scholarly journals 61 2018 Southern Section Extension Forum: Collaborating to meet the needs of clientele

2019 ◽  
Vol 97 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 6-7
Author(s):  
Lawton Stewart ◽  
Mary K Mullenix ◽  
Matt Hersom ◽  
Jason Smith ◽  
Philipe Moriel ◽  
...  

Abstract A two-day forum was held at the University of Tennessee (UT) Middle Tennessee Research and Education Center to foster collaborative efforts between Extension specialists and county or area agents across the southern United States. The forum was attended by 28 specialists and 18 county or regional agents from across the Southern Section of ASAS. The forum began with a tour of the UT Heifer Development Center. The forum was split into three sessions and included: 1. Transfer of knowledge (Demonstration research), 2. Developing formal education for Extension agents, and 3. Collaborating across state lines to develop Extension Programs. Within each section, a brief presentation was given, followed by break-out sessions to discuss success stories from each state and potential programs to implement. From the break-out session, areas of need identified primarily focused on the development of support resources for Extension agents. Needed outputs identified included a resource guide for conducting on-farm research and demonstration projects with county and regional Extension agents, defining a regional process to provide formal distance education for agents, and development of online coursework and training tools for agents for continuing education. Assessment data indicate that participants had completed an average of 8.4 (± 6.65, range 0.5 to 24) years of service. Agents were asked to rank their level of confidence, using a 5-point Likert scale, with three tasks. Averages (SEM) of that self-assessment are indicated in Table 1. The 2018 Southern Section Extension Forum was a successful effort to bring together collaborators to identify needs and propose programs to improve the impact of Extension.

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadezhda N. Pokrovskaia ◽  
Marianna Yu. Ababkova ◽  
Denis A. Fedorov

Higher education has complex roles in society, the economy, and politics; it helps to transmit culture, transfer knowledge, and develop the personality of citizens. This diversity of roles is confronted with the limited resources that are related to the sources of financing, that is, students and their families, the national government, and local authorities, among others. The discussions related to the role of universities concern the economy of knowledge and the digital tools influencing education. The specific case of St. Petersburg universities simultaneously represents the impact of the deep socio-political transition from Soviet society to the liberal principles of a market economy, including the perception of higher education institutions as service sector companies. The services allowed by universities include research and training; however, from the consumer point of view, universities should create specific value: the increase of the intellectual components of human capital. These complex functions are interconnected. During 2017–2018, a survey in St. Petersburg was organised to ascertain the opinion of students, professors, and employers on the quality of education. The results of the survey demonstrate the impact of the exaggerated implementation of the liberal principles on education, both positive and negative. The positive effect is the renewing of content and innovative training techniques due to competition among universities. The negative impacts include the preference for popular disciplines and the opportunistic behavior of students that lose their passion for acquiring knowledge and choose instead the passive attitude of consumers of a competitive service. They are less interested in the sphere of their studies, in searching for a job, in the interaction with other social and economic actors, and even in the research and education options presented by the universities.


Author(s):  
Marcelo Fernandes da Silva ◽  
Luis Henrique Borges ◽  
Maria Soledade Gomes Borges ◽  
Inara Pena Barbosa Elias

Abstract: The institutional self-assessment is considered herein in the context of higher education assessment as a university management tool. The paper aims to present and discuss the impact of the results of an institutional self-assessment committee in the management of pedagogical and administrative issues of a Brazilian university in accordance with contemporary education policy. Four consecutive annual reports were reviewed to demonstrate the impacts of institutional self-evaluation and to raise questions about the academic community. Content analysis principles were used to validate the assumptions of the committee’s annual routines regarding the importance of the institutional assessment framework as the basis for the qualification of academic procedures. It was possible to observe the positive effects of the committee on the university’s practices: the effective participation of the academic community in the evaluation processes as well as validation of the information for university management. Another aspect that the evaluation allowed was the identification of areas of greater or lesser impacts on the scientific, social, pedagogical and technological aspects. The role of the committee was essential in identifying strengths and weaknesses, thus contributing towards performing actions to improve the institutional quality of the University of Uberaba under the panorama of Brazilian higher education assessment.


Author(s):  
N. N. Petrukhin ◽  
O. N. Andreenko ◽  
I. V. Boyko ◽  
S. V. Grebenkov

Introduction. The activities of health workers are associated with the impact of many harmful factors that lead to loss of health. Compared with other professional groups, health care workers are ill longer and harder, which may be due to polymorbidity pathology.The aim of the study based on the survey data to study the representation of health workers about working conditions and to identify their impact on the formation of occupational diseases.Materials and methods. In order to get a real idea of the attitude of medical workers to their working conditions in 2018, an anonymous survey was conducted of 1129 doctors and 776 employees of secondary and junior medical personnel working in health care institutions in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Krasnoyarsk, Vologda and Orel.Results. Research of working conditions and health of physicians allowed to establish that work in medical institutions imposes considerable requirements to an organism of working, its physical condition and endurance, volume of operational and long-term memory, ability to resist to mental, moral and ethical overloads.Conclusions: The most important method of combating the development of occupational diseases is their prevention. Organizational and preventive measures should be aimed primarily at monitoring the working conditions and health of medical staff .


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-74
Author(s):  
Fonteh Athanasius Amungwa

This paper examines the impact of community education and challenges facing Centres for Education and Community Action as a rural development strategy in Cameroon. The study was conducted in the North-West Region of Cameroon, employing field observations, semi-structured interviews with key informants using a convenient sampling technique and through elaborate review of documents. These research instruments were blended into what is termed triangulation and the data collected was analysed descriptively. The main focus of qualitative analysis is to understand the ways in which people act and the accounts that people give for their actions. This paper posits that extreme dependence on the provision of Western formal education cannot solve the problems of a rapidly changing society like Cameroon, which is facing a long-term economic crisis and persistent unemployment issues of graduates. Consequently, education should be redefined in the context of the prevailing economic crisis to make it responsive to the aspirations of rural communities. Findings showed that community education had contributed towards rural development immensely but has suffered many challenges due to neglect of the field in the policy agenda. This paper recommends the integration of community education with formal education to facilitate group and community betterment in particular and rural transformation in general.


2021 ◽  
pp. 025576142110272
Author(s):  
Oriana Incognito ◽  
Laura Scaccioni ◽  
Giuliana Pinto

A number of studies suggest a link between musical training and both specific and general cognitive abilities, but despite some positive results, there is disagreement about which abilities are improved. This study aims to investigate the effects of a music education program both on a domain-specific competence (meta-musical awareness), and on general domain competences, that is, cognitive abilities (logical-mathematical) and symbolic-linguistic abilities (notational). Twenty 4- to 6-year-old children participated in the research, divided into two groups (experimental and control) and the measures were administered at two different times, before and after a 6-month music program (for the experimental group) and after a sports training program (for the control group). Children performed meta-musical awareness tasks, logical-mathematical tasks, and emergent-alphabetization tasks. Non-parametric statistics show that a music program significantly improves the development of notational skills and meta-musical awareness while not the development of logical-mathematical skills. These results show that a musical program increases children’s meta-musical awareness, and their ability to acquire the notational ability involved in the invented writing of words and numbers. On the contrary, it does not affect the development of logical skills. The results are discussed in terms of transfer of knowledge processes and of specific versus general domain effects of a musical program.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-85
Author(s):  
Sunni L. Sonnenburg-Winkler ◽  
Zohreh R. Eslami ◽  
Ali Derakhshan

AbstractThe present study investigates variability among raters from different linguistic backgrounds, who evaluated the pragmatic performance of English language learners with varying native languages (L1s) by using both self- and peer-assessments. To this end, written discourse completion task (WDCT) samples of requesting speech acts from 10 participants were collected. Thereafter, the participants were asked to assess their peers’ WDCTs before assessing their own samples using the same rating scale. The raters were further asked to provide an explanation for their rating decisions. Findings indicate that there may indeed be a link between a rater’s language background and their scoring patterns, although the results regarding peer- and self-assessment are mixed. There are both similarities and differences in the participants’ use of pragmatic norms and social rules in evaluating appropriateness.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Madhusudan Ganigara ◽  
Chetan Sharma ◽  
Fernando Molina Berganza ◽  
Krittika Joshi ◽  
Andrew D. Blaufox ◽  
...  

Abstract The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a profound impact on medical educational curricula. We aimed to examine the impact of these unprecedented changes on the formal education of paediatric cardiology fellows through a nationwide survey. A REDCap™-based voluntary anonymous survey was sent to all current paediatric cardiology fellows in the United States of America in May, 2020. Of 143 respondents, 121 were categorical fellows, representing over one-fourth of all categorical paediatric cardiology fellows in the United States of America. Nearly all (140/143, 97.9%) respondents utilised online learning during the pandemic, with 134 (93.7%) reporting an increase in use compared to pre-pandemic. The percentage of respondents reporting curriculum supplementation with outside lectures increased from 11.9 to 88.8% during the pandemic. Respondents considered online learning to be “equally or more effective” than in-person lectures in convenience (133/142, 93.7%), improving fellow attendance (132/142, 93.0%), improving non-fellow attendance (126/143, 88.1%), and meeting individual learning needs (101/143, 70.6%). The pandemic positively affected the lecture curriculum of 83 respondents (58.0%), with 35 (24.5%) reporting no change and 25 (17.5%) reporting a negative effect. A positive effect was most noted by those whose programmes utilised supplemental outside lectures (62.2 versus 25.0%, p = 0.004) and those whose lecture frequency did not decrease (65.1 versus 5.9%, p < 0.001). Restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic have greatly increased utilisation of online learning platforms by medical training programmes. This survey reveals that an online lecture curriculum, despite inherent obstacles, offers advantages that may mitigate some negative consequences of the pandemic on fellowship education.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dion Alperstein ◽  
Jan Copeland

Background: While there is considerable evidence that brief motivational and skills-based interventions for substance use are effective, little is known regarding the transfer of knowledge from research to practice. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of two half-day didactic clinical training workshops for allied health workers, which did not incorporate feedback or supervision, via independent follow-up three months post training.Methods: In total, 1322 participants attended either or both of the evidence-based treatment workshops run by the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre. Of those participants, 495 (37%) completed an online follow-up evaluation three months later regarding their use of the newly learnt intervention(s).Results: At follow-up, 270 (54.5%) participants had an opportunity to use the skills and 144 (53.3%) of those participants reported having used the clinical skills taught in the workshop. Of those who used one of the interventions, 90 (62.5%) participants reported their clients had reduced or quit their cannabis use. Furthermore, 43 (30%) of these participants had attempted to train others in the workplace in the techniques learnt in the workshop.Conclusion: Even a half-day didactic clinical training workshop on evidence-based brief cognitive–behavioural techniques delivered to clinicians working in the field can improve knowledge and confidence among clinicians and outcomes among their clients with cannabis use related problems.


2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 333-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis Gray ◽  
Eric Sundstrom ◽  
Louis G. Tornatzky ◽  
Lindsey McGowen

Cooperative research centres (CRCs) increasingly foster Triple Helix (industry–university–government) collaboration and represent significant vehicles for cooperation across sectors, the promotion of knowledge and technology transfer and ultimately the acceleration of innovation. A growing social science literature on CRCs focuses on their management and best practices, mainly through success stories and rarely by describing and analysing CRC failures. The literature on CRCs can benefit by learning from failures, as has been seen in other areas of social science. Here the authors present four mini-cases of CRC failures – centres that were successfully launched but later declined and closed – and, in contrast, one mini-case of a success story. The analysis identifies: (a) likely contributing factors in the failures, mainly environmental influences and mismanagement of centre transitions; (b) themes in the failures, notably a tendency for problems in one area to magnify the impact of problems in other areas; and (c) learning points for CRCs concerning leadership and succession. The implications for Triple Helix organizations are discussed.


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