A math review exam, written and administered in conjunction with the Quantitative Assessment Program at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, is used at the beginning of the 1st food engineering course to evaluate math skills needed for successful completion of the course. Students who do not score well on the math exam are targeted for individual…

Two of the challenges in teaching Food Analysis are bringing relevance to the various chemical and physical analyses discussed and exposing students to the realities of quality assurance in the food industry. In a project to help meet those objectives, each student, with the assistance of a "resource person" from the food industry, completes the…

A science content course in food chemistry was offered as a 4-day summer workshop from 1999 to 2001 to 4th grade school teachers in the Seattle School District. The objectives of the workshop were to increase the teachers' knowledge of food science, to perform simple experiments that could be used in the 4th grade classroom, and to help the…

Decades of research have provided evidence that food irradiation is a safe technology that can decrease the incidence of foodborne diseases; however, adoption of this technology has been slow. The purpose of our study was to qualitatively explore the effectiveness of various components of a professional development training on family and consumer…

One of the core competencies in the new IFT Education standards is for students to achieve competency in communication skills (that is, oral and written communication, listening, interviewing, and so on). According to the IFT guidelines, by the time students graduate, they should not only be able to search for and condense information, but also be…

Objective: To compare the effects of active and didactic teaching strategies on learning- and process-oriented outcomes. Design: Controlled trial. Setting: After-hours residents' teaching session. Participants: Family and Community Medicine, Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics residents at two academic medical institutions. Interventions: We…

Although studies have been conducted to examine the effects of a variety of factors on the comparability of scores obtained from standardized patient examinations (SPE), little research has been conducted to specifically investigate the challenge of detecting drift in case difficulty estimates over time, particularly for large-scale,…

Purpose: To examine the validity of using scores from a clinical evaluation form as an assessment of clinical competence. Method: Investigators collected a longitudinal clinical skills assessment database that included scores reflecting performance on standardized patient interactions, case-based learning performance, scores on multiple-choice…

The ECFMG[R] Clinical Skills Assessment (CSA[R]) was developed to evaluate whether graduates of international medical schools (IMGs) are ready to enter graduate training programs in the United States. The patient note (PN) exercise, conducted after a 15-minute interview with a standardized patient (SP), is specifically used to assess a candidate's…

Medical students will influence future health care considerably. Their professional orientation while at medical school will be related to their future professional development. Therefore, it is important to study this group's view of the role of medical doctors, especially because Swedish health care is currently undergoing major changes and…

Objective: To explore the experience and practice of students entering a problem-based (PBL) medical undergraduate course and to identify contributory social, curricular and contextual factors. Design: A multiple case study exploiting the natural experimental features of the setting. Qualitative data collection methods, including participant…

I attended all 42 hours of classes in the Cardiovascular System Course in order to help the course coordinator set the examination. What makes this unusual is that I am not a physician. As a PhD educator supporting faculty and the educational programs at our medical school I became a learner as well as a co-course co-coordinator. Attending all the…

Firstly, the many characteristics of expertise are examined: they include aspects of pattern recognition, knowledge, skill, flexibility, metacognitive monitoring, available cognitive space and teaching abilities. Secondly, three educational models from different domains(Nursing, Surgical Education, Education) are analysed, compared and contrasted,…

The Undergraduate Medical Programme at McMaster University selects students using a comprehensive set of tools. Attempts to modify the selection process over many years have been impeded by an inability to reconcile very strongly held views among stakeholders as to the importance of the selection tools and, indeed, the very purposes of the…

Purpose: The selection process for residency positions is sometimes seen as being "opaque'' and unfair by students, and can be a significant source of student stress. Yet efforts to clarify the process may not have helped reduce student stress for a number of reasons. This paper examines the nature of the knowledge that students possess and…