BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The 18 medical schools involved in the UME-21 initiative developed innovative curricula and evaluation strategies. While there was significant variation in how schools approached the evaluation process, there were common methodological issues and challenges affecting the reliability of scores and validity of interpretations regarding outcomes. This paper explores these...

BACKGROUND Indigenous health programs are seen as a curriculum response to addressing health disparities and social accountability. Several interrelated teaching approaches to cultural competency curricula have been recommended, however evidence of the impact of these on learner outcomes including engagement and self-reported competencies is limited. We aimed to explore undergraduate medical st...

For occupational therapy to provide a holistic view of meaningful activity, we must understand the relationship between physical, psychological, and social variables, especially as they affect our psychosocial evaluations and treatment. Existing definitions of psychosocial variables are unclear and, for occupational therapy practice, must be linked to activity and occupational performance. Occu...

Today, educational evaluation theory and practice face a critical juncture with the kind of educational accountability evaluation legislated by No Child Left Behind. While the goal of this kind of educational accountability is to improve education, it is characterized by a hierarchical, top-down approach to improving educational achievement reflecting a climate of control and efficiency. Democr...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to assess the reliability of the Advanced REACH Tool (ART) by (i) studying interassessor agreement of the resulting exposure estimates generated by the ART mechanistic model, (ii) studying interassessor agreement per model parameters of the ART mechanistic model, (iii) investigating assessor characteristics resulting in reliable estimates, and (iv) estimatin...

How to incorporate instructional strategies in computer-assisted learning systems in a systematic manner has been a major research topic in recent years. In this paper, a style-matching strategy that attempts to match learning materials’ styles to learners’ latent traits is proposed and realized in a Web-based tutoring system, called CooTutor. The mechanism of adaptive material selection takes ...

OBJECTIVES A significant amount of literature documents the challenges of undertaking evaluative research on the public health impacts of interventions in the non-health sector. However, few studies have investigated why such studies are undertaken despite the undoubted challenges. Taking housing as a case study, the authors aimed to identify the factors contributing to successful evaluative re...

Educators differ among themselves as to both the essence and worth of an educational program. The wide range of evaluation purposes and methods allows, each to keep his own perspective. Few see their own programs "in the round", partly because of a parochial approach to evaluation. To understand better his own teaching and to contribute more to the science of teaching, each educator should exam...

Hypermedia-based learning is currently a popular instructional delivery system. However, the last decade relevant literature has maintained that most educational software does not meet its promise. One of the reasons for the lack of educational software of high quality is that educational research cannot keep pace with the advances of technology and as a result existing evaluation methods are o...