What a difference mentoring makes: service learning and engagement for college students

Colleges are increasingly interested in ways to better engage students in their academic careers. This article reports 20 college students' experiences as mentors for at‐risk fourth‐graders through a mentoring program called The Learning Connection (TLC), run by the Community Services Office at Moravian College. The study describes students' voluntary participation in service learning activities as a source of student engagement, the characteristics of the TLC mentoring program, the process by which student mentors reported their experiences over the course of the academic year, and the benefits of the mentoring program through the eyes of the college student mentors. At the beginning of the mentoring experience, mentors reported that the primary reasons for mentoring were to make a difference in a child's life and supplement classroom learning. At the end of the academic year, mentors reported that mentoring taught them important lessons about children, themselves, community work and the value of mentoring. Mentor feedback supports mentoring, specifically, and service learning, generally, as a source of student engagement for college students.     

What students learn in problem-based learning: a process analysis

This study aimed to provide an account of how learning takes place in problem-based learning (PBL), and to identify the relationships between the learning-oriented activities of students with their learning outcomes. First, the verbal interactions and computer resources studied by nine students for an entire PBL cycle were recorded. The relevant concepts articulated and studied individually while working on the problem-at-hand were identified as units of analysis and counted to demonstrate the growth in concepts acquired over the PBL cycle. We identified two distinct phases in the process—an initial concept articulation, and a later concept repetition phase. To overcome the sample-size limitations of the first study, we analyzed the verbal interactions of, and resources studied, by another 35 students in an entire PBL cycle using structural equation modeling. Results show that students’ verbal contributions during the problem analysis phase strongly influenced their verbal contributions during self-directed learning and reporting phases. Verbal contributions and individual study influenced similarly the contributions during the reporting phase. Increased verbalizations of concepts during the reporting phase also led to higher achievement. We found that collaborative learning is significant in the PBL process, and may be more important than individual study in determining students’ achievement.     

Ethanol-glycerin fixation with thymol conservation: a potential alternative to formaldehyde and phenol embalming

Anatomical fixation and conservation are required to prevent specimens from undergoing autolysis and decomposition. While fixation is the primary arrest of the structures responsible for autolysis and decomposition, conservation preserves the state of fixation. Although commonly used, formaldehyde has been classified as carcinogenic to humans. For this reason, an adequate substitute was developed. Ethanol-glycerin fixation and thymol conservation are described and compared with formaldehyde and phenol in this technical report. The setup, tissue qualities, financial aspects, and health concerns of this method are discussed. Ethanol-glycerin fixation and thymol conservation provide outstanding haptic and optic tissue qualities. Typical formaldehyde and phenol effects, such as skin, airway, and eye irritation, as well as carcinogenic effects, can be circumvented by using ethanol-glycerin and thymol instead. Ethanol-glycerin fixation is more expensive than formaldehyde and requires an explosion-proof facility. However, the absence of health effects and its convincing tissue qualities balance these higher costs. Therefore, ethanol-glycerin fixation and thymol conservation provide a potential alternative and complement established fixation techniques. The use of carcinogenic formaldehyde and toxic phenol can be effectively restricted through the use of the described method.     

The development and implementation of a teaching unit on the immune system for secondary schools in Israel

In an attempt to widen the scope of school chemistry teaching, the authors have developed an interdisciplinary unit on the immune system. The main features of this unit are described, covering both its content and the pedagogical strategies employed in it. A brief summary of the results of the trial implementation of the unit is also presented.     

Practical Considerations When Using Pedometers to Assess Physical Activity in Population Studies

Abstract

The aim of this study was to summarize both practical and methodological issues in using pedometers to assess physical activity in a large epidemiologic study. As part of a population-based survey of cardiovascular disease risk factors, physical activity was assessed using pedometers and activity diaries in 775 men and women ages 25–64 years who were residents of Burnie, Tasmania, 1998–99. Common data problems were classified by type. The frequency of each problem and the methods used to identify it are reported along with strategies to correct or prevent each problem type. Pedometer data from 15 (1.9%) participants could not be used due to errors in completing the pedometer protocol. Among 760 participants with usable data, the median number of steps was 9,729 for men and 10,388 for women. Pedometer steps per day were modestly correlated (r = .20, p < .0001) with the duration of pedometer wear, which ranged from 4.50 to 21.75 hr. Adjustment for wear time, however, did not alter observed correlations between pedometer steps and cardiovascular risk factors. The authors conclude that pedometers can be used in large population studies with a relatively low frequency of data errors. However, guidelines for consistent data collection and interpretation are needed.