Search Results for
"Teaching"

Objective: The object of this study was to establish what residents in 1994 and 2003 characterised as an ideal clinical teacher and whether differences existed between residents' views in 1994 and 2003. Study design: Setting: postgraduate medical education in the Netherlands. Subjects: 207 obstetric-gynaecologic residents. Intervention: open-ended questionnaire. Analysis: qualitative data analysis with two coding dictionaries based on current literature. Differences between 1994 and 2003 were estimated using the Chi-square test. Results: Residents preferred the 'person' role both in 1994 (42%) and in 2003 (48%). The 'physician' role was significantly more important in 1994 than in 2003; the 'supervisor' role was significantly more important in 2003 than in 1994 (p < 0.05). Seventy percent of the comments related to 'direct interaction' (i.e., between residents and clinical teachers), 30% to 'indirect interaction' (i.e., clinical teachers' behaviour affecting residents indirectly). Conclusion: The data showed that almost half of residents' comments described 'person' role characteristics. There was a significant shift in the role ranked second, from the physician role in 1994 to the supervisor role in 2003. The findings highlighted that teachers, in order to be perceived as ideal, should adapt their behaviour to residents' learning needs. © 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Training posts in primary care or hospital practice settings provide rich learning opportunities for trainees. Trainees will appreciate and benefit from support for their learning in the clinical setting, exposure to modern teaching methods and constructive feedback. Planning is very much at the heart of productive learning: both planning for single teaching episodes and planning on what should be achieved overall during an attachment.

This article investigates teaching as collective work. The goals, functions and forms of teachers' collective work and changes in the professional representations or repertoire of actions through collective activity are identified. A synthetic framework is outlined and shown to be useful in addressing the data, by revealing the importance of interactions in professional competence acquisition. The article relates this framework to data collected from new teachers in the induction year in Scottish secondary schools (age range of pupils 11-18 years) and discusses the relationship of collective work to competence standards. Some issues for teacher educators and further research questions are identified.

Numerous educators have proposed the development of constructivist Internet-based learning environments for students. When creating the constructivist Internet-based learning environments, it is important for researchers to be aware of students' preferences toward these environments. Through gathering data from 659 university students in Taiwan, this study developed a questionnaire to assess students' preferences toward constructivist Internet-based learning environments. The questionnaire, with adequate validity and reliability, included 34 items on the following seven scales: relevance, multiple sources (and interpretations), challenge, student negotiation, cognitive apprenticeship, reflective thinking and epistemological awareness. The questionnaire responses revealed that male students tended to prefer the Internet-based learning environments where they could solve challenging problems, acquire cognitive apprenticeship and guidance from experts, and promote epistemological development than did female students. The findings also suggested that, if educators intend to develop Internet-based learning environments for more academically advanced students, such as graduate students, care should be taken to create more opportunities for them to negotiate ideas, obtain proper guidance, reflect their own thoughts, and explore epistemological issues. Finally, students with more Internet experiences tended to demand more on many features of the constructivist Internet-based learning environments than those with less Internet experiences. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Research substantiates the effectiveness of problem-based, project-based, and case-based learning as effective tools for student learning. Research also shows the frustration of faculty who have offered excellent teaching in a classroom but who are faced with the challenge of shifting the whole classroom into an online environment. This chapter is focused on ways to transform and redesign a traditional classroom course into an online virtual classroom using the practical application of the problem/project-based approach to learning using online case-based instruction as authentic and active strategies. The chapter shares instructional design strategies as well as the effectiveness of problem-based interactive multimedia case delivery. © 2008, IGI Global. All rights are reserved.

Description: Collaboration among organizations in the digitally connected 21st century society often requires electronic communications within and across fields to facilitate superior outcomes that would not be possible without the power of communication technologies. The Handbook of Research on Electronic Collaboration and Organizational Synergy offers exhaustive research on collaborations in education, business, and the government and social sectors. Through 50 in-depth research contributions by multidisciplinary scholars from 16 countries, this unique collection identifies areas where previous theories, literature, research methods, and approaches need to be updated to acknowledge the changes now emerging in a digitally connected global economy and society. Coverage: The many academic areas covered in this publication include, but are not limited to: • Collaborative action research • Collaborative commerce • Collaborative E-Learning • Collaborative Partnerships • Collaborative synergy • Collective identity • Collective memory with community repository • Computer mentoring • Digital global frontier • Digital technology collaboration • Distance Education • Distributed cognition • Electronic Collaboration • Electronic commerce adoption • E-research collaboration • E-social constructivism • Global collaboration education • Hybrid synergy • Inter-cultural learning • Interdisciplinary Collaboration • Interorganizational collaboration • Networks and communities of practice • Online collaborative integration • Organizational synergy • Relational synergy • Technology enhanced collaborative leadership development • University techscapes • Virtual Classroom • Virtual knowledge working • Virtual multicultural teams. © 2009 by IGI Global. All rights reserved.

Research substantiates the effectiveness of problem- based, project-based, and case-based learning as effective tools for student learning. Research also shows the frustration of faculty who have offered excellent teaching in a classroom but who are faced with the challenge of shifting the whole classroom into an online environment. This chapter is focused on ways to transform and redesign a traditional classroom course into an online virtual classroom using the practical application of the problem/project-based approach to learning using online case-based instruction as authentic and active strategies. The chapter shares instructional design strategies as well as the effectiveness of problem-based interactive multimedia case delivery. © 2008 by IGI Global.

This chapter discusses evolution of the thinking of the Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt about teaching, learning, assessment, technology, and instructional design under the broad heading of their extended work on the principles and practices of Anchored Instruction. It begins by stating a general set of ideas about the characteristics of powerful learning environments and the instructional design principles that are coupled to them. Then in subsequent sections it illustrates how features of the CTGV's evolving work on Anchored Instruction helped lead to and embody those principles. The subsequent sections begin by describing the earliest work on Anchored Instruction, the development of a set of multimedia instructional materials known as the Adventures of Jasper Woodbury. Later sections then describe work that pushed the ideas of Anchored Instruction in new and important directions that led to development of the SMART model and development of a general inquiry-learning model known as STAR.Legacy. An example of extending the Legacy instructional design model to higher education instructional settings is provided in the context of work in the VaNTH Center on bioengineering and biomedical engineering education. The chapter concludes with thoughts regarding what has been learned over time, challenges that remain in the areas of theory, research and practice, and the role of technology in the larger enterprise of connecting theory, research, and instructional design. © 2008 Springer-Verlag US.

This paper presents a research project that charts the complex development of engagement and professional identities in a group of international students (including British students) on an MSc course in Engineering. A detailed picture of the diversity of students' social, cultural and educational backgrounds at entry is placed against the development of students' own sense of what it means to be an Engineer in an international context. The case study was initiated by a concern for summative assessment outcomes in a number of the modules which were producing a notable bipolar marks distribution in students' final assessments. Students were either achieving highly in the module or clearly demonstrating an inability to work with the concepts and ideas of the module. The aim of the research was to investigate the detail and the nature of this outcome following the introduction of an intensified focus on tutors' own research, amongst other innovations. Through survey, observation and interview data the case study focuses on the sociocultural background to learning in Engineering and presents a qualitative finegrained picture of how students build their competences and identities as professional Engineers through engagement with their tutors and their tutors' own research. The initial data on the backgrounds of students presented a fascinating picture of the effects of internationalisation on the composition of student groups in Higher Education. Through the student interviews a picture of students constructing both their competences and identities emerged. The research presented to them by their tutors and that they engaged in themselves as part of the course was seen to be a significant factor in their learning and one that distinguished their learning experience in the UK from their previous learning. Students also placed emphasis on the social and personal factors that both supported them in their learning and motivated them to become Engineers in the first instance. Furthermore, early analysis of students' summative assessments indicated that there was a clear impact upon the proportion of students who had made a transition between weak engagement and failure and there was a growing engagement and achievement of threshold performance.

Background: Few studies have assessed the efficacy of communication skills training for postgraduate physician trainees at the level of behaviors. We designed a residential communication skills workshop (Oncotalk) for medical oncology fellows. The intervention design built on existing successful models by teaching specific communication tasks linked to the patient's trajectory of illness. This study evaluated the efficacy of Oncotalk in changing observable communication behaviors. Methods: Oncotalk was a 4-day residential workshop emphasizing skills practice in small groups. This preintervention and postintervention cohort study involved 115 medical oncology fellows from 62 different institutions during a 3-year study. The primary outcomes were observable participant communication skills measured during standardized patient encounters before and after the workshop in giving bad news and discussing transitions to palliative care. The standardized patient encounters were audiorecorded and assessed by blinded coders using a validated coding system. Before-after comparisons were made using each participant as his or her own control. Results: Compared with preworkshop standardized patient encounters, postworkshop encounters showed that participants acquired a mean of 5.4 bad news skills (P <. 001) and a mean of 4.4 transitions skills (P <. 001). Most changes in individual skills were substantial; for example, in the bad news encounter, 16% of participants used the word "cancer" when giving bad news before the workshop, and 54% used it after the workshop (P <. 001). Also in the bad news encounter, blinded coders were able to identify whether a standardized patient encounter occurred before or after the workshop in 91% of the audiorecordings. Conclusion: Oncotalk represents a successful teaching model for improving communication skills for postgraduate medical trainees. ©2007 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.