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Objective The development and evaluation of new employees in air medical transport has historically lacked standardization and competency-based learning goals. Here we discuss the development, implementation, and assessment of a new competency-based education and evaluation method at Geisinger's Life Flight air medical transport service. Methods Using Bloom's taxonomy of learning, 14 competencies for flight employees were identified. An electronic database was created to track progress across competencies and serve as an information repository for the identification of goals and the development of individualized learning plans. Ten months after implementation of the new method, 11 preceptors and education team members were surveyed to understand their views on the new program. Results At the time of survey administration, 20 orientees had completed orientation under the new education and evaluation program in an average of 6.45 weeks, with a range of 3 to 10 weeks. Of the 11 surveyed instructors, 81.1% definitely agree that the new method adequately assesses performance compared with 45.5% with the previous unstandardized method; 81.8% of the instructors rated the overall change as very helpful. Conclusion The adoption of a competency-based learning model for air medical transport employee education and evaluation improves the assessment of performance and allows for the development of customized learning plans.

Background A computer simulation-based communication education program with interactive and individualized learning features for nursing students is greatly needed. The specific objectives of this study were to develop a computer simulation-based, interactive, communication education (ComEd) program, and to assess the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of the program regarding nursing students’ communication knowledge, learning self-efficacy, communication efficacy, and learning satisfaction. Methods This study used the ADDIE model (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) for the systematic development of the program. A one-group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was conducted with 30 nursing students to assess its feasibility, acceptance, and effectiveness. Results All participants completed the program without difficulties and expressed satisfaction with this new method of communication education. Additionally, the program improved participants’ communication knowledge, learning self-efficacy, and communication efficacy. Conclusion Repetitive learning through the ComEd program was shown to improve nursing students’ therapeutic communication skills.

The massive open online courses (MOOCs) enable learners to learn over distances. These courses also attract attentions in higher education. However, classroom virtualization generates problems, creates distraction for students. MOOCs have provided an individualized learning opportunity in the sense that the cognitive style affects learning. This study aims at exploring the differences of students’ attention levels and learning effectiveness perceived affected by different cognitive styles within a MOOC learning environment. Brainwave detection equipment was used to carry out a teaching experiment among junior university students who were enrolled in a course about the Internet of Things. Results revealed that: (1) learners who have independent verbal, independent imagery, and dependent imagery types of cognitive styles, learning effectiveness are significantly better in the MOOC learning environment compared to traditional PowerPoint-based teaching; (2) in the MOOC learning environment, learners who have dependent verbal type of cognitive style would have significantly better attentional levels than those who have the dependent imagery type of cognitive style; (3) attention levels among learners who have the independent verbal type of cognitive style were highly positively correlated with learning effectiveness. It also implies that learners who have the independent verbal type of cognitive style benefit greatly to learn in the MOOC environment. For those learners who have the dependent verbal type of cognitive style are the last to benefit to learn in the MOOC teaching environment.

There is a wealth of research investigating the predictive power of learners' attitudes towards technology, perceived usefulness of technology and efficacy. However, the associations between these learner factors and the actual application of technology for individualized and collaborative school-related learning activities in a specific domain and in the Asian context are not adequately discussed. This paper contributes to the literature by attempting to investigate such correlations, and treating individualized and collaborative applications as separate entities, with particular reference to Chinese adolescent learners of English in Hong Kong. An analysis of 193 questionnaires completed by adolescent English learners aged 13–16 in three Hong Kong secondary schools supported the differentiation of actual application for individualized and collaborative school-related English learning activities. While the adolescents’ attitudes, self-efficacy (familiarity with technology) and perceptions towards technology use were positive, attitude was related to use of technology for individualized learning purposes, and self-efficacy was related to perceived usefulness of technology for English learning. Their perceived usefulness of technology and actual application behavior for school-related learning tasks were not commensurate with each other. Older adolescent learners tended to favor more technology as a useful tool for English learning. Gender effects, however, were negligible. The study points to the significance of understanding both learner perceptions and relations with actual application of technology use for school-related English learning activities.

Professionalism represents a fundamental characteristic of physicians. Professional organizations have developed professionalism competencies for physicians and medical students. The aim of teaching medical professionalism is to ensure the development of a professional identity in medical students. Professional identity formation is a process developed through teaching principles and appropriate behavioral responses to the stresses of being a physician. Addressing lapses and critical reflection is an important part of the educational process. The "hidden curriculum" within an institution plays an important role in professional identity formation. Assessment of professionalism involves multiple mechanisms. Steps in remediating professionalism lapses include (1) initial assessment, (2) diagnosis of problems and development of an individualized learning plan, (3) instruction encompassing practice, feedback and reflection and (4) reassessment and certification of competence. No reliable outcomes data exist regarding the effectiveness of different remediation strategies.

What's New Communication of medical students' pediatric milestone assessments and individual learning plans from medical schools to pediatric residency directors allows for effective educational handovers promoting the continuum of education. Existing undergraduate medical education assessments can provide meaningful data to determine most pediatric milestone levels.

This study explored school- and teacher-level factors associated with a higher probability of teachers’ implementation of student-centered instructional practices. These practices include adaptive instruction and active teaching strategies that support learning enhanced by information communication technology (ICT), collaborative small-group learning, and project-based learning. We used data from the U.S. sample in the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2013, which consisted of 1112 teachers from 89 public schools. Results showed that teacher participating in professional development (PD) in ICT and approaches to individualized learning, receiving student feedback, and student assessments were related to a higher level of implementing student-centered instruction.

In order to meet the need of individualized learning, the current network teaching platform all bring in recommendation system, including the recommendation of learning resources, the recommendation of task and exercise, etc. Problems like outdated datum or sparse datum still exist in teaching platform recommendation. Take task recommendation system of computer courses as an example, the computer knowledge updates quickly. The old knowledge will be out of date in two to three years. Another case is that, when the website was put into use, as the website traffic is quite low, the datum of task finished by the students are quite little. Both of those two cases can cause sparse datum of task system in network teaching platform. In order to solve this problem, this article tries to apply transfer learning into network teaching recommendation system, and verify its feasibility through experiment.

Kernel Fisher discriminant analysis (KFDA) is a very popular learning method for the purpose of classification. In this paper, we propose a novel learning algorithm to improve KFDA and make it very suitable for dealing with the large-scale and high-dimensional data sets. The proposed algorithm is termed individualized KFDA (IKFDA). IKFDA is based on individualized learning, i.e., a strategy to learn and classify the individual test samples one by one. Our approach seeks to find the appropriate training subset, referred to as learning area, for each individual test sample, and then employ the learning area to construct the KFDA model for the test sample. For each individual test sample, IKFDA exploits some types of similarity measures to determine a learning area that consists of the training samples that are most similar to the test sample. Compared with the traditional learning algorithms that often exploit the whole training set to construct the learning models without considering the distribution property of the test samples, IKFDA can adaptively learn the individual test samples. It is a powerful tool to deal with the real-world complicated data sets that are often very large-scale and high-dimensional, and are usually drawn from the different distributions. Extensive experiments show that the proposed algorithm can obtain good classification results. A novel concept "the individualized learning" is introduced for the first time.We propose the individualized KFDA (IKFDA) using the idea of the individualized learning.IKFDA is very suitable for dealing with the large-scale and high-dimensional data sets.IKFDA exploits multiple similarity measures to sufficiently learn the test samples.IKFDA can outperform many state-of-the-art classification methods.

Individualized learning plans (ILPs) are helpful tools that can facilitate learner-centered education and can be used with all levels of learners. We introduce the concept of ILPs, the rationale for their use in pediatric and adolescent gynecology education, and review the challenges that learners might face in creating ILPs, and describes how educators can support learners during this process.

Objectives To evaluate whether knowledge on core ambulatory care topics, as measured by pre- and post-testing, improved during ambulatory care advanced pharmacy practice experiences (APPEs) after completing online modules and topic discussions individualized to specific student needs. Methods Preceptors for eight ambulatory care APPE sites developed a 54 question pre-post-test and online modules for 10 knowledge areas, which include guidelines, algorithms, literature, clinical pearls, special populations, lecture handouts, patient education resources, and a self-assessment quiz. Online modules and individualized learning experiences were required for content areas with a score of Results Overall, 70 students were evaluated. The mean overall pre- and post-test scores were 65.1% and 86.3%, respectively [mean change 21.2% ( p Conclusion The use of individualized online modules and topic discussions based on pre-test scores significantly improved student knowledge in core ambulatory care content areas during APPEs.

The paper dwells on the psychological and pedagogical conditions of implementing learner-centered approach in teaching foreign language to engineering students at the Tomsk Polytechnic University. The concept of learner-centered approach in teaching foreign language was in detail pedagogically, psychologically and methodologically studied, foreign language teaching regulatory documents in the technical university were analyzed, teaching methods and learning outcomes in accordance with the existing English language teaching methodology were presented, results of the engineering students’ questionnairing and key techniques to improve teaching foreign language based on the learner-centered approach were proposed.

The paper focuses on individualized learning from the point of preferred types of study materials and formats of knowledge assessment. Results of two researches held at the Faculty of Informatics and Management, University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic are provided and interpreted so that to show what approaches to the process of individualized learning could be carried on.

5th World Conference on Educational Sciences (WCES) -- FEB 05-08, 2013 -- Rome Sapienza Univ, Rome, ITALY WOS: 000335471203036 A design and application of adaptive online exam system are carried out in this paper. Adaptive exam systems determine different question sets automatically and interactively for each student and measure their competence on a certain area of discipline instead of comparing their gains with each other. Through an adaptive exam technique, a student's distraction and motivation loss that is led by the questions with quite lower hardness level than his/her competency is prevented. In addition, negative effects of questions requiring higher knowledge than his/her competency over a student's self confidence and morale are dismissed. Since questions are specialized so that they can allow making clear deductions about student gains, they are able to detect student competencies more effectively. Requiring less total time for measuring and being more flexible in the exam management are among the advantages provided by the system. Self sufficiency of the system in terms of planning, repeating and assessment of the measurement process especially allows itself to be used in the individual education sets. Through this system, student competencies can be determined more effectively in cases such as distant-learning, in which some challenges are experienced frequently. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Near E Univ, Ankara Univ, Bahcesehir Univ

Background As the number of graduating medical students is increasing, the number of residency positions is remaining the same. One solution to this problem is the creation and accreditation of new residency programs to help bridge the gap. However, the distinct challenges and opportunities that new training programs present for learners and faculty have not been extensively studied or described. Objective Determine and understand the distinctive perspective of a group of resident physicians who served as the inaugural interns in a new categorical pediatrics residency program. Methods We conducted a modified qualitative analysis of themes to generate resident perspectives. Seven residents (70% of the total class) agreed to answer six initial open-ended questions followed by a analysis of themes. These residents then met as a group and identified three consensus themes in each of the three topic areas: Strengths, Challenges, and Lessons Learned from a new program. In small working groups key areas were investigated and themes were consolidated, reviewed and edited for flow by faculty over a 2-month period and presented in a summarized form. Results Residents described strengths of participating in a new residency-training program as the opportunity to shape the program, individualized learning experience, and enthusiastic and available faculty. They identified challenges of training in a new program as lack of upper level residents, diverse faculty expectations, resident morale, and coping with challenges. Lessons learned included themes of resident engagement, standard expectations and feedback, and resident driven wellness. Conclusions Our inaugural class of residents identified the key challenges and opportunities of training in a new program. These perspectives should prove informative for educators who are planning new programs in graduate medical education.

Residency programs are challenged to develop unique and engaging strategies for achieving academic excellence. In-training exams (ITEs) provide formative assessments throughout residents’ development in preparation for the board examination. With an 82% first-attempt board pass rate in 2011, the University of Florida Pediatric Residency program sought to develop novel interventions to reach a pass rate of 100%. Initial strategies included the use of board individualized learning plans (ILPs), designed by each resident to target areas for improvement. While the intervention's intent was to create individualized study curricula, the resultant exam pass rate showed no improvement. In July 2014, team-based learning (TBL) board study groups were formed, demonstrating positive results from 2015 onwards. In 2016, an 18-month didactic curriculum was instituted in Academic Half Day (AHD) as a weekly forum for knowledge building, simulation exercises, and team-building events. These sessions improved the culture of the residency program and provided practical knowledge in a collaborative setting. In 2017, a multimedia bundle, MedStudy, was purchased for the pediatric residents as a tool for board preparation. Following this intervention and the longitudinal AHD curriculum, the Class of 2018 achieved a 100% board examination pass rate. This increase also correlated with an increase in median board examination scores from 194 to 211 (2012 to 2018, see Figure). Overall, a significant improvement in board pass rate was seen from 2012-2018 using a Kruskal-Wallis Test (p

Changes in training and certification requirements demand that trainees and practitioners take charge of planning and documenting their ongoing learning. Individualized learning plans (ILPs) have been proposed as a tool to guide this process. We report on a pilot program using ILPs as part of the pediatric continuity clinic experience. Objective.—The goal of the project was to explore residents' and faculty members' reactions to using ILPs when ILPs were offered as an optional tool. Methods.—A group of 42 residents and 13 faculty members volunteered to use ILPs in continuity clinic. Nine months into the intervention, residents and faculty completed questionnaires about their experiences using ILPs. We performed a content analysis of questionnaire responses to identify perceived benefits and barriers to using ILPs. Results.—ILP users reported that the program was helpful in providing a framework and focus for learning and in amplifying their awareness of the learning process. Barriers to using ILPs included lack of time and difficulty establishing and working with learning goals. Conclusions.—Our results suggest that residents are unaccustomed to taking active roles in planning their own learning. To prepare trainees for lifelong learning and continuous professional development, residency programs need to provide explicit education in the process of self-directed learning.

This field study examined the influences of cognitive styles on performance and perceived effectiveness of computer-based education (CBE) delivered from CD-ROM, and computer-aided education (CAE) delivered over the World Wide Web. Significant differences in both performance and perceived effectiveness were found among people with various cognitive styles and their modes of education. People who are able to work with more abstract information (high global) performed better in CAE than people who prefer concrete detail, whereas the converse was found in CBE. Also, people who more prefer collaborative learning (low internal) performed better in CAE than did their counterparts who prefer individualized learning. As a result, suggestions are made for the delivery and design of CBE and CAE.

In 1989, the Instrument Society of America began developing instructional lessons in a new training medium—interactive videodisc. This medium was chosen because it offers abilities such as individualized learning, hands-on simulation, and computerized record keeping. The first series of interactive videodisc training courses produced is on the topic Instrument Calibration. These courses provide performance-based training for instrument technicians and engineers. This paper describes the aspects of interactive videodisc that make it particularly appropriate for training in instrumentation.

Measuring EUS Skill Development Among GI Fellows With a Novel Assessment Tool Kalpesh K. Patel, Brijen Shah, Sunil Amin, Jenny Woo, Jonathan M. Buscaglia, Christopher J. DiMaio, Sammy Ho, Reza Y. Akhtar, Divyesh V. Sejpal, Sharmila Anandasabapathy, Satish Nagula, Michelle K. Kim Gastroenterology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY; Gastroenterology, Stony Brook University Medical Center, Stony Brook, NY; Gastroenterology, Memorial SloanKettering Cancer Center, New York, NY; Gastroenterology, Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, NY Background: Endoscopic Ultrasound (EUS) is an advanced endoscopic procedure, requiring skills which can be challenging to learn. Previous studies have defined numbers of procedures needed to become competent, but have not evaluated the process by which GI fellows acquire specific skills to perform a high-quality exam and systematically identify anatomical landmarks. Aim: To assess acquisition of EUS skills and measure competency with a novel assessment tool. Methods: This was a multi-centered, prospective study with participation from EUS attendings and fellows in four academic hospitals from July to November 2010. The majority of EUS attendings had performed between 500-1000 procedures. We assessed EUS skills with a questionnaire which was completed by both the attending and fellow following each procedure. This questionnaire assessed the fellows’ competence in two domains: previously established EUS quality indicators and anatomical landmarks. Skills were ranked on a 5 point scale (1 observation, minimal competence, 5 independent exam, maximal competence). Competence was defined by a score of 4 or greater for each skill. Results: 7 EUS attendings and 6 GI fellows participated in this study. 107 matched assessments were available for review. The most frequent indications for EUS were pancreatic pathology (53.4%) and subepithelial lesions (15.9%). Mean skill scores for EUS quality indicators for subepithelial, esophageal, and pancreatic lesions were 3.23, 2.73, 2.73 (p 0.05). With respect to anatomy, fellows demonstrated similar skills in identifying mediastinal and pancreatic landmarks (2.366 vs 2.544, p 0.05). Fellows achieved lower skill scores in the transduodenal pancreatic exam (uncinate/head 2.42) as compared to the transgastric pancreatic exam (body/tail 3.10) (p 0.01). Finally, overall competency (demonstration of quality indicators and anatomical landmarks) was similar for use of both radial and linear echoendoscopes (2.48 vs. 2.75, p 0.05). Conclusions: Continuous assessment of skills acquisition during EUS training is feasible and offers useful information for individualized learning plans. Regardless of site of lesion, no significant differences were found in skill acquisition of quality indicators or accurate demonstration of anatomical landmarks. Fellows achieved higher skill scores on pancreatic transgastric landmarks as compared to transduodenal landmarks, confirming that the transduodenal exam and especially the head of the pancreas and uncinate process are the most difficult regions to learn to examine. We hope that with future data collection, we will gain more insight into the achievement of competence in EUS.

Development of understanding of mathematical concepts and facility with quantitative techniques as aids to decision-making are important aims for post-experience management courses. Unfortunately, many British managers have a low level of numeracy and find this area difficult. From practical experience with such courses, it is argued that some of the special difficulties and the widely varying needs of middleaged managers might be met by introducing a self-scheduling learning scheme. The features of this approach to teaching are discussed against a background of the widespread interest in individualized learning in other areas of education. A proposed system for teaching quantitative techniques is described to illustrate this approach and raise a number of design issues.

I have described the self-learn programme at my London school in some detail in Foreign Language Learning, meeting individual needs . Subsequent to publication I found that I had, as a by-product of much larger scale research, a bank of data which would enable me to assess objectively the effects of access to self-study materials upon performance in French. It is apparent that the self-learn programme has been both motivating and effective.

This study examines the effects of individual goal structures on the intra- and interpersonal behavior of 120 fourth-grade children. Each group of four children was introduced to one of two individualized learning programs: (a) workbook materials color-coded according to level of difficulty (allowing implicit comparisons among children as to progress), and (b) materials not coded according to difficulty (discouraging comparisons). In both learning programs, children worked individually (at story writing) and were rewarded for the work. Results indicate that boys, but not girls, who were rewarded equally for doing good work in an individualized setting but who start and end at a lower step than other more frequently took away a toy from those peers with whom they compared themselves than did boys who were rewarded equally for good work and where there were no comparisons. Boys as a group, regardles of condition, gave more prize tickets to themselves than to others and gave more prize tickets to themselves than girls gave either to themselves or others. Both boys and girls appear to adopt the evaluations of their work given by the experimenter and appear to be influenced thereby in later prized-giving to themselves and to others.