Staff development planning in an academic health sciences library.

OBJECTIVE: A staff development committee (SDC) was convened to implement staff development opportunities for an academic health sciences library system comprised of three separate facilities. The charge for the SDC was to: (1) develop programs to enhance workplace skills and personal growth, (2) communicate the availability of existing programs at the university and medical center, and (3) encourage the staff to participate in these opportunities. PROGRAM: The committee created goals and objectives and developed a survey designed to give staff the opportunity to provide input for this initiative. With an 80% response rate, the survey results were used to plan 15 events based on staff needs and preferences. First-year attendance for SDC-sponsored events was 459. Committee members served as liaisons for each event. Two forms were developed to facilitate event planning. A monthly announcement sheet, email reminders, and the library's local area network are used to communicate upcoming SDC events and encourage attendance. CONCLUSION: This approach can serve as a useful model for similar program planning in any organization.     

Divergent production in gifted adolescents using timed vs. untimed stimuli with creative prompting

Although creativity and expertise are related, they are nonetheless very different things. Expertise does not usually require creativity, but creativity generally does require a certain level of expertise. There are similarities in the relationships of both expertise and creativity to domains, however. Research has shown that just as expertise in one domain does not predict expertise in other, unrelated domains, creativity in one domain does not predict creativity in other, unrelated domains. People may be expert, and people may be creative, in many domains, or they may be expert, or creative, in few domains or none at all, and one cannot simply transfer expertise, or creativity, from one domain to another, unrelated domain. The domain specificity of creativity matters crucially for creativity training, creativity assessment, creativity research, and creativity theory. The domain specificity of creativity also means that interdisciplinary thinking, interdisciplinary collaboration, and interdisciplinary creativity are even more important than one would assume if creativity were domain general.     

Visually Framing Press Freedom and Responsibility of a Massacre: Photographic and Graphic Images in Charlie Hebdo's Newspaper Front Pages Around the World

This research examines 441 front-page images published in 367 newspapers on the day following the shooting in Paris of 12 people at or near the Charlie Hebdo office. The aim of this study is to understand how mainstream media visually framed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo massacre and how these visual frames coalesced to represent collective narratives about press freedom. Through a collaborative visual analysis, this study attempts to understand how the selected visual frames worked to communicate the causes, effects, and responses to the massacre and also to press freedom—an ideological construct that news media had a vested interest in advancing.     

Enhancing nursing home care for seniors: impact of a living classroom on nursing assistant’s education

ABSTRACT

Nursing Assistants (NAs) are the largest workforce in nursing homes, but often lack adequate preparation for their role. The Living Classroom (LC) is an integrated learning approach, whereby a NA program is delivered in a nursing home (NH) in collaboration with a community college. This paper describes the implementation and evaluation of the LC. Mixed methods were used to gather data from 48 NA students, 5 faculty, and 42 NH staff over 30 weeks. Students, faculty, and nursing home staff described the LC as a positive learning experience. Students’ gerontological knowledge increased over time (p = .0012). Students reported very positive relationships with program mentors and NH residents. The LC provides a unique approach to prepare NAs to work in nursing homes. This model could expand to other educational programs with a gerontology focus.     

THE DELPHI: EDUCATION AND ASSESSMENT IN INSTITUTIONAL GOAL SETTING

This paper describes and analysies the use of a delphi research methodology to assess faculty perceptions of institutional needs and goals in an osteopathic medical education program. Use of the delphi to educate faculty in the administrative and political functioning of the institution as well as to involve all faculty in the refinement of specific needs and goals is discussed. Full‐time clinical and basic science faculty of the New Jersey School of Osteopathic Medicine provided an example of the varied uses of the delphi research methodology in higher education and specifically in profesiional higher education. The three rounds of the delphi procedure produced faculty consensus on the following institutional variable items: (a) the philosophical and functional orientation of the curriculum; (b) location and design of the physical campus facilities and environment; (c) faculty issues of tenure, promotion, salary and merit; (d) teaching, and the evaluation of teaching; (e) student characteristics and admissions policies; and (f) administrative structure and communication networks.