Bewegungstherapie in der Kinder- und Jugendlichenrehabilitation

Although recommended in most treatment guidelines for child/adolescent rehabilitation, there is a lack of standards regarding the amount of exercise therapy that children and adolescents should receive during rehabilitation to ensure effective treatment. First, existing treatment guidelines were examined with regard to data on the frequency, duration, content, and modes of procedure of exercise therapy in the treatment of children and adolescents with asthma, obesity, and atopic dermatitis. Moreover, the actual implementation of exercise therapy in child/adolescent rehabilitative care was analyzed by using standardized data on the classification of therapeutic measures of the years 2007/2008 and comparing different rehabilitation centers. In the context of a nationwide survey, experts and clinicians were asked to describe and define how exercise therapy can be adopted in rehabilitative practice. On this basis, an expert workshop was conducted during which a pilot version of treatment guidelines for child/adolescent rehabilitation was developed and compared with actual medical care practice. Obese children/adolescents receive the highest amount of exercise therapy (4.7 h/week). However, children suffering from atopic dermatitis engage just as long in therapeutic exercises (1.9 h/week) as do children with asthma (1.9 h/week). Exercise therapy modules vary significantly between rehabilitation centers in terms of average frequency and duration. When comparing treatment guidelines and actual medical practice, it becomes apparent that only children up to the age of 7 with atopic dermatitis or asthma are provided to some degree adequately with exercise therapeutic treatment, whereas children aged 8 or older with asthma and/or obesity receive too little exercise therapy. Potential reasons for large variations between rehabilitation centers regarding the use of exercise therapy as well as possible factors that influence discrepancies between actual rehabilitative care practice and therapeutic guidelines are discussed.     

Self-rated competences questionnaires from a design perspective

This paper provides a theoretical review of self-rated competences questionnaires. This topic is influenced by the ongoing world-wide reform of higher education, which has led to a focus on the learner outcomes of higher education. Consequently, questionnaires on self-rated competences have increasingly been employed. However, self-ratings are often criticised for their lack of validity. Our intention is to outline some principles of good questionnaire design and to use these principles to contrast questionnaires on self-rated competences. We begin with an overview of research about questionnaire design. Then we introduce seven questionnaires and portray them in terms of their design characteristics. A comparison reveals some significant points: biographical data need to be handled more carefully, and there is an overuse of vague and abstract language. On the positive side, all of the questionnaires that were examined provide reliable sub-scales covering important facets of competences.     

“Freedom Edition”: Considering Sony Pictures and The Interview

Culture Digitally is a community of scholars, originally convened by Tarleton Gillespie (Cornell University) and Hector Postigo (Temple University). With generous support from the National Science Foundation, the group supports scholarly inquiry into new media and cultural production through a wide range of projects and collaborations, including a scholarly blog and periodic workshops. For more information on projects and researchers affiliated with Culture Digitally, visit culturedigitally.org or follow @CultureDig on Twitter.

This is the latest in the series of Culture Digitally’s “dialogues.” On occasion, we invite two or more participants to engage in an intellectual back-and-forth, on a point of interest that emerges from discussions at our meetings, around blog posts, or based on evident, shared interests. In these dialogues, scholars are encouraged to grapple with contemporary issues in media, but to do so quite a bit faster than the glacial pace of publishing typically allows. We imagine them as the digital equivalent of the scholarly exchange of letters between pre-eminent scientists. The thinking is meant to be raw and provocative, a chance for the dialogue participants to prod each other beyond their own certainties.

The scholars in this dialogue were convened by Joshua Braun in response to the recent public and media discourse surrounding the security breach at Sony Pictures Entertainment and its film, The Interview.     

Scoring Constructed Responses Using Expert Systems

The use of constructed-response items in large scale standardized testing has been hampered by the costs and difficulties associated with obtaining reliable scores. The advent of expert systems may signal the eventual removal of this impediment. This study investigated the accuracy with which expert systems could score a new, nonmultiple-choice item type. The item type presents a faulty solution to a computer programming problem and asks the student to correct the solution. This item type was administered to a sample of high school seniors enrolled in an Advanced Placement course in Computer Science who also took the Advanced Placement Computer Science (APCS) examination. Results indicated that the expert systems were able to produce scores for between 82% and 95% of the solutions encountered and to display high agreement with a human reader on the correctness of the solutions. Diagnoses of the specific errors produced by students were less accurate. Correlations with scores on the objective and free-response sections of the APCS examination were moderate. Implications for additional research and for testing practice are offered.     

Improved learning efficiency and increased student collaboration through use of virtual microscopy in the teaching of human pathology

The implementation of virtual microscopy in the teaching of pathology at the Bloomington, Indiana extension of the Indiana University School of Medicine permitted the assessment of student attitudes, use and academic performance with respect to this new technology. A gradual and integrated approach allowed the parallel assessment with respect to both the virtual and optical microscopes. Student survey data indicated that the virtual imaging technology was enthusiastically received, and aggregate grade comparisons with the previous classes showed no decrease in content mastery. Survey questions assessing a variety of parameters reveal improved time and resource utilization, as well as increased student collaboration. Even so, 50% of the respondents indicated having both optical and virtual microscopes available was preferable. Anat Sci Ed 1:240–246, 2008. © 2008 American Association of Anatomists.     

Parallel assessment of nutrition and activity in athletes: validation against doubly labelled water, 24-h urea excretion, and indirect calorimetry

The assessment of nutrition and activity in athletes requires accurate and precise methods. The aim of this study was to validate a protocol for parallel assessment of diet and exercise against doubly labelled water, 24-h urea excretion, and respiratory gas exchange. The participants were 14 male triathletes under normal training conditions. Energy intake and doubly labelled water were weakly associated with each other (r = 0.69, standard error of estimate [SEE] = 304 kcal x day(-1)). Protein intake was strongly correlated with 24-h urea (r = 0.89) but showed considerable individual variation (SEE = 0.34 g kg(-1) x day(-1)). Total energy expenditure based on recorded activities was highly correlated with doubly labelled water (r = 0.95, SEE = 195 kcal x day(-1)) but was proportionally biased. During running and cycling, estimated exercise energy expenditure was highly correlated with gas exchange (running: r = 0.89, SEE = 1.6 kcal x min(-1); cycling: r = 0.95, SEE = 1.4 kcal x min(-1)). High exercise energy expenditure was slightly underestimated during running. For nutrition data, variations appear too large for precise measurements in individual athletes, which is a common problem of dietary assessment methods. Despite the high correlations of total energy expenditure and exercise energy expenditure with reference methods, a correction for systematic errors is necessary for the valid estimation of energetic requirements in individual athletes.