Kitchen Wizards: Community Engaged Learning at The Wolfville Farmers’ Market

This article tells the story of an introductory, undergraduate required course with a significant community service-learning project developed in partnership between the School of Nutrition and Dietetics at Acadia University and the Wolfville Farmers’ Market. This partnership began in 2009, with the vision of putting food and community at the centre of the School’s pedagogy. After two years of developing a trusting relationship between the partners with the integration of focused assignments, a community-service learning initiative called Kitchen Wizards was created. Kitchen Wizards, now in its 10th year, engages 50 to 80 first-year School of Nutrition and Dietetics’ students with the community each fall semester through a Food Commodities course. The initiative introduces 6 to 12-year-old children to in-season local vegetables through a taste-testing experience centered around a simple, healthy recipe made from local produce at the Farmer’s Market, which gives the children purchasing power to buy a vegetable with a three-dollar voucher after participating in the tasting. This Kitchen Wizard’s story was developed from an action research case study, grounded in a constructivist paradigm, which explored the community-valued outcomes of this program over a three-year period, as well as the student and institutional benefits. This study was conducted by a team that included the Wolfville Farmers’ Market Coordinator and the Director of the School of Nutrition and Dietetics who teaches the Food Commodities course. Through observation, dialogue and in-depth interviews conducted with students, teaching assistants, community members, Market staff, faculty, and university administration, insights were derived that illuminate community engaged learning as a key strategy for teaching about local food systems that puts both food and community at the centre.

Financial institutions and financial control

The article points out that the institution of financial control has clearly defined limits of application in society, while the scope of its direct application is the formation, distribution and use of public finances. The author shows that the institution of control has a binary nature, whose consideration allows to distinguish between its formal and informal content and to find ways to improve the efficiency of its use. The informal content of the institution of control is related to the financial morality of society and its members, and the formal one — to the competence or practice of agents of the institution of control as its structural elements for the benefit of society in the form of financial gain. It is proved that the public utility of the institution of control is determined by the financial and institutional benefits of its operation. Based on the calculations, it is shown that the institution of control is in a state of dysfunction. The author proposed various ways to overcome the established dysfunction, in particular, are proposed – giving the institute control over the powers to prevent financial violations and to effect full compensation.

Building online degrees quickly: Academic experiences and institutional benefits

Universities everywhere are rushing to upgrade their digital learning capabilities — and, more so now, in response to COVID-19. Long term, large-scale development of online courses requires investment in digital infrastructures and collaborative curriculum design involving educational, technical, and subjectmatter experts. However, compared to the resources invested in course development, there is relatively little investment in researching such development processes. Drawing on findings from a study of a strategic initiative to rapidly develop 12 fully online undergraduate degree programs in one Australian university, this paper reports on a study that aimed to capture the experiences of academic course writers. Findings show broad satisfaction with the production processes, courses created, and knowledge acquired - although also demonstrating key differences between senior, junior and casualised staff. This empirical case study contributes to knowledge about capacity building arising from large-scale, in-house development of fully online degree programs.

Mindfulness in medical education: Students’ perceptions and four recommendations for implementation of a mindfulness intervention

Background: Faculties of Medicine around the globe have implemented mindfulness-based curricula to deal with medical student’s burnout, anxiety and depression. The purpose of this qualitative study is to assess students’ perception of a mandatory mindfulness intervention and their recommendations for further curricula development and implementation.Methods: Third-year medical students participated in a mandatory three-hour mindfulness workshop embedded in their family medicine academic week. Eleven students consented to two interviews which explored their perceptions of mindfulness and the workshop in relation to their personal and professional wellbeing as well as their views for the implementation of a longitudinal mindfulness curriculum.Results: Student and institutional benefits and barriers relating to the curriculum were identified. Student’s benefits included positive changes in stress, self-awareness and personally that also translated into self-reported better patient care. Students reported lack of time, forgetting to practice and lack of knowledge about mindfulness as barriers. Institutional pride for their support of student wellness and an overfilled curriculum, were the major institutional benefits and barriers respectively, to the expansion of this curriculum. Among developing an implementing a longitudinal mindfulness curriculum, we found four key features to consider: Firstly to engage the stakeholders; secondly, to incorporate the mindfulness intervention into the curriculum with both a mandatory and elective component; thirdly, to emphasize the clinical implications of the mindfulness intervention and fourthly, to have protected time for wellness interventions.Conclusions: Introducing mindfulness into the undergraduate medical school curriculum through this workshop resulted in perceived personal, institutional and professional benefits. For faculties of medicine that want to implement a mindfulness intervention, we found four key components for implementing a mindfulness intervention in their institutions. Further research is needed to better quantify the benefits and to identify ways to manage barriers at both individual and institutional levels.

Importance of supervision in professional development of social workers supporting homeless people

The article presents the definitions and functions of supervision significant in the area of social work as well as its individual and institutional benefits. It also presents the results of a pilot study concerning the importance of the instrument of supervision in professional development of social workers. The study showed that the respondents most often participated in sessions providing emotional support, and less often in the sessions offering specialist knowledge. The way of carrying out the supervision was convergent with the current needs of the respondents; however, participating in supervision did not have much influence on making professional decisions or their quality.

Institutional provision of financial mechanism of water use: theory and practice

The statutes have the necessary positive and institutional benefits in the financial mechanism of water supply. The basic institute of financial security in the system of the water management complex of Ukraine is highlighted. The expediency of considering the institutional nature of financial support for the water management complex as a basis for optimization of economic systems has been proved. At the same time, it was noted that the market transformation of the Ukrainian Agrarian Union began without proper institutional support for the financial mechanism of the water management complex, which remained unchanged from the Soviet economic system, which does not meet the requirements of a market economy and needs a new revision. It is noted that the paradigm of institutionalism also provides an opportunity to determine the scenarios of financial support for the modernization of Ukraine. The necessity of formation of development institutes has been proved, among which in the research area are identified: institutes of property, management, financial intermediation, loan capital, rent of natural resources, entrepreneurship. It is determined that the development institute is an organizational and economic structure that facilitates the allocation of resources in favor of projects to realize the potential of economic growth. In the system of financial mechanism the main role is assigned to the Institute of Bank Lending. The basic problems of its functioning are revealed and the ways of their solution are determined. The main task of the National Bank of Ukraine is to expedite the problem of conducting currency swap operations, as they are able to solve the problem of shortage of national currency resources for the enterprises of Ukraine.

A research institution framework for publishing open code to enable reproducible science

Reproducible science is greatly aided by open publishing of scientific computer code. There are also many institutional benefits for encouraging the publication of scientific code, but there are also institutional considerations around intellectual property and risk. We discuss questions around scientific code publishing from the perspective of a research organisation asking: who will be involved, how should code be licensed, where should code be published, how to get credit, what standards, and what costs? In reviewing advice and evidence relevant to these questions we propose a research institution framework for publishing open scientific code to enable reproducible science.