Attempts to Purchase Misoprostol Online in Indonesia: A Mystery Client Study Design

Introduction: Abortion is highly restricted in Indonesia; self-administered misoprostol can safely induce an abortion. Pharmacies, a common place to purchase misoprostol off-label in other parts of the world, are monitored in Indonesia so that they cannot function outside the law. Misoprostol is for sale online through in-country distributors. Such procurement offers a level of safety and anonymity to the buyer and seller. So as to understand online acquisition of misoprostol, we created a protocol to capture the most visible universe and of sellers, how they engaged with clients, and what women’s experiences were likely to be attempting to buy misoprostol from them. Methods and analysis: We carried out a mystery client methodology to replicate the experiences of women procuring misoprostol online. Our study consisted of five sections: (1) identify the universe of online sellers using the most common search terms, drawn from multiple platforms to capture diversity in interactions as well as products sold (2) remove sellers advertising on more than one site as determined by their telephone numbers (3) draw a roughly probability proportional to size sample (4) contact sellers as mystery clients through text/chat, depending on the platform and engage with them using one profile (marital status, age, and number of children) and (5) purchase drugs offered by the seller. Ethics and dissemination: Ethical considerations include that by purchasing abortion medications from these online sellers, its possible that we made it harder for women seeking to buy drugs from online sellers. Our engagement with these online sellers may have resulted in some of them feeling under scrutiny and possibly pausing their sales. Dissemination plans include depositing a preprint of the paper, sharing the protocol with other study teams who are interested in replicating the methodology in other locations, and sharing our data collection tools on SurveyCTO.

THE USE OF DISCORD APPLICATION IN VIRTUAL ENGLISH LEARNING: AN INVESTIGATION ON STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS

Discord application, a voice and text chat platform usually used for games, social, class, or business groups, started to be used as one of the alternative media in virtual learning. A deeper investigation was conducted to get more information about students’ perception of virtual learning by using Discord application. This study implemented a qualitative research design, especially a case study. The data were collected from tertiary education students who were experienced in virtual English learning by using Discord by distributing an online questionnaire and doing interviews. Based on the results of data analysis, it was found that 89.72% of the students positively perceived the use of Discord application in virtual English learning. Some advantages of virtual learning by using Discord application found in the study were elaborated.

A mobile education and social support group intervention for improving postpartum health in northern India: Development and Usability Study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Structural and cultural barriers limit Indian women’s access to adequate postnatal care and support despite its importance for maternal and neonatal health. Targeted postnatal education and support through an mHealth intervention may improve postnatal recovery, neonatal care practices, nutritional status, knowledge and care seeking, and mental health. OBJECTIVE We sought to understand feasibility and acceptability of our first pilot phase, a flexible six-week postnatal mHealth intervention delivered to three groups of women in Punjab, India, and integrate these findings into the intervention for our next pilot phase which will formally assess intervention feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness. METHODS Our intervention prototype was designed to deliver culturally tailored educational programming via a provider-moderated, voice and text-based, group approach to connect new mothers with a virtual social support group of other new mothers, increase their health-related communication with providers, and refer them as needed. We targeted deployment for feature phones to include diverse socioeconomic participants. We held moderated group calls weekly, disseminated educational audios, and created mobile text groups. We varied content delivery, group discussion participation, and text chat moderation. Three groups of postpartum women from Punjab, India were recruited for the 6-week pilot through community health workers. Sociodemographic data were collected at baseline. Intervention feasibility and acceptability were assessed through weekly participant check-ins (n=29), weekly moderator reports, structured endline in-depth interviews (IDIs) among some participants (n=15), and backend data from the technologies used. RESULTS Our 29 participants were 24-28 years and 1-3 months postpartum with parity 0-1. Half had their own phone. Half of participants attended 3 or more of the 6 calls; main barriers were childcare and household responsibilities, and network or phone issues. Most participants were very satisfied with the intervention and found the educational content and group discussion beneficial. Participants utilized the text chat, particularly where facilitator-moderated. Sustaining participation and fostering group interactions was limited by technological and socio-cultural challenges. CONCLUSIONS The intervention was considered generally feasible and acceptable, and protocol adjustments were identified to improve intervention delivery and engagement. To address technological issues, we engaged a cloud-based service provider for group calls and an interactive voice response service provider for educational recordings, and developed a smartphone application for participants. We seek to overcome socio-cultural challenges through new strategies for increasing group engagement, including targeting mid-level female Community health Officers as moderators. Our second pilot will assess intervention feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness at six months. Ultimately, we seek to support the health and wellbeing of postpartum women and their infants in South Asia and beyond through the development of efficient, acceptable, and effective intervention strategies. CLINICALTRIAL NCT04636398

Synchronous web-based collaborative writing: Attitudes of learners toward working in pairs and small groups

This study explored learners’ attitudes toward collaborative writing in pairs and small groups (fours and sixes) in a synchronous web-based environment. Sophomore pre-service teachers in one intact class in the Philippines (n=31) completed the same collaborative writing tasks using Google Docs. In three separate out-of-class sessions, they first worked in pairs, and then they were assigned to either groups of four or groups of six in the succeeding two sessions. After completing the tasks, they were asked to complete a post-task questionnaire. The learners had an overall positive attitude toward peer collaborative writing in a web-based synchronous environment as it helps them to develop the content better, find appropriate vocabulary, and improve the grammatical and mechanical accuracy of the texts they produced. Students highly appreciated working in pairs and groups of four. In pairs, they felt that it is easier to manage text-chat deliberation, resolve concerns, and attend to each other’s suggestions. In groups of four, they acknowledged the increase of peer resources for knowledge sharing and in ensuring the accuracy of their language use. Hence, the majority complained that a group of six is not that conducive in a real-time text-chat environment. When asked about their preference, most students would prefer to work in a similar task and environment in pairs. These findings on learners’ attitudes toward collaborative writing concur with the previous literature in face-to-face educational settings and open new insights on synchronous web-based collaborative writing via text-chat.

Collaborative Writing on Google Docs: Taiwanese Students’ Participation, Behaviors, and Writing Trajectories with Real-work Online Tasks

In the past two decades, the growing rage of computer mediated environments (CMC) affords new literacies and new opportunities for language learners to experience, construct, communicate, and access knowledge (Ware, Kern & Warschauer, 2016). Also, it suggests that writing in multimodal in the digital ear contributes to its production and interpretation (Canagarajah, 2013) and can be particularly beneficial for L2 learners’ writing practices (Elola & Oskoz, 2010) such as writing quality (Stroch, 2005), writing fluency (Bloch, 2007), academic voices (Sperling & Appleman, 2011) and a sense of audience (Sun & Chang, 2012). Google Docs and online text-chat systems are prominent collaborative tools for group writing, and the result shows that the focus group displayed a mixed-interaction pattern, a collaborative pattern in two online text-chat systems, and a more dominant-passive pattern while co-constructing the text. They study also explored that changing the mode of communication from Line to Google Docs chat-room appears to have led to an increase in the participants’ interaction and communication and seems to have facilitated collaboration. Participants make a significant contribution of two types of writing changing functions, adding and correcting in the text and make revisions to their text.

How to vEGU: networking

<p>This year vEGU21 has flexible networking tools available to conveners and attendees, allowing people to engage and socialise with, and learn from one another in almost any way they wish. Networking is facilitated by three key tools: the Networker community-building platform, the conference Handshake tool, and the Pop-Up Scheduler.</p> <p>This year the Networker will help attendees find, meet, and talk with one another and forge lasting connections. Build your profile by adding in your expertise, social media, contact information and other details; you can even add stickers to quickly showcase your Division, whether you are an Early Career Scientist, and your pronouns amongst other choices! During the Assembly you can find other members with similar interests on the Networker, share your profiles with people you meet at the conference, or start group text chats with other members in your network. The Networker isn’t just for the Assembly either: after building your network at the Assembly members will be able to keep connected and meet others all year-round!</p> <p>One of the quickest ways to build your network during the Assembly is by using the conference networking tool: Handshake. Handshake lets you quickly initiate contact with other attendees in your virtual conference room and share your networker profile or start a text chat.</p> <p>If you want to run your own event then the Assembly’s Pop-Up Scheduler allows you to set up networking opportunities of any kind, from small events focusing on a particular scientific topic to spaces for you to build a community. Perhaps you’ve been inspired by member-led events like the Games Night or Rhyme Your Research and want to explore more ways to get involved in geoscience communication! The Pop-Up Scheduler allows you to do all this and more: simply choose a date, time, and provide a link to a platform of your choice. Once submitted it will be added to the conference programme. You can link to any platform you like: the scheduler is designed to be flexible and meet the needs of the membership, so members should feel free to organise events using platforms from Animal Crossing to Zoom! Unsure which one to choose? Check out our uploaded display materials for inspiration and suggestions.</p>

Depression Therapy Using Chatbot

The objective of this paper is to build a Web Application based on Virtual voice and chat Assistant. The current study focuses on development of voice and text/chat bot specifically. It is specially being built for people who feel depressed and insists them to talk open mindedly which in turn pacifies them. As the name of the application suggests, App: An application to pacify people and make them as happy as a cat would be with his or her mother (the reason why a cat purrs). We will be using Dialog flow for the application design and Machine Learning as a part of Artificial Intelligence for Natural Language Processing (NLP), an easiest way to use Machine Learning libraries. At the back-end we will be using a database to store the communication history between the user and the bot. This application will only work on devices with Web operating system version-5.0 and above.

Synchronous Group Cybersupervision

The professional literature on the use of synchronous group cybersupervision is almost nonexistent. This poster presentation aimed to partially address this dearth by examining the use of a full-spectrum version of synchronous group cybersupervision. Full-spectrum was defined as the use of a real-time combination of (1) text-chat, (2) VoIP audio, (3) webcam video streaming, and (4) psychotherapy session video and audio playback. Adobe Connect 7.5 was the online environment employed. Supervisee assessment of the usefulness, telepresence, and barriers of full-spectrum synchronous group cybersupervision was conducted and results were presented. Keywords: Clinical Supervision, Cybersupervision, Synchronous Web, Telepresence, Group Supervision