A goal of science education is for students to develop scientific literacy. Scientific literacy involves the acquisition of factual scientific knowledge and the ability to assess the credibility of scientific assertation. Furthermore, students should be able to include ethical considerations. Realising this goal is complicated because it requires the development of argumentation skills, content knowledge, and an understanding of Nature of Science. Teachers struggle to apply effective strategies in the classroom. Few studies have shed light on usable, effective strategies. Therefore, the research goal is to identify features that encourage students to explore socio-scientific issues. To stimulate the development of scientific literary and support teachers, a web-based educational instrument was designed. In this study, the effects and influences of its features in the context of socio-scientific issues are investigated. The instrument provides a sequence of concept cartoons alternated with an interactive diagram. The instrument is deployed in 14 classrooms in both primary and secondary schools. In this paper, we present the educational instrument and report on its practical implementation and its constituent features. The results indicate that students show active involvement during their interaction with the instrument and reveal both the merits and challenges regarding the various features.
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Emergence, the coming-into-being of new entities, new organizations, or new structures out of the interactions of individual agents in networks, is becoming a central concept in today's management literature. We are now evolving from the age of reductionism to the age of emergence, meaning that organizations in the connected society can no longer predict what is going to happen but will find themselves continuously doing things (creating value) in co-evolution with their environment, things that are not necessarily in line with actions planned in advance. In such a dynamic environment managers must learn to enable emergent processes in real time if an organization is to turn unpredictability to its competitive advantage. The importance of the perspective of emergence is introduced in regard to the growing complexity in society.
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Purpose: The aims of this study were to investigate how a variety of research methods is commonly employed to study technology and practitioner cognition. User-interface issues with infusion pumps were selected as a case because of its relevance to patient safety. Methods: Starting from a Cognitive Systems Engineering perspective, we developed an Impact Flow Diagram showing the relationship of computer technology, cognition, practitioner behavior, and system failure in the area of medical infusion devices. We subsequently conducted a systematic literature review on user-interface issues with infusion pumps, categorized the studies in terms of methods employed, and noted the usability problems found with particular methods. Next, we assigned usability problems and related methods to the levels in the Impact Flow Diagram. Results: Most study methods used to find user interface issues with infusion pumps focused on observable behavior rather than on how artifacts shape cognition and collaboration. A concerted and theorydriven application of these methods when testing infusion pumps is lacking in the literature. Detailed analysis of one case study provided an illustration of how to apply the Impact Flow Diagram, as well as how the scope of analysis may be broadened to include organizational and regulatory factors. Conclusion: Research methods to uncover use problems with technology may be used in many ways, with many different foci. We advocate the adoption of an Impact Flow Diagram perspective rather than merely focusing on usability issues in isolation. Truly advancing patient safety requires the systematic adoption of a systems perspective viewing people and technology as an ensemble, also in the design of medical device technology.
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Cancer and its treatments cause significant changes in sexuality that affect the quality of life of both patients and their partners. As these issues are not always discussed with healthcare professionals, cancer patients turn to online health communities to find answers to questions or for emotional support pertaining to sexual issues. By using a discursive psychological perspective, we explore the social actions that participants in online health forums perform when discussing sexuality. Data were collected by entering search terms in the search bars of three online health forums. Our analysis of 213 threads, containing 1,275 posts, provides insight into how participants who present themselves as women with cancer account for their sexual issues and, in doing so, orient to two intertwined norms: Having untroubled sex is part of a couple’s relationship, and male partners are entitled to having untroubled sex. We discuss the potential harmful consequences of orienting to norms related to sexual behaviour. Yet, our findings can also help healthcare professionals in broaching the topic of sexuality in conversations with cancer patients. The insights of this study into what female patients themselves treat as relevant can assist health professionals in better aligning with patients’ interactional concerns.
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Nowadays companies need higher educated engineers to develop their competences to enable them to innovate. This innovation competence is seen as a remedy for the minor profitable business they do during the financial crises. Innovation is an element to be developed on the one hand for big companies as well as for small-and-medium sized companies through Europe to overcome this crisis. The higher education can be seen as an institution where youngsters, coming from secondary schools, who choose to learn at higher education to realize their dream, what they like to become in the professional world. The tasks of the Universities of applied Sciences are to prepare these youngsters to become starting engineers doing their job well in the companies. Companies work for a market, trying to manufacture products which customers are willing to pay for. They ask competent employees helping achieving this goal. It is important these companies inform the Universities of applied Sciences in order to modify their educational program in such a way that the graduated engineers are learning the latest knowledge and techniques, which they need to know doing their job well. The Universities of applied Sciences of Oulu (Finland) and Fontys Eindhoven (The Netherlands) are working together to experience possibilities to qualify their students on innovation development in an international setting. In the so-called: ‘Invention Project’, students are motivated to find their own invention, to design it, to prepare this idea for prototyping and to really manufacture it. Organizing the project, special attention is given to communication protocol between students and also between teachers. Students have meetings on Thursday every week through Internet connection with the communication program OPTIMA, which is provided by the Oulu University. Not only the time difference between Finland and the Netherlands is an issue to be organized also effective protocols how to provide each other relevant information and also how to make in an effective way decisions are issues. In the paper the writers will present opinions of students, teachers and also companies in both regions of Oulu and Eindhoven on the effectiveness of this project reaching the goal students get more experienced to set up innovative projects in an international setting. The writers think this is an important and needed competence for nowadays young engineers to be able to create lucrative inventions for companies where they are going to work for. In the paper the writers also present the experiences of the supervising conditions during the project. The information found will lead to success-factors and do’s and don’ts for future projects with international collaboration.
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Engineering students have to learn to create robust solutions in professional contexts where new technologies emerge constantly and sometimes disrupt entire industries. The question rises if universities design curricula that enable engineering students to acquire these cognitive skills. The Cynefin Framework (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003; Snowden & Boone, 2007) can be used to typify four complexity contexts a system or organisation can be found in: chaos, complex, complicated and obvious.The Cynefin framework made it possible to create the research question for a case-study: To what extend does the Business Engineering curriculum enable bachelors to find business solutions in the complexity contexts of the Cynefin framework? The results show that 80% of the methods are suitable for complicated contexts and no distinction is made between contexts. This means students are taught to approach most contexts in the same way and are not made aware of differences between the contexts. Making sense of the methods in the curriculum with the Cynefin framework was insightful and suggestions for improvement and further research could be substantiated
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On a four-year bachelor course at Inholland University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, additional modern language was offered to first-year students studying at three locations. Since each location only had a few students and there was only one language teacher available, across the three locations, lessons were given by the teacher in a ‘hybrid’ classrooms. The teacher was at one location with some students while students from the other two locations would join via live video link. The focus was to develop speaking and listening skills through in-classroom discussion that took place via the video link. Short video news segments in the language were watched live in class. This lead to discussion and practicing the language. Learning support materials were available in the form of a grammar book with an online self-test learning environment. The research group conducted research on this original and creative solution to teaching smaller groups since much could be learned from a practical, didactic and organisational perspective. Several organisational issues influenced the course. And from a pedagogical perspective, this case supported findings from the literature that it is complicated to engage with students live in a classroom while also communicating with students at other locations via a video screen.
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This thesis is about dilemmas, discretionary space and ethics in public welfare. In my position as a lecturer of ethics in socio-legal practices I am concerned with the way in which these practices open up to an ethical development of their professionals. Thus, this thesis is a search for the most fundamental themes and issues in understanding and judging public welfare as a, perhaps, ethical socio-legal practice. In the field of public services professionals function as the intermediary between government and citizen. In their daily work public welfare professionals take care of the important societal task and goal of poverty alleviation. During the last decades, public welfare has developed into a civil right that involves many obligations on the part of the client in return. The requirement to see to it that the client fulfils these obligations has complicated the public welfare professional’s task of helping citizens in need.
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Many students in secondary schools consider the sciences difficult and unattractive. This applies to physics in particular, a subject in which students attempt to learn and understand numerous theoretical concepts, often without much success. A case in point is the understanding of the concepts current, voltage and resistance in simple electric circuits. In response to these problems, reform initiatives in education strive for a change of the classroom culture, putting emphasis on more authentic contexts and student activities containing elements of inquiry. The challenge then becomes choosing and combining these elements in such a manner that they foster an understanding of theoretical concepts. In this article we reflect on data collected and analyzed from a series of 12 grade 9 physics lessons on simple electric circuits. Drawing from a theoretical framework based on individual (conceptual change based) and socio-cultural views on learning, instruction was designed addressing known conceptual problems and attempting to create a physics (research) culture in the classroom. As the success of the lessons was limited, the focus of the study became to understand which inherent characteristics of inquiry based instruction complicate the process of constructing conceptual understanding. From the analysis of the data collected during the enactment of the lessons three tensions emerged: the tension between open inquiry and student guidance, the tension between students developing their own ideas and getting to know accepted scientific theories, and the tension between fostering scientific interest as part of a scientific research culture and the task oriented school culture. An outlook will be given on the implications for science lessons.
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When it comes to hard to solve problems, the significance of situational knowledge construction and network coordination must not be underrated. Professional deliberation is directed toward understanding, acting and analysis. We need smart and flexible ways to direct systems information from practice to network reflection, and to guide results from network consultation to practice. This article presents a case study proposal, as follow-up to a recent dissertation about online simulation gaming for youth care network exchange (Van Haaster, 2014).
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