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Background A theoretical foundation in caring science is invaluable for nursing care because it enriches practice by providing explanations, clarity and direction. However, after graduation, students experience the frustration of not being able to sufficiently intertwine caring science theories in practice. Consequently, the integration of caring science theories in nursing education and practice is considered an essential focus area to reduce this theory-practice gap. Aim This study aims to elucidate master alumni's experiences of appropriation and application of caring science after completing a master's education. Methods The data were collected by semi-structured interviews with 21 alumni from Finland, Sweden and Norway who had recently completed a master's degree with caring science as the major subject. A thematic analysis was used. Findings The analysis resulted in two main themes, both with three subthemes. Educator's bearing and a learning community are important for students' appropriation of caring science theories. Learning through reflection and the response of others evoke new paths of thought, and practice-related teaching promotes the intertwining and application of caring science theory in practice. The appropriated theory has significance to alumni by providing a guiding basis that strengthens alumni's professional bearing and way of being. The caring science theory guides alumni in providing nursing care with an increased ethical awareness and questioning approach that enables good patient care. Their professional identity and confidence in caring are also strengthened. Conclusion Educators' bearing is of outermost importance for appropriation and application of caring science theory. It has a key function in facilitating students' understanding and intertwining of caring science theory and practice. Appropriated caring science theory provides authority and courage to practice nursing care. The appropriated theory promotes alumni's ethical awareness, confidence and a sense of pride in the profession.

We describe a first-semester, integrated, introductory biology and chemistry course for undergraduates at Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA, USA. Our vision was to create a supportive learning community in which students could comfortably make connections between scientific disciplines as they learned necessary content for subsequent courses, further developed problem solving, communication, and laboratory skills, and meaningfully connected with other students and with faculty during their first semester in college. Through highlighting five guiding principles that are central to the course, we describe the integrated course structure and content as well as our efforts to build community, provide support, and engage students in building skills crucial to scientists. We also highlight features of this course and institutional policies that facilitated its logistical and collaborative implementation that can be adapted to fit the needs, goals, and constraints of a diverse range of institutions. A companion article describes an assessment of our course in achieving academic and community building goals.

BACKGROUND Caregivers in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) often determine care practices in silos, although access to learning communities can improve quality. Project ECHO, a telehealth-delivered mentoring intervention, provides specialists' expertise but not in the NICU until now. Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) prevention and timely recognition is one area where specialist support and engaging with a learning community could improve outcomes. NEC-Zero is one care bundle that aims to improve care quality by providing tools to implement NEC prevention in family-engaged ways. AIMS To examine the feasibility and acceptability of NeoECHO to disseminate NEC-Zero education and describe the intentions of internal facilitators (IFs) and clinicians to initiate quality improvement changes. METHODS This was a convergent mixed-methods study. Our team delivered the first neonatal adaptation of Project ECHO called "NeoECHO" to leverage facilitation as an implementation strategy to disseminate NEC-Zero evidence and support practice change. RESULTS Six IFs and seven NICUs participated. All units and IFs that began the series finished it. Of the 261 session attendees, 206 (79%) study evaluations were completed. Of those who completed evaluations, 89 (100%) completed at least one session and 29 (33%) completed three or more. Satisfaction was high. Participants appreciated the engaged and accessible format to learn from experts using real case examples and didactic sessions. Individuals and IFs reported intentions to adopt evidence based on NeoECHO. LINKING EVIDENCE TO ACTION NeoECHO was an acceptable and feasible way to engage under-resourced NICUs and share NEC-Zero evidence and tools. More research is needed to examine the impact of NeoECHO on care processes and patient outcomes.

Third sector community organisations are important sites for learning, especially for the most excluded groups in society. However, scant attention has been paid to the various factors shaping educational provision in community contexts, and how these interact to shape the provision available to marginalised populations. This article presents new evidence addressing this gap, through drawing on interview data from practitioners working in the UK homelessness sector. It identifies a range of factors shaping educational provision in these community contexts. These are: service user need and demand; staff roles and capacity; organisational purpose and structures; national policies; support from other adult education providers; non-governmental finance; and volunteers. With some modification, and placed within an overarching critical realist framework, it is argued that these findings are consistent with Boeren’s (2016) Comprehensive Lifelong Learning Participation Model. The article concludes that so long as government policy and related funding continues to ignore and fails to support educational provision in these settings, it will remain piecemeal and highly contingent on the contribution of volunteers and short-term funding.

E-learning platforms are becoming more and more important and they are gradually changing people?s learning ways. In the e-learning platforms, users actively create and join their favorite communities to share their questions and ideas. With the increase of users of e-learning platforms, the number of communities is increasing dramatically. In this context, it has become difficult for users to find learning communities that match their interests and preferences. Therefore, how to effectively recommend the learning community for users has become an urgent need. However, compared to learning item recommendation, there is relatively limited work on learning community recommendation, and the existing research on community recommendation often ignores the personality information. Personality is considered one of the primary factors that influence human behavior and social relationships, as it affects how people react and interact with others. Several studies have demonstrated that people with similar personality tend to have similar interests. Furthermore, homophily theory also states that social interactions between similar individuals occur at a higher rate than among dissimilar ones. Since interests and interactions are important driving forces for users to join the learning communities, personality has an important impact on users? choices of communities. Therefore, this paper aims at shedding some light on the impact of personality information on the accuracy of community recommendations. Particularly, we propose three enhanced matrix factorization models based on the Big Five personality framework. To evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed models, we conducted extensive experiments on myPersonality datasets. The results prove that the personality information can improve the performance of the learning community recommendation model and alleviate the data sparsity problem.

Clinical teaching is a cornerstone of health sciences education; it is also the most challenging aspect. The University of Pittsburgh Schools of Dental Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmacy developed a new evidence-based interprofessional course framed as a faculty learning community (FLC) around the principles of learning in a clinical environment. The aim of this study was to assess the overall effectiveness of this two-semester FLC at four health professions schools in academic year 2014-15. The assessment included anonymous participant surveys in each session and an anonymous end-of-course survey. Thirty-five faculty members from dental, health and rehabilitation sciences, nursing, and pharmacy enrolled in the FLC, with six to 32 enrollees attending each session. All attendees at each session completed the session evaluation surveys, but the attendance rate at each session ranged from 17.1% to 91.4%. Sixteen participants (46%) completed the end-of-course survey. The results showed overall positive responses to the FLC and changes in the participants' self-reported knowledge. Session surveys showed that the participants found the FLC topics helpful and appreciated the opportunity to learn from each other and the interprofessional nature of the FLC. Responses to the end-of-course survey were in alignment with the individual session surveys and cited specific benefits as being the content, teaching materials, and structured discussions. In additional feedback, participants reported interest to continue as a cohort and to extend the peer-support system beyond the FLC. This outcomes assessment of the first round of the FLC confirmed that this cohort-based faculty development in an interprofessional setting was well received by its participants. Their feedback provided valuable insights for changes to future offerings.

Situative theories of learning challenge the notion of learning as a singular cognitive pursuit. However, the relations between the designed environment and situated learning activity are not well theorised, and this increases the difficulty of designing future learning spaces to accommodate learning communities supported by a range of digital technologies. In this paper, we use the ACAD framework and insights from the ecology of resources model to explore the role of materials in the enactment of situative theories of learning in a refurbished seminar room, in the University of Sydney Business School. Conducted as ethnography, this case study draws on observations, interviews and document analysis, which reveal a qualitative shift in learning activity facilitated by improved eye‐contact and increased fluidity of movement that supports instructor‐student and student‐student interaction. This paper offers a theoretical contribution in its exploration of the materiality of learning, methodological innovation in the use of images to examine spatial pedagogies and practical innovation through a reconceptualisation of spatial provisions for learning—all of which has implications for the design and use of future learning spaces intended to accommodate learning communities supported by complex webs of material and digital infrastructure. Practitioner NotesWhat is already known about this topic The role of the designed environment in learning is poorly theorised.As a result, educational research tends to frame material and digital infrastructure for learning as deterministic (causing change) or instrumental (improving efficiency).This makes enacting valued learning theory challenging at any scale.What this paper adds A case study using a theoretical framework capable of addressing the relations between designed form and learning activity—contributing to the integration of theory and practice.Methodological innovation using visual methods to examine spatial pedagogies.Practice‐based design innovation in the reconceptualisation of spatial provisions for learning.Implications for practice and/or policy The consequences of failing to understand how the materiality of space for learning indirectly influences situated learning activity.Impetus for thinking about how a richer understanding of space supports decision making around the use of digital technologies for learning.The need to rethink spatial allocations for learning to accommodate increasingly active, collaborative and digitally mediated learning activity both in person and online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A learning community works with a collective knowledge space where members contribute and interact with one another's ideas to advance their community's knowledge. This study aims to explore designs of collective knowledge space to support cross‐community interaction. A design experiment was conducted in four grade 5 classrooms with the support of Knowledge Forum over a school year. As students conducted focused inquiry and discourse within their own community, they reviewed productive threads of ideas and created "super notes" (idea thread syntheses) for cross‐community sharing and interaction. A set of "super notes" from previous classrooms studying human body systems was also posted in the cross‐community space. Qualitative analyses results showed that the students wrote and posted "super notes" to capture substantive idea progress and deepening questions that had emerged from their inquiry. Social network analysis of who had read whose "super notes" revealed extensive social interactions between the four classrooms as well as among the students within each classroom. Analysis of the classroom conversations that followed the "super notes" reading elaborated how students built on the insights gained from the cross‐classroom interactions to develop deeper understandings in their home classroom. Analyses of teacher interviews and observation data documented the teachers' roles to contextualize the purpose of the cross‐classroom space, support "super notes" reading and writing, and scaffold cross‐classroom connection and conversation. Practitioner Notes: What is already known about this topic Students work with a collective knowledge space where they contribute and interact with one another's ideas to advance their community's knowledge.Existing designs of collective knowledge spaces focus on supporting students' interaction in individual classroom communities, which is often organized as relatively short inquiry activities lasting over a couple of weeks. What this paper adds A multilevel emergent interaction design for connecting the knowledge spaces of different communities.Elaborated classroom processes and technology support for enabling knowledge building across classroom communities. Implications for practice and/or policy Teachers can facilitate collaborative knowledge building in each classroom and further create cross‐community connections for mutual learning and idea build‐on.It is important to support student‐driven efforts to develop interconnected knowledge spaces in order to enable sustained knowledge building and deep inquiry across classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When educators develop and introduce new learning approaches or resources, they usually have specific didactic goals in mind that they want to achieve. However, these goals may not always match the needs of their students, who often confound such plans by finding new and different uses for the educational tools that are offered to them. Originating from the author's work as the histology component director at the University of Michigan, the experience described here provides an example of a learning resource being reappropriated by the learning community. In order to encourage dental students to study histological micrographs after faculty-guided laboratory sessions were eliminated, the author prepared and offered them a series of PowerPoint files with histology images and some corresponding questions. However, instead of increasing their motivation to use the online virtual microscopy resources, students adapted this new tool for reviewing the material and for self-evaluation whether they were prepared for upcoming examinations. Although the product did not succeed as originally devised, it turned into a very popular review resource for the author's students. Students' feedback and critical input, as well as their active participation in producing additional, similar learning tools were the deciding factors for this successful change of purpose and the further development and refinement of this new learning resource.

Access to information as a necessary precondition for human flourishing is recognized explicitly in the UNESCO Strategic Development Goals, and mirrored by the work of universities globally to reduce barriers to information, especially research outputs. Growing international attention has turned to learning and teaching resources, particularly textbooks as a key barrier to fully engaging with, and participating in, higher education. The affordances of open texts provide an alternative to commercially published and often exclusionary access practices; and empower educators and students in co-creation and open sharing of information and knowledge. This paper examines the design of an ongoing institutional grants program predicated on a facilitated community learning approach for academic staff seeking to adopt, or adapt open textbooks into the curriculum as one mechanism to increase access to information. The participants’ experiences and personal learning were captured through a series of semi-structured interviews that inform the iterative design of the ongoing grants program that could be transferred to other institutions seeking to support educational change.

Introduction In 2020, as classroom environments shifted abruptly from in-person offerings to largely Zoom-mediated learning spaces in response to COVID-19 restrictions, educators were challenged to engage students behind the box. Moreover, the unplanned and sustained lack of physical classroom interaction disrupted the learning community, a factor that contributes to higher student satisfaction and achievement. Our objective was to engage students with their peers and class material in the virtual learning environment. Methods: Zoom was used to deliver two distinct classroom events: a virtual showcase in an undergraduate systems-based anatomy course and a student symposium on sociocultural influences on gastrointestinal (GI) diseases and conditions in a second-year integrated medical GI & Nutrition course. The undergraduate virtual showcase featured abstract art of neurodegenerative diseases that correlated with topics in nervous system anatomy. Students used a variety of media, such as canvas paintings, sketches, and clay molds, to communicate the anatomy relevant to their disease topic and their interpretation of the effects of this disease on the patient and their families. During the virtual showcase, students viewed a rotating slide-show of the work of their peers and completed a reflection assignment. For the second project, students were organized into small groups of 5 or 6 and asked to interview multiple stakeholders involved in the diagnosis, treatment, and management of a disease of their choosing within predetermined categories, such as oral/pharyngeal health or chronic liver disease. Each student interviewed a person with a unique narrative related to the disease and the group creatively synthesized their findings. For example, one group role-played the experience of the patient from initial diagnosis of colon cancer with their doctor to the follow-up with the healthcare team and support groups. They presented perspectives from a patient, physician, family caretaker, support therapist, dietician, and colon cancer researcher. Results: The top 30 (of 135) art submissions were featured in an undergraduate anatomy showcase on Zoom. Student feedback was mostly positive, with 64% (n=135) indicating strongly agree (39%) or agree (25%) when asked if they enjoyed opportunities to be creative in the anatomy classroom. Additional artforms were requested by students. The student symposium was designed as a two-hour mini-conference with 206 medical students organized into 36 groups. Six groups presented concurrently every 20 minutes among six different Zoom accounts. Additionally, students signed up to attend five peer presentations. Preliminary feedback revealed several themes including a deeper appreciation of GI anatomy and the lived experience of the patient, the importance of supportive healthcare roles in patient treatment (e.g. dieticians, caregivers, community support), and pride in their peers' creative presentations.Conclusions: These projects highlight ways to foster a thriving learning community in a virtual environment. During a particularly difficult period for student engagement these activities provided students with connections to the lecture content, to each other as peers, and to their wider communities.

Social distancing measures due to the COVID‐19 pandemic will make anatomy dissecting room practicals difficult, if not impossible to run at some institutions in the upcoming academic year. The learning community that exists within physical anatomy practicals needs to be moved online. Virtual replacement of visuo‐spatial and social elements of learning anatomy pose particular challenges to educators. Our department has trialed Blackboard Collaborate, an online communication platform in conjunction with Visible Body, a 3D anatomical modeling program. We have delivered 266 hr of synchronous small group teaching to medical and physician associate students. We describe this approach and discuss the relevance of distance learning pedagogy to the design of new online anatomy teaching and development of online learning communities.

In the 21st century when knowledge‐based economy is emphasized, the cultivation of autonomous learning and problem‐solving abilities presents the importance. With web‐based collaborative problem‐based learning (CPBL), learners could more conveniently cultivate their problem‐solving abilities through autonomous learning. Nevertheless, learners are often guided to solve a target problem by the information announced by teachers during the CPBL processes. Individual learners often could not effectively absorb such standard information, thus ignoring the important information from teachers. In the information communication theory, the two‐step flow of communication through opinion leaders has been proved that it can better change audiences' attitudes than the one‐step flow of communication through mass media. This study thus employs the modularity Q function as the fitness function of genetic algorithm to optimally detect learning communities and uses PageRank measure to accurately find out community opinion leaders according to the social network interaction data of learners in the CPBL process. Based on quasi‐experimental design, this study examines whether learners in the experimental group using the two‐step flow of communication through opinion leaders to convey information for solving the target CPBL missions could more significantly enhance web‐based CPBL performance, social network interaction and group cohesion than learners in the control group using the one‐step flow of communication through teachers' information. Analytical results show learners in the experimental group remarkably outperform those in the control group on learning performance and peer interaction under a CPBL environment. Particularly, female learners in the experimental group notably outperform female learners in the control group on learning performance, while there is no significant difference in male learners between both groups. More importantly, learners in the experimental group present significantly higher group cohesion than those in the control group. This study confirms that using the two‐step flow of communication instead of the one‐step flow of communication traditionally used in web‐based learning environments could significantly promote web‐based CPBL performance, social network interaction and group cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accessible summary Dementia is an illness caused by damage to a person's brain. People with learning disabilities, especially people with Down's Syndrome, are more likely to get dementia, and when they are younger. We talked to people working in community learning disability teams to find out what they thought about services and support for people with learning disabilities and dementia and carers. Screening and assessments mean that people get diagnosis and support more quickly and other problems are picked up. More appropriate housing and support is needed so people can stay at home for longer. Research needs to look at the best ways to support people with learning disabilities and dementia. It is important to find ways to involve people with learning disabilities and dementia and carers in meetings about their support and future research. Background Dementia prevalence rates are higher amongst people with learning disabilities than the general population. People with Down's syndrome are at even greater risk of developing dementia and of developing dementia at an earlier age. This study, conducted as part of a wider service evaluation, explored community learning disability team perspectives on screening, pathways, training, information and supports developed to improve services for people with learning disabilities and dementia. Methods A focus group was held with health and social care professionals working in community learning disability services. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Results The dementia screening, pathways and processes had become embedded in practice, leading to a common framework, an efficient, multidisciplinary, proactive approach, earlier detection and diagnosis of dementia and identification of other health needs and issues. This avoided crisis situations supporting people to remain at home longer. Training and information were felt to improve care quality and reduce caregiver anxiety. People with learning disabilities and caregivers were involved to varying extents. External influences impacting on support included the availability, appropriateness, cost and effectiveness of different models of service provision. Conclusions Service developments have been made as a result of the findings which suggest that dementia pathways and supports improve service provision and outcomes for people with learning disabilities. It is important to develop the evidence base on the effectiveness of different service models for people with learning disabilities and dementia. Future studies need to gather views of people with learning disabilities and carers.

Accessible Summary People with learning disabilities may have help from their families, paid carers and professionals such as nurses, psychologists etc. Professionals (like psychologists) can help people with learning disabilities and their families, carers and other professionals by meeting to talk about solutions together. This is called a systemic consultation. We asked two people who came to the systemic consultations what they thought was helpful and unhelpful about the systemic consultations. The two people we asked were two professionals who worked with people with learning disabilities. The helpful things were that the systemic consultations might have helped people to feel better about themselves and speak about their worries. People may feel that others care about them too. People with learning disabilities started to find their own answers to the difficulties they had. We found that the people who were responsible for the systemic consultations asked some helpful questions. For example, they spoke in a positive way and tried to talk about the things that people were good at. Another helpful thing was that coming to the systemic consultations helped people to get on better with each other. The unhelpful things were that people coming to the systemic consultations thought that something else would happen at the consultations. They also thought that sometimes there were too many people at the systemic consultations. They said that it was not helpful if the people who help in the systemic consultations change. After looking at the answers the people gave, we talked about the things that can be done to make sure that systemic consultations become more helpful for everyone. AbstractBackground Systemic approaches can be useful in working with people with learning disabilities and their network. The evidence base for these approaches within the field of learning disabilities, however, is currently limited. Materials and Methods This article presents part of a service evaluation of systemic consultations in a Community Learning Disability Service (CLDS). Two multidisciplinary team professionals were interviewed about what they found helpful and unhelpful in their experiences of attending systemic consultations. Interview data were analysed via applying thematic analysis principles. Results Five main themes were elicited: differing expectations, enabling for the client, positive techniques, uncertainty regarding “forum” (“forum” meaning the collective of all of the individuals meet, which could include the professionals, lead therapist, reflecting team, etc.) composition and strengthening the network. Conclusions Systemic consultations provided some positive and valuable experiences along with important caveats. Considerations for clinical practice are therefore discussed. Continued evaluation of systemic consultations within CLDSs is recommended.

Background The Learning Disability Screening Questionnaire (LDSQ) has been shown to have high sensitivity and specificity to identify those who are likely to meet intellectual disability diagnostic criteria (McKenzie, et al. 2015). However, there is no independent research to date to support these findings. Materials and Methods An archival research design was used, utilizing data from diagnostic tools including the LDSQ, Wechsler Adult Intelligence assessments and Adaptive Behavior Assessment System Second Edition (ABAS-II) scores. Results Sensitivity and specificity values derived here were lower than those reported by (McKenzie, et al. 2015). Only IQ, not adaptive/social functioning, was found to be an accurate predictor of the LDSQ score. Conclusions Results indicate limited validity in using (McKenzie, et al. 2015) proposed cut-off scores. The authors have expressed caution around using the LDSQ in isolation to identify those with an intellectual disability.

This chapter describes four new leadership areas in the development of faculty learning community programs and provides perspectives and resources that these leaders can use to engage their work.

This article uses published research to explore how Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) can help to sustain learning communities to engage in creative exploration and open investigation. It then draws on this research to ask: how could we use TEL to support pedagogies of socio-ecological sustainability in the Art and Design education community? Three interrelated themes are explored: learning communities – in developing shared values and supporting investigations around issues of concern; learning spaces – in supporting these communities and their dialogue; and theory – to illustrate and provide language to understand the values, activities and goals of participants. Theory may help us to link the impact of these community activities, supported by TEL, to global issues. This article attempts to initiate an exploration of the fundamental elements required to create pedagogies of socio-ecological sustainability within Art and Design higher education.

At a time when a growing proportion of university students appear to be experiencing mental health problems, one form of collective response is to seek to develop supportive learning communities within academic courses and programs. Such communities have the potential to enhance student social connectedness, which can in turn help students to access peer support and to share strategies for coping with the demands of university. The development of supportive learning communities can be regarded as a preventative approach to student mental well-being, and complements the more individually focused work of mental health professionals. Here I discuss three relatively common pedagogical practices within the discipline of Geography which, in addition to their educational benefits, can be used to foster supportive learning communities. The practices are group work, residential fieldwork, and assignments that invite students to reflect on the aspects of the contemporary university that promote or undermine student mental well-being. I discuss some of the ways in which these pedagogical practices can help foster student mental well-being, as well as noting some institutional obstacles to their use. Renforcer le bien-etre mental des etudiants par l'intermediaire de communautes d'entraide et d'apprentissage Dans un contexte d'augmentation de la proportion d'etudiants universitaires qui eprouveraient des problemes de sante mentale, une mesure collective consiste a soutenir le developpement de communautes d'entraide et d'apprentissage integrees aux cours et programmes d'etudes. Ces communautes contribuent a rehausser la cohesion sociale entre les etudiants qui disposeront alors d'un acces au soutien par les pairs et a des strategies communes pour faire face aux exigences universitaires. Le developpement de communautes d'entraide et d'apprentissage peut se definir comme une approche de prevention en matiere de bien-etre mental des etudiants qui complete les services plus axes sur l'individu qu'offrent les professionnels de la sante mentale. Je m'interesse particulierement a trois pratiques pedagogiques bien ancrees dans le cursus de la geographie qui, outre leurs bienfaits educatifs, peuvent servir a renforcer les communautes d'entraide et d'apprentissage. Il s'agit des travaux en equipe, des travaux sur le terrain ou les acteurs resident ensemble, et des travaux scolaires qui amenent les etudiants a se pencher sur les elements propres au milieu universitaire d'aujourd'hui qui sont benefiques ou nuisibles a leur bien-etre mental. Je decris les manieres par lesquelles ces pratiques pedagogiques peuvent contribuer a renforcer le bien-etre mental des etudiants, tout en identifiant quelques obstacles institutionnels qui entravent leur mise en œuvre.

The purpose of this research is to unpack and learn from the experiences of teachers who deliver courses to remote secondary school students by videoconference. School districts are using videoconferencing to connect students and teachers who are separated geographically through regular live, real-time conferences. Previous studies have shown the inadequacy of videoconferencing to create effective learning communities when used solely as a lecturing tool, but there is limited research into understanding how to mitigate the challenges in order to leverage the tool for what it affords. This collective case study uses qualitative methods to examine those challenges and propose strategies for overcoming them. Five obstacles were identified (insufficient time, feelings of isolation, scheduling and logistics, unreliable technology and limited personal connection) with the following recommendations: leverage supporting tools, intentionally build presence and prioritize the programming within the district.

While educators value wikis' potential, wikis may fail to support collaborative constructive learning without careful scaffolding. This article proposes literature-based instructional methods, revised based on two expert instructors' input, presents the collected empirical evidence on the effects of these methods and proposes directions for future refinements. The instructional methods were implemented by an expert instructor teaching a 12-week 68-student undergraduate design class in Canada. Data were collected from observations, interviews and content analysis of wikis. The findings revealed that in small-group project SGP, the wiki instructional methods enhanced collaborative learning with most instructional methods derived from cooperative learning, but in whole-class collaborative knowledge building CKB, the wiki instructional mehtods failed to turn the class into a self-sustained learning community after the scaffolding faded. We conclude that the genre of wikis should be different for SGP and CKB. While the students easily adopted the 'reproduced' genre of wikis for SGP with familiar tasks, they felt overwhelmed or resistant to the unfamiliar 'emergent' genre of wikis for CKB in massive collaborative constructive learning. Therefore, we propose that future refinements for wiki-supported CKB should focus on providing students scaffolding for intersubjectivity understanding collaborative constructive learning and transfer of responsibility developing autonomy.

Background In the UK, people with intellectual disabilities who exhibit aggressive behaviour often receive community-based specialist health services from a community learning disability team (CLDT). Our aim was to estimate costs associated with this provision and to identify predictors of higher costs. Method Costs were estimated for 60 adults with intellectual disabilities and aggressive behaviour who attended specialist psychiatric outpatient clinics in the West Midlands region of the UK, including contact time with members of the CLDT and use of psychotropic medication over a 12-month period. Results Mean total cost of 12-month service provision was £418 (95% confidence interval [CI] £299–557). Mean total cost of 12-month psychotropic medication was £369 (95% CI £256–492). Amongst individual members of the CLDT, mean costs were highest for psychiatrists (£181) and relatively lower for community nurses (£70) and clinical psychologists (£30), and lowest for physiotherapists (£13). Male sex, presence of expressive verbal communication and presence of epilepsy were independently associated with 12-month medication and service use costs, accounting for 23% of the variance in cost. Conclusions It seems that in terms of costs, there is an overreliance on medication and psychiatrists and a relatively lesser reliance on other CLDT members such as community nurses and clinical psychologists for the management of aggressive behaviour in adults with intellectual disabilities within community settings. Health commissioners may wish to explore this relative cost discrepancy further and try to redress the balance where appropriate.

This chapter considers the role an academic residential learning community can play in helping new undergraduates examine their motives for attending college.

Research on microblogging in education has suggested its potential to promote community building and collaborative learning, but little is known about the nature of interaction in such microblogging communities. More research is needed to understand how online learning communities can be designed in a way that supports effective learning. The purpose of the study is to explore how people interact in a popular microblogging-based learning community by examining a one-hour synchronous chat event and analyzing its network structure, levels of participation, major topics generated and types of interaction. The findings suggested that the levels of participation in the synchronous chat were largely uneven. During the chat, participants were engaged in many types of interaction and discussed a variety of issues related to the topic. Interestingly, people who were different in their levels of participation also varied on the types of topics generated, but not on the types of interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public Carnegie Foundation Research institution with 14 schools and colleges that enrolls more than 18,000 undergraduate students at the main campus in Storrs, CT. Beginning in 1999, First-Year Experience (FYE) seminars were offered to entering freshman students. Since that time, the size of the program and the number of entering freshman who participate has increased. In conjunction with FYE classes, residential and non-residential learning communities (LC) were developed to create community within a broad interest area or within a discipline. One of these, the Animal Science LC, is open to all Animal Science majors and for the last 15 years has been led by the same faculty member. Students enrolled in the Animal Science LC complete a FYE seminar that can be clustered with 3 or 4 other courses to accomplish a sense of belonging among a cohort of majors, enhanced peer mentoring support, and sustained faculty-student interaction. A review of data has shown that over the last 10 years, students who participated in the Animal Science LC were more likely to persist in the Animal Science major, and they were more likely to graduate within 4 years. Impact Statement First-year experience courses with 20 or fewer students enhance the experience of freshman college students, including the transition from high school to college, especially at large research intensive universities. At the University of Connecticut, many of the first-year experience courses are connected to discipline and interest-related learning communities, including animal science. Participation in this learning community increases student retention in the major and increases the percentage of students that graduate in 4 years.

Social media provide new means and opportunities for learning that are consistent with major tenets of both social and cognitive constructivism, and extend the process of learning and meaning construction to more diverse communities and universally accessible shared activities that are jointly and concurrently engaged in by both peers and experts.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: Communities of Practice and Learning Collaboratives have gained momentum as approaches to practice improvement and implementation utilizing shared learning to facilitate change across organizations. These models promote knowledge transfer through data sharing, in‐person activities, and affinity groups; however, efforts can often only be classified as “helping it happen” in the spread of innovations. Facilitated cross‐agency mentoring is a promising approach to advancing shared learning within collaborative improvement networks and furthering spread of innovations. The current objective focuses on the development of a cross‐agency mentorship approach to support scale‐up of TEAM UP for Children, a pediatric behavioral health integration (BHI) model, within a learning community (LC). STUDY DESIGN: The TEAM UP LC is divided into two phases: initial and scale‐up. Development of a cross‐agency mentoring approach utilized a modified practice profile methodology. Methods were aimed at identifying learnings and best practices among early adopting agencies in the initial phase. A data gathering form was created to systematically elicit feedback on elements critical to model integration. Key programmatic documents were collected from agencies and reviewed to identify common and exemplar best practice approaches. Qualitative interviews were conducted with participants to understand barriers and facilitators to implementation. Findings were utilized to develop iterative mentoring strategies and establish areas of expertise upon which mentoring activities could be facilitated. POPULATION STUDIED: The LC includes seven community health centers (CHCs) delivering pediatric primary care to urban populations across eastern Massachusetts. Teams from each CHC include a project manager, clinical champions, billing champion, IT analyst, pediatric providers, behavioral health clinicians, and community health workers. Three CHCs began in the initial phase, and an additional four were added for the scale‐up phase. Early implementation and planning has been the focus to date of activities within the scale‐up phase. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Key findings from qualitative interviews published in the Journal of Pediatrics and data forms highlighted barriers and facilitators to implementation of the BHI model, including leadership engagement, billing optimization, and EMR system improvement. CHCs where exemplar best practices were identified were matched for one‐on‐one mentoring based on the needs of new CHCs and shared characteristics, like EMR systems. Best practice approaches were highlighted during interactive Web‐based and in‐person forums, and through facilitated speed‐sharing and mentoring match‐up activities. Feedback was solicited throughout early implementation and planning via structured evaluations and discussion to understand the impact of strategies piloted and promote necessary adaptation. CONCLUSIONS: Work to elicit learnings and best practice among early adopting CHCs in the initial phase resulted in the development of a facilitated cross‐agency mentoring approach to support scale‐up of the TEAM UP model. Utilizing multiple forms of qualitative data and an iterative process of feedback and evaluation, diverse strategies were developed to promote early implementation of the BHI model across CHCs engaged in the LC. IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY OR PRACTICE: Cross‐agency mentoring strategies are applicable across settings to support implementation and scale‐up of a wide variety of evidence‐based approaches. These approaches show particular promise in driving the spread of complex care delivery models, taking advantage of experience and learnings of early adopters to promote implementation within new agency settings. PRIMARY FUNDING SOURCE: Private Foundations.