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"human"

Objective: This two-part study examines the present gap between financial and educational incentives required and the recruitment strategies used to draw health science students to underserviced areas in Southeastern Ontario. Part 1 explores the impact of offering travel stipends, rent-free accommodation and interprofessional educational opportunities to health science students on their willingness to participate in clinical placements in underserviced areas. Design: Mixed-method two-part study using a self-administered questionnaire. Setting: Canadian university campus. Participants: Four hundred and sixty-eight senior level medical, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy and X-ray technology students from a Canadian university and affiliated professional school. Main outcome measures: The influence of currently established incentives on student willingness to complete a clinical placement in designated underserviced communities in Southeastern Ontario. Results: Based on a 75% response rate, the results demonstrate that, in general, students agree that they are more willing to complete a clinical placement in an underserviced community if provided travel stipends (75%), rent-free housing (92%) and interprofessional educational opportunities (65%). Students also identified 15 additional factors influencing willingness. Conclusions: Students are more willing to complete clinical placements in underserviced communities if provided incentives. The findings of this study support an interprofessional clinical education and recruitment enhancement program in Southeastern Ontario. © 2007 The Authors; Journal Compilation © 2007 National Rural Health Alliance Inc.

ABET, ASEE, and the wider engineering community have long acknowledged the potential benefits of interdisciplinary education, including the opportunity to develop non-technical skills such as communication and teamwork while cultivating a broader awareness of the ethical, societal, historical, and environmental impacts of engineering work. Instructors have encountered many challenges in planning and implementing integrated courses, such as the difficulty of coordinating the teaching methods, content, and learning objectives of different academic disciplines in a finite and already overcrowded curriculum. This paper presents the goals, design approach, implementation, and selected outcomes of one integrated project-based course (using Paul Revere and other case studies to integrate materials science with the history of technology) and uses it to discuss the advantages of disciplinary integration, particularly with respect to improved student self-direction and contextual understanding. Assessments administered during and after class suggest that this integrated course successfully engendered high student motivation along with an increase in student aptitudes over the course of the semester without a corresponding loss of discipline-specific knowledge. The implementation of this integrated course and the evaluation of its outcomes are works in progress, and future assessments are being designed to shed additional light upon these issues. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2007.

This paper examines theoretical issues arising from technical and further education and training reforms over the last few decades. It illustrates how these reforms have been dominated by particular knowledge concerns assumed to be central to specific areas of human activity. It then examines the reforms in terms of theoretical relationships among knowledge, skills, activity and meaning, as advanced by Piaget (1980a, 1980b) and Vygotsky (1934/1986); and discusses the implications for this and other sectors of education. The paper concludes that the reforms in technical and further education have pursued an image of relevance, but have mistaken how individuals construct meaning in workplace activities and the relationships among these kinds of meanings and those used in wider individual and social activities. It is also concluded that this mistake has serious implications for the current directions of the sector and its effectiveness in preparing people for their working lives.