A pilot study of a family focused,psychosocial intervention with war-exposed youth at risk of attack and abduction in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

Rural communities in the Haut-Uele Province of northern Democratic Republic of Congo live in constant danger of attack and/or abduction by units of the Lord's Resistance Army operating in the region. This pilot study sought to develop and evaluate a community-participative psychosocial intervention involving life skills and relaxation training and Mobile Cinema screenings with this war-affected population living under current threat. 159 war-affected children and young people (aged 7–18) from the villages of Kiliwa and Li-May in north-eastern DR Congo took part in this study. In total, 22% of participants had been abduction previously while 73% had a family member abducted. Symptoms of post-traumatic stress reactions, internalising problems, conduct problems and pro-social behaviour were assessed by blinded interviewers at pre- and post-intervention and at 3-month follow-up. Participants were randomised (with an accompanying caregiver) to 8 sessions of a group-based, community-participative, psychosocial intervention (n = 79) carried out by supervised local, lay facilitators or a wait-list control group (n = 80). Average seminar attendance rates were high: 88% for participants and 84% for caregivers. Drop-out was low: 97% of participants were assessed at post-intervention and 88% at 3 month follow-up. At post-test, participants reported significantly fewer symptoms of post-traumatic stress reactions compared to controls (Cohen's d = 0.40). At 3 month follow up, large improvements in internalising symptoms and moderate improvements in pro-social scores were reported, with caregivers noting a moderate to large decline in conduct problems among the young people.     

Collection-Based Education by Distance and Face to Face: Learning Outcomes and Academic Dishonesty

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Assembling and curating specimen collections is a valuable educational exercise that integrates subject-specific skills such as field collection,...     

Tools to support expository video capture and access

Video tends to be imbalanced as a medium. Typically, content creators invest enormous effort creating work that is then watched passively. However, learning tasks require that users not only consume video but also engage, interact with, and repurpose content. Furthermore, to promote learning across domains where content creators are not necessarily videographers, it is important that capture tools facilitate creation of interactive content. In this paper, we describe some early experiments toward this goal. Specifically, we describe a needfinding study involving interviews with amateur video creators as well as our experience with an early prototype to support expository capture and access. Our findings led to a system redesign that can incorporate a broad set of video-creation and interaction styles.     

The conversational frame in public address

Conversationalism has been hailed as the hallmark of modern eloquence, yet its political and ethical implications have received little attention. This essay explores the diverse forms and motives of the conversational frame in public address. By framing their remarks and transactions with their listeners as conversational, orators may attempt to reconstruct or seem to reconstruct speaker‐audience relationships and to position themselves and their audiences within networks of reciprocal rights and obligations.