Moving Online: Evidence-Based Programming During COVID

The COVID pandemic disrupted the way evidence-based health promotion programs (EBPs) are delivered to older adults who were the most at-risk group in terms of mortality and faced unprecedented threats to their independence and physical and mental health. Many organizations stopped in-person EBPS causing older adults to lose access to key social networks and health resources. It is a top public health priority to find new ways to keep older adults connected to their EBPs. Fit & Strong! (F&S!) is a group exercise/health education EBP for older adults with arthritis offered by CBOs in 32 states. CBOs stopped offering F&S! in-person in March 2020. Since the lockdown, we have worked closely with our provider network to develop and pilot a version that is remote/online and live, titled “F&S! @Home”. Instructors deliver F&S! @Home to older adults with minimal technological resources. We created a staging website for both providers/instructors and participants that is used to initiate the classes, enable providers to manage participants, collect data, and share support materials. The pilot began September 2020; since that time 15 classes have been offered to 147 participants. Administration on Community Living falls and arthritis outcomes data are being collected. Preliminary analyses of 45 participants and 8 instructors demonstrate a high rating of the program (mean score of 90.2 out of 100) with no adverse outcomes to date. This presentation will review the process of creating the online adaptation, lessons learned, and will review pre/post outcomes and participant and instructor evaluation feedback.

Comparative Analysis of Generation Z Era Students’ Overall Grades and Course Satisfaction of a Basic Floral Design Course Taught Fully Face-to-face versus an Online Hybrid Format

As Generation Z (born 1995–2012) students replace Millennial (born 1981–94) students on college campuses, instructors may begin to evaluate and structure their courses based on how this new generation best learns. Generation Z students were exposed to such things as the internet, smart phones, personal computers, and laptops since infancy and, hence, are very comfortable with technology and multitasking. The purpose of this study was to compare students’ overall grades and perceptions of the course and instructor in a face-to-face vs. an online/hybrid basic floral design course taken by a majority Generation Z student population. The face-to-face course consisted of live lectures that met twice per week for 50 min at an assigned time; reading materials and standard lecture slides were used. The hybrid course had content placed online within weekly modules and released to students in an asynchronous manner each Monday. Both versions of the course had a face-to-face laboratory that met once per week. Comparisons of grades between the face-to-face and hybrid course formats were made using analysis of variance tests. A Mann-Whitney U test was used to determine if there were statistically significant differences in the way students in each course format answered the end of semester course and instructor evaluation survey. Of those that took the course, a majority [466 (98.3%)] was between the ages 18 and 24 years, within the Generation Z era. When comparing grades within this group, it was found students in the hybrid course received more A and B letter grades overall [223 (91%)] compared with the students of the same age range in the face-to-face course [198 (88.7%)]. Overall, seniors and juniors scored higher grades in both the hybrid and face-to-face course when compared with the sophomore and freshmen within the same class. No significant difference was found between the face-to-face and hybrid students’ responses to any of the 11 questions on the course and instructor evaluation survey. Results showed an overall high level of satisfaction (4.50) for both the face-to-face and hybrid format.

Instructor Evaluation of Business Student Writing: Does Language Play a Role?

Because few studies of disciplinary business writing have examined whether language features play a role in instructor assessment of student writing, this study explored the relationship between student language use and instructor essay scores. Undergraduate business students wrote a case study critique as part of their final exam, and their critiques were evaluated by their instructors for theory integration and essay structure. Student language use was analyzed in terms of error rate, lexical sophistication, lexical diversity, and phrasal complexity. Whereas lexical sophistication positively predicted instructor scores, error rate was a negative predictor of their assessment of business student writing.

Opinion Mining for Instructor Evaluations at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez

The Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez performs an instructor evaluation each semester to find strengths, weaknesses, and areas of opportunity during the teaching process. In this chapter, the authors show how opinion mining can be useful for labeling student comments as positives and negatives. For this purpose, a database was created using real opinions obtained from five professors of the UACJ over the last four years, covering a total of 20 subjects. Natural language processing techniques were used on the database to normalize its data. Experimental results using 1-NN and Bagging classifiers shows that it is possible to automatically label positive and negative comments with an accuracy of 80.13%.

On Misinterpretation of Course and Instruction Evaluation Data: How Relying Solely on Mean Scores Can Distort Score Meaning

One of the fundamental components of basic statistics is to examine a data distribution, namely its centre (median, mean, etc.), shape (skewness, symmetry, modality, etc.) and spread (variability, range, etc.). When examining research data, most educators are keenly aware of these fundamentals, but curiously seem to forget these fundamentals when examining course and instructor evaluation data. What often occurs is evaluators rely solely on mean score ratings as the basis for making inferences about a course and/or its instructor(s). This is problematic because a mean score alone does not illustrate the underlying score distribution, which in turn could completely alter the meaning of the data. The aim of this article is to present an illustrative example from basic statistics illustrating how course and instructor evaluation score inferences may be distorted by the underlying distribution of scores, thus threatening the validity of the measures. Suggestions for improving data reporting are provided.

Flight Performance and Mental Stress of Pilots by Verbal Reports and Spatial Disorientation

Spatial disorientation (SD) can adversely affect a pilot’s flight mission and cause critical flight accidents. To ensure a pilot’s flight safety, it is important to understand the impact of SD on a pilot’s flight performance and mental stress levels, and it is necessary to verify the effectiveness of using verbal reports (VR) for pilots to overcome SD without the aid of aeronautical systems. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the difference in pilot performance and mental stress levels by VR executions and SD types. In this study, simulated flight experiments were performed on thirty Air Force fighter pilots (fifteen VR and fifteen non-VR) using a SD simulator with an Electrocardiography (ECG) measurement sensor attached. The experimental data was analyzed with using two flight performance scales (instructor evaluation scores and self-evaluation scores) and two mental stress scales (heart rate variability (HRV) measures and subjective stress scores) by two VR executions (VR and non-VR) and six SD types (Somatogravic Illusion, Coriolis, Leans, False Horizon, Graveyard Spin, and Black Hole Illusion). The result of the experiment, in terms of flight performance, showed a significant difference in instructor evaluation scores for VR execution, and in both instructor evaluation scores and self-evaluation scores for SD types. On the other hand, in terms of mental stress, there was a significant difference in both high frequency (HF) of HRV measures and subjective stress scores for VR execution, and in subjective stress scores for SD types. The results of this study can help pilots understand SD situations and overcome SD by executing VR.

Verbal Reports Influence on Pilot Flight Performance and Mental Stress Under Spatial Disorientation

BACKGROUND: Circumstances in flight can adversely affect a pilots spatial abilities and lead to spatial disorientation (SD), increasing the potential for fatal accidents. To systematically understand the impact of SD, it is important to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze pilots flight performance and mental stress, and to verify the effectiveness of verbal reports (VR) in enabling pilots to deal with an SD situation. This study investigated the effects of VR execution and type of SD on flight performance and mental stress.METHODS: SD simulation experiments were conducted on 30 Air Force fighter pilots (15 in the VR group and 15 in the non-VR group) with electrocardiography (ECG) sensors attached. The pilots gave their VRs by immediately verbalizing their attention to instrument information and six potentially disorientating scenarios were implemented in each flight phase. Flight performance was analyzed using instructor evaluation and self-evaluation scores, and mental stress was measured using heart rate variability (HRV) and perceived distress score.RESULTS: In maintaining flight performance, the VR group, respectively, had 8% and 10% higher scores for altitude and speed than the non-VR group. The self-evaluation scores were lowest for Coriolis, while Graveyard Spin was scored lowest in the instructor evaluations. Regarding mental stress, the VR group tended to have higher HFs and lower LF/HF ratios among HRV measures than the non-VR group, and an 11% lower perceived distress score. The highest perceived distress score was for Coriolis.DISCUSSION: We suggest that pilots can be assisted to understand and overcome SD situations through VR.Kang Y, Yun MH, Kim S. Verbal reports influence on pilot flight performance and mental stress under spatial disorientation. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2020; 91(12):948955.