Jill E. Stefaniak

The implementation of service-learning in graduate instructional design coursework

This paper describes the design of service-learning experiences with a graduate-level instructional design course. Service-learning provides students with real-life experiences in a situated-learning environment. Students were tasked with working on an instructional design project in a real-world setting to gain consultative experience. This paper discusses instructional design considerations for instructors interested in coordinating service-learning activities as a coursework requirement.

Community Needs Assessment to Reach Out to an Underserved Population

A community-based participatory research project was conducted to identify health information needs of clients (an underserved population) at a homeless shelter. Staff at the shelter, medical students, and public librarians were sought as outreach partners; their needs and challenges in accessing health information resources to serve underserved populations were also assessed. The community needs assessment yielded results that helped shape a medical librarys efforts in supporting medical students’ service-learning activities related to humanistic education. The resulting data also informed library decisions on health information education outreach programs tailored to vulnerable, underserved populations and community partners serving the specific populations in the communities.

Promoting Learner-Centered Instruction Through the Design of Contextually Relevant Experiences

Learner-centered instructional strategies provide learners with increased autonomy of the learning process and promote participatory learning through solving authentic problems that are contextually relevant to the learners’ environment. Instructors must be adaptable to the needs of their learners and flexible to address the challenges associated with learner-centered instruction. A cognitive apprenticeship was used to teach undergraduate faculty how to develop more contextually relevant learning experiences for their courses. Examples of how such experiences promote principles of situated learning and enhance the design of instruction are discussed.

Physician as teacher: Promoting health and wellness among elementary school students

Background: Every day, physicians engage in teaching during their patient encounters. It may be that medical students who are introduced to the principles of teaching and learning are more likely to become good communicators and learners. Service-learning may be an effective way for medical students to practice skills in teaching and communication in a real-world setting, while also filling a need within the community. The purpose of this study was to identify common themes within medical students′ reflections on what they learned through participating in a teaching exercise with local elementary school children. Methods: As a required component of a longitudinal prevention and public health course that spans the first and second years of undergraduate medical education, second year students at the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, in Detroit, Michigan, in the USA completed a service-learning activity, which included teaching a standardized curricular module to local elementary school children. Students were required to complete a reflection assignment based on their teaching experience. Medical students′ responses to assignment′s three guided questions were qualitatively coded to identify common themes among the responses related to the teaching activity. Results: Qualitative analysis of students′ reflections revealed several themes regarding what the students learned and viewed as the benefits of the activity: The importance of early education and parental involvement; the importance of understanding your audience when teaching; the importance of simplifying complex concepts to the audience′s level; and the importance of preparation for teaching. Medical students identified the difficulties of communicating at an audience appropriate level and providing patient education outside the confines of a controlled classroom setting. Discussion: This activity provided medical students with hands-on experience presenting to an audience age-appropriate, health-related topics. Presenting in an elementary school environment helped students better understand what health information various age groups knew about and the importance of clarifying information when communicating with a younger audience.

Effects of learner-to-learner interactions on social presence, achievement and satisfaction

One current focus of research regarding online courses concentrates on identifying effective design and delivery methodologies. This non-experimental comparative research study investigated two types of learner-to-learner interaction techniques: designed and contextual interactions and their effects on learner achievement, social presence, interaction quality and learning satisfaction in online asynchronous courses. Designed interactions have a high level of collaborative/cooperative instructional intent. Contextual interactions provide the opportunity for interaction but have little or no collaborative/cooperative instructional intent. Results indicate designed interactions or interactions that have high levels of collaborative/cooperative intent positively affect learner achievement and satisfaction. Results also indicate that a high level of instructor social presence has positive effects on student achievement and learning satisfaction. The results continue to reveal that a high level of interactive quality significantly affects levels of instructor and learner social presence as well as learner satisfaction.

Does the sequence of instruction matter during simulation

Introduction Instructional strategies must be balanced when subjecting students to full-immersion simulation so as not to discourage learning and increase cognitive overload. The purpose of this study was to determine if participating in a simulation exercise before lecture yielded better performance outcomes among novice learners. Methods Twenty-nine participants were divided into 2 groups as follows: group 1 participated in simulation exercises followed by a didactic lecture and group 2 participated in the same learning activities presented in the opposite order. Participants were administered a multiple-choice cognitive assessment upon completion of a workshop. Results Learners who participated in the simulated exercises followed by the didactic lecture performed better on postassessments as compared with those who participated in the simulation after the lecture. A repeated-measures or nested analysis of variance generated statistically significant results in terms of model fit F (&agr; = 0.05; 4.54) = 176.07 with a P < 0.0001. Despite their higher levels of increased performance, 76% of those who participated in simulation activities first indicated that they would have preferred to participate in a lecture first. Conclusions The findings of this study suggest that differences occur among learners when the sequencing of instructional components is altered. Learners who participated in simulation before lecture demonstrated increased knowledge compared with learners who participated in simulation after a lecture.

Editor’s Welcome

The increasing number of aging people around the world, especially in developing countries, and its economic, social, and health consequences demonstrate the necessity of studies focusing on the elderly. The results of the studies can provide ways for solving the existing and future problems that are associated with the aging population. Although research studies on elderly are conducted in Iran and other developing countries, many remain unpublished or published in the languages that cannot be universally used because there are not many English language journals in the area of healthy aging. The Elderly Health Research Center in the School of Public Health at Shahid Sadoughi University (SSU) of Medical Sciences in Yazd, Iran is the publisher of the Elderly Health Journal (EHJ), an English language and peer-reviewed journal. The EHJ received the approval from Irans Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance and periodical commission of Ministry of Health and Medical Education. The call for papers was through e-mails and announcements on the SSU website. We are pleased to release the first issue of the EHJ, containing eight papers related to aging and health. We hope that the readers will find the papers useful. We will do the best we can to receive international indexing for the journal. So we invite researchers, students, and practitioners in the area of healthy aging to submit their research-based articles to assist us in achieving our final goal, which is aging health promotion around the world especially in developing countries. We welcome constructive suggestions to improve the overall quality of the EHJ. Looking forward to seeing your comments and manuscripts.

The Influence of Perceived Constraints during Needs Assessment on Design Conjecture.

Needs assessment is a fundamental step in the instructional design process where instructional designers must determine the difference between the current state of affairs and a desired state. Throughout the needs assessment process, the instructional designer must feel comfortable making decisions and assumptions based on the information that has been provided for a project. We refer to the ability to make these decisions with limited information as design conjecture. This research aims to explore the relationship between needs assessment and design conjecture by examining the influence of perceived constraints on instructional designers’ ability to make decisions. A total of 47 instructional designers participated in a design session where they were asked to design an intervention for a given scenario while using a think-aloud protocol. We dissected the design sessions to explore how the instructional designers conjectured over needs assessment topics. The results point to recommendations for how we can align and strengthen the relationship between analysis and conjecture in an instructional design context.

Immersive Simulation: The Replication of Environments to Practice Problem Solving

Simulation is a form of instruction that has been used in a variety of different industries including clinical training for physicians and nurses, aviation, department of defense, weather, and customer service. Simulations have evolved throughout the decades from role-playing exercises, dramatizations, and task trainers to immersive simulations where exact replicas of real work environments are created for the sole purpose of training. This chapter explores the theoretical instructional design foundations that are helping revolutionize simulation in the fields of aviation and health care.