The South Dakota Med-Fax network

Health sciences librarians established a statewide medical information network in South Dakota to provide rural physicians with database access and rapid document delivery. A private grant funded equipment for interactive simultaneous remote searching (ISRS) and telefacsimile transmission, as well as for a coordinator for training and follow-up support. In less than one year, telefacsimile technology has become an integral part of library information transfer among sixteen network sites, and ISRS is gaining acceptance among physicians who lack local access to online databases.     

Considering the Role of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices Research in Transforming Urban Classrooms

We explore the first four articles in this Special Issue of Studying Teacher Education to identify challenges to the self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (S-STEP) methodology, and how this methodology supports the work of teachers and teacher educators working in urban settings. We respond to these articles by identifying strategies and tools that might be used by S-STEP researchers to strengthen the presentation of their work and to explore the challenges to transforming classrooms using this methodology.     

Child and Adolescent Predictors of Personality in Early Adulthood

This study investigated development of the Big Five personality traits from early childhood into adulthood. An initial group of 137 Swedish children were assessed eight times between ages 2 and 29 years. Initial decreases in extraversion leveled off in early adulthood; agreeableness and conscientiousness increased from ages 2 to 29; neuroticism initially increased, leveled off in later childhood and adolescence, and decreased throughout early adulthood; while openness to experience showed an initial increase, then decreased and leveled off in early adulthood. Individual developmental trajectories varied significantly, particularly in relation to gender. Personality traits became increasingly stable, and the fact that childhood scores predicted scores in adulthood indicated that personalities are fairly stable across this portion of the life span.     

Investigating Microadaptation in One-to-One Human Tutoring

The authors investigated whether some advantages of tutoring over other instructional methods are due to microadaptation, or, tutors basing their actions on assessments of tutees they develop during tutoring. In a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment, independent variables were shared experience (tutors either worked with the same or a different tutee in each of four segment of the tutoring session) and communication context (face-to-face or computer-mediated). Although there were no overall learning differences across experience conditions, tutees who worked with the same tutor demonstrated better learning of concepts initially discussed during the final tutoring segment. Shared experience led to accurate competence assessments only in the computer-mediated context, suggesting that cognitive load influences assessment development. However, there was no evidence of micro-adaptation.     

Introduction to the Special Forum on Critical Making as Research Program

This special issue spotlights the growing diversity of critical making practices in a range of disciplinary contexts both inside and outside of the academy, and begins to develop perspectives that will foster the emergence of critical making as a coherent field. On one hand, we see great value in incorporating material practices into existing information systems (IS) and science and technology studies (STS) research programs. In particular, forms of material engagement can help overcome the ineffectual linguistic bias of traditional critiques of technoscience. On the other hand, we believe that current material practices can benefit from the conceptualization of knowledge and social organization that are foundational to IS and STS research. In this introduction to the special issue we call attention to the mechanisms by which such practices may combine representational and material work to foster and support the development of new knowledge-making communities and institutions. We believe such work can serve as a framework for others engaged in critical making practices to better contextualize and expand the relevance of their work. We intend this special issue to serve as a “stake in the ground” for research on new forms of material-conceptual critique and their incorporation in the repertoire of critical technoscience scholarship.     

How to conduct External Quality Assessment Schemes for the pre-analytical phase?

In laboratory medicine, several studies have described the most frequent errors in the different phases of the total testing process, and a large proportion of these errors occur in the pre-analytical phase. Schemes for registration of errors and subsequent feedback to the participants have been conducted for decades concerning the analytical phase by External Quality Assessment (EQA) organizations operating in most countries. The aim of the paper is to present an overview of different types of EQA schemes for the pre-analytical phase, and give examples of some existing schemes. So far, very few EQA organizations have focused on the pre-analytical phase, and most EQA organizations do not offer pre-analytical EQA schemes (EQAS). It is more difficult to perform and standardize pre-analytical EQAS and also, accreditation bodies do not ask the laboratories for results from such schemes. However, some ongoing EQA programs for the pre-analytical phase do exist, and some examples are given in this paper. The methods used can be divided into three different types; collecting information about pre-analytical laboratory procedures, circulating real samples to collect information about interferences that might affect the measurement procedure, or register actual laboratory errors and relate these to quality indicators. These three types have different focus and different challenges regarding implementation, and a combination of the three is probably necessary to be able to detect and monitor the wide range of errors occurring in the pre-analytical phase.