How students perceive teachers’ nonverbal and verbal communication at agricultural universities in Austria,Slovenia and Albania

Purpose: This study attempts to close the research gap created by the fact that existing studies neglect the problem of how effectively agricultural professors from different European countries communicate. The aim is to identify similarities and differences in the numbers of agricultural professors perceived by students as engaging in verbal and nonverbal immediacy communication.

Methodology: An online survey was conducted among students of agricultural universities from Austria, Slovenia and Albania.

Findings: The results show that professors of agriculture from Austria, Slovenia and Albania should generally not be satisfied with their own communication patterns and should thus try to improve their communication. The result also reveals cultural differences in the shares of agriculture professors employing different communication patterns in Austria, Slovenia and Albania. Compared to Austrian and Slovenian students, their Albanian peers perceive that most of their professors use nonverbal immediacy communication. According to Austrian students, the majority of their professors use verbal immediacy. On the contrary, Albanian students assessed that some of their professors employ verbal immediacy.

Practical Implications: The results show the professors of agriculture should improve the way they communicate to students. In particular, the Albanian professors should improve their verbal communication especially in terms of providing timely and quality feedback to students.

Theoretical implications: The study reveals differences in immediacy communication among countries (Austria, Slovenia and Albania) which the scientific literature considers to have a high-context culture.

Originality/Value: Given that no study has yet examined how students perceive professors’ communication in different European countries, this research helps understand the characteristics of agricultural professors’ communication.     

How well are pregnant women in Croatia informed about the oral glucose tolerance test?

Introduction

Preanalytical errors still constitute the largest source of errors in laboratory work. Proper patient preparation and patient’s knowledge about a particular procedure affects its accuracy and reliability. We hypothesized that most of pregnant women are not well enough informed about the proper procedure for the OGTT. The aims of this study were to investigate: (i) how well pregnant women are informed about the OGTT; (ii) the most common way to inform pregnant women about OGTT and (iii) whether pregnant women’s level of knowledge about the OGTT differ regarding source of information.

Materials and methods

The anonymous questionnaire was conducted across the country in 23 Croatian primary and secondary healthcare centres. The questionnaire contained 9 questions on certain demographic data and familiarity with OGTT procedure. All 343 participants filled the questionnaire before the first blood draw.

Results

42% of the participants demonstrated high and 38% adequate level of knowledge about the OGTT procedure. Majority of participants were informed about the procedure by gynaecologist (56%). The level of knowledge differed among participants with different sources of information (P = 0.030). Further analysis showed that the level of knowledge was lower in pregnant women having received information from their gynaecologist compared to pregnant women who received information from the laboratory staff.

Conclusions

In general, pregnant women are familiar with OGTT procedure, main source of information about the OGTT procedure is their gynaecologist, but the level of knowledge was higher in women who received information about the OGTT procedure from the laboratory staff.Key words: preanalytical phase, oral glucose tolerance test, survey, patient education, gestational diabetes     

Propagation from the start: the spread of a concept-based instructional tool

We describe the propagation of a technology-based educational innovation through its first 3 years of public use. The innovation studied is the Concept Warehouse (CW), a database-driven website developed to support the use of concept-based pedagogies. This tool was initially developed for instructors in undergraduate chemical engineering courses, but has spread to other disciplines as well. In this time, it has grown to over 650 registered instructors representing over 170 institutions. While this study is specific to a particular case, the intent of this article is to provide an exemplar of real-time propagation that informs other researchers and developers. We frame our analysis with Diffusion of Innovation Theory and use a design research methodology that focuses on communication channels, types of knowledge, and stages of the innovation-decision process. Data sources include usage records and survey responses which are analyzed with network diagrams and non-parametric statistics. We find that in comparison to mass media, interpersonal communications tended to result in higher proportions of how-to knowledge and implementation. Three types of opinion leaders were identified through user data and network diagrams. All played critical roles in the tool’s propagation, especially the project collaborators—opinion leaders who actively promoted the CW, in part, because it also propagates their own innovations. Finally, users with self-identified prior principles knowledge showed statistically significantly greater progress in gaining how-to knowledge, but no significant difference in progressing to the implementation stage of the innovation-decision process when compared to users without.     

The paraoxonase 1, 2 and 3 in humans

The paraoxonase gene family in humans includes three members: PON1, PON2 and PON3. The products of those three genes are the following enzymes: paraoxonase 1 (PON1), paraoxonase 2 (PON2) and paraoxonase 3 (PON3). PON1 is mainly associated with a high density lipoprotein (HDL). A small amount of this enzyme is also bound to very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) and postprandial chylomicrons. PON1 possess organophosphatase, arylesterase and lactonase activity and it hydrolyzes many different substrates. It is also known that PON1 may have antiatherogenic function. Compared to the PON1, PON2 and PON3 are much less studied and described. PON2 is ubiquitously expressed intracellular protein, while PON3 is bound to HDL, like PON1. The both enzymes possess antioxidant properties.     

The influence of experience on pre-service and novice teachers – the Croatian perspective

This paper researches students’ and teacher trainees’ personal experience of student-centred teaching during their education in grades 1–4 of primary school. The questionnaire comprised 45 statements and was completed by 403 primary school teacher trainees and 535 students (future teachers) at Faculties of Teacher Education in Croatia. The research results show that students do not have sufficient prior experience that they could use as inspiration in their future teaching practice and that in the course of their education they were mainly exposed to traditional approach to teaching. The majority of teacher trainees are aware of the importance of student-centred teaching although they cannot fully give up the control of students and educational process. This research opens up the issue of a paradigm change within the teaching system and education in Croatia as well as the issue of changes within education and professional development of teachers.     

Impact of external examinations (Matura) on school lessons

In the first part, the paper considers the impacts of external examination on learning and school lessons. Numerous researches and analyses have shown that students from specialized high schools retain incomplete, shallow and often completely incorrect ideas about some natural and social phenomena. They do not know how to connect the knowledge that they have gained. The reason for the low applicability of knowledge and lack of retention is mainly due to the domination of shallow and reproductive studying, which is even encouraged by the external Matura. Multiple‐choice questions and tasks of low taxonomic level, which can be objectively measured or graded, predominate in the external examination. The results, in the second part of the paper, indicate that the knowledge gained in high schools is narrowing throughout the years of schooling. This means that, with the approach of the final examination, exact summaries of learned material, definitions and information are demanded from students more often at the end than at the beginning of high school. Students' comprehension, linking their knowledge to other subjects and topics, critical thinking and applying the knowledge to other examples is demanded more often at the beginning of schooling (in the first year) than in the fourth year of high school (just before the Matura). Also, the democratization of the grading process decreases throughout the schooling. Students are debating with the teachers about form, methods and content of grading examinations more frequently in the first year than in the fourth year of their schooling.     

Microfluidic chip for fast bioassays��evaluation of binding parameters

A seven channel polystyrene (PS) microchip has been constructed using a micromilling machine and a high-temperature assembling. Protein A (PA) has been immobilized by a passive sorption on the microchannel walls. Two bioaffinity assays with human immunoglobulin G (hIgG) as a ligand have been carried out. (i) PA as the receptor and fluorescently labeled hIgG (FITC-hIgG) as the ligand, (ii) PA as the receptor with hIgG as the quantified ligand and fluorescently labeled goat anti-human IgG (FITC-gIgG) as the secondary ligand. One incubation step of the assays took only 5 min instead of hours typical for enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay applications. Calibration curves of the dependence of a fluorescence signal on the hIgG concentration in a sample have been obtained in one step due to a parallel arrangement of microchannels. A mathematical model of the PA-FITC-hIgG complex formation in the chip has been developed. The values of the kinetic constant of the PA-FITC-hIgG binding (k_on=5.5 m³ mol⁻¹ s⁻¹) and the equilibrium dissociation constant of the formed complex (K_d≤3×10⁻⁶ mol m⁻³) have been obtained by fitting to experimental data. The proposed microchip enables fast evaluation of kinetic and equilibrium constants of ligand-receptor bioaffinity pairs and the ligand quantification. As the use of microfluidic chips for immunoassays is often limited by price, we used procedures and chemicals that allow for an inexpensive construction and operation of the microdevice, e.g., temperature assembling as a fabrication technique, detection via an ordinary digital camera, nonspecific polystyrene as a substrate, passive sorption of biomolecules as an immobilization technique, etc.     

STEM colonization: Applying hard sciences' socio-organisational patterns and evaluation procedures to the soft sciences in Croatia

Academic systems are undergoing changes in which the social organisation of research as well as patterns of scientific productivity in the humanities and social sciences progressively resemble those in hard sciences. The hard and soft sciences are increasingly converging. This development can be observed in (a) publishing patterns, (b) the division of research, and (c) the internationalisation of research. This study explored the extent to which these changes occurring in academic systems in terms of a transformation of disciplinary practices are also becoming a trend in transitional post-socialist countries. We used Croatia as a case of a post socialist transitional context and compared it to Slovenia, a country with a similar past but somewhat different science policies and strategies. The results point to increasing convergence in some soft disciplines, visible in projectification and internationalisation of academic work as well as a significant change in the publishing patterns.