given of the retrenchment and restructuring operations with which Dutch higher education was confronted during the last decade. Drawing, mainly, on public administration and political theory, we then attempt to formulate a framework for analysis. In this we focus on the Dutch higher education system as a policy network, and address the relationships that exist between the various key actors in the network: between government and higher education, among higher education institutions themselves, and among the different actors within the institutions, especially administrators and academics. In doing so, we hope to demonstrate that at all these levels some identical basic processes operate which to a large extent determine the outcomes of governmental policies aimed at changing the higher education system. Time and again the modern state stumbles over the academic system (Clark 1983: 137)     

Impact of accreditation on improvement of operational inputs after two cycles of assessments in some Ghanaian universities

The study assesses the influence of accreditation, after two cycles of evaluation on some selected Ghanaian universities. This was done by examining the changes that had occurred in specified indicators, mainly because of the implementation of suggestions for improvement made by the previous cycle’s evaluators. The study employed quantitative research methods in analysing the changes (for better or for worse) that had occurred in the selected indicators from one cycle of assessments to the other and as observed in the reports of the evaluators. The results showed varying degrees of improvements in the selected indicators at the subsequent assessments over the previous ones.     

Anatomy education environment measurement inventory: A valid tool to measure the anatomy learning environment

Students' perceptions of the education environment influence their learning. Ever since the major medical curriculum reform, anatomy education has undergone several changes in terms of its curriculum, teaching modalities, learning resources, and assessment methods. By measuring students' perceptions concerning anatomy education environment, valuable information can be obtained to facilitate improvements in teaching and learning. Hence, it is important to use a valid inventory that specifically measures attributes of the anatomy education environment. In this study, a new 11‐factor, 132‐items Anatomy Education Environment Measurement Inventory (AEEMI) was developed using Delphi technique and was validated in a Malaysian public medical school. The inventory was found to have satisfactory content evidence (scale‐level content validity index [total] = 0.646); good response process evidence (scale‐level face validity index [total] = 0.867); and acceptable to high internal consistency, with the Raykov composite reliability estimates of the six factors are in the range of 0.604–0.876. The best fit model of the AEEMI is achieved with six domains and 25 items (X² = 415.67, P < 0.001, ChiSq/df = 1.63, RMSEA = 0.045, GFI = 0.905, CFI = 0.937, NFI = 0.854, TLI = 0.926). Hence, AEEMI was proven to have good psychometric properties, and thus could be used to measure the anatomy education environment in Malaysia. A concerted collaboration should be initiated toward developing a valid universal tool that, using the methods outlined in this study, measures the anatomy education environment across different institutions and countries. Anat Sci Educ 10: 423–432. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.