Julie Foertsch - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Julie Foertsch

Written Communication, Jul 1, 1995

What sort of approach should we use to teach writing skills in today's classrooms? Many socia... more What sort of approach should we use to teach writing skills in today's classrooms? Many socially oriented scholars think we should teach context-specific writing skills that address the text's social milieu, whereas cognitively inclined scholars think we should teach more general models that can be adapted to a wide variety of writing contexts. As a number of composition theorists (e.g., Carter, 1990; Flower, 1994; Nystrand, 1989) have argued, a genuine synthesis between the cognitive theorists' general knowledge perspective and the social theorists' local knowledge perspective is necessary if we wish to teach students of diverse backgrounds how to write successfully in a variety of present and future contexts. This article attempts to bridge the misleading dichotomy between local knowledge and general knowledge by applying what cognitive psychologists have discovered about memory, expertise, and the transfer-of-learning to the question of appropriate composition pedagogy.

PubMed, 2020

Toxicology, as a profession, lacks diversity. Undergraduate students, and especially underreprese... more Toxicology, as a profession, lacks diversity. Undergraduate students, and especially underrepresented students, are not commonly introduced to toxicology at US colleges and universities. The Toxicology Mentoring and Skills Development Training Program (ToxMSDT) seeks to acquaint underrepresented undergraduates enrolled in STEM fields with toxicology fundamentals and skills to aid their entry into graduate programs and, ultimately, careers in toxicology. ToxMSDT is a collaboration among three universities. It is a year-long holistic training and mentoring program comprised of web resources accessible 24/7 and extensive one-to-one mentor-mentee interactions throughout the year. Evaluation of the two-year pilot program shows that students expressed a significant increase in knowledge about toxicology careers, networking with people involved in the field of toxicology, feelings of being part of the toxicology community, and seeing themselves as someone who will study toxicology, compared with their feelings prior to their participation in the ToxMSDT program. Thirty students have completed the ToxMSDT program and all 10 (100%) of those who have graduated have joined graduate school in toxicology or toxicology-related STEM fields. Of the 20 (66.6%) program alumni still enrolled as undergraduates, five (25%) are in the process of applying to graduate programs and medical schools as of August 2019.

PubMed, 2008

A decade's worth of online education literature reveals a great deal of consensus on the pedagogi... more A decade's worth of online education literature reveals a great deal of consensus on the pedagogical practices necessary to make online courses at least as effective as the face-to-face courses they are replacing. As many authors have pointed out, the principles that govern effective online teaching are similar to those that underlie effective classroom-based teaching. Building from Chickering and Gamson's "Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" (1987), Chickering and Ehrmann (1996) and Graham et al. (2001) illustrate how these same principles apply to online education, in spite of the fact that online teachers and students rarely meet in person. All three articles argue that effective undergraduate education: 1. encourages contact between students and faculty, 2. develops reciprocity and cooperation among students, 3. encourages active learning, 4. gives prompt feedback, 5. emphasizes time on task, 6. communicates high expectations, and 7. respects diverse talents and ways of learning. Numerous college educators have incorporated one or more of these principles into their online courses. The Teaching, Learning, and Technology Group has cataloged hundreds of technology-assisted teaching and learning strategies that use Chickering and Gamson's seven principles, many of which are what the group describes as "low threshold"-that is, easy for faculty and institutions to implement. This compendium of successful strategies implemented by online instructors nationwide demonstrates the many ways in which the Internet can support critical thinking, student engagement, and productive group work as well as, and sometimes better than, the face-to-face classroom environment. In this article, we present the outcome of a formative evaluation of an online undergraduate course in psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) that not only adheres to the seven principles of effective teaching but also illustrates an eighth principle: It employs the unique benefits and constraints of online communication to prompt critical thinking about various facets of human communication, psychology, sociology, and human-computer interface design. Exploring Autism, an upper-level course offered entirely online, benefited from an illuminating association between its content-the cognitive and social experiences of autistic people-and its online environment, which effectively removed the nonverbal social cues that shape face-to-face communication. Being restricted to online communication helped students understand the complications of communicating when those nonverbal cues are absent or, as for autistic people, difficult or impossible to decode and enabled students to better understand both how those with autism flourish in online communication and the benefits and limitations of online communication for themselves. Course Goals and Design Exploring Autism was developed by psychology professor Morton Ann Gernsbacher to familiarize UW students with the latest research on the increasingly diagnosed class of developmental disabilities known as autism. The primary goals of this upper-level course for psychology majors are to expand students' http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=434

Council on Undergraduate Research quarterly, Dec 1, 2020

Two decades ago, when the author evaluated the impacts of Summer Research Opportunity Programs fo... more Two decades ago, when the author evaluated the impacts of Summer Research Opportunity Programs focused on minority undergraduates in STEM at 15 universities, blacks, Latinx/Hispanics, and Native Americans were dramatically underrepresented among PhD recipients in STEM fields. In the 20 years that followed, there have been significant increases in the representation of blacks and Latinx among STEM PhD recipients. The author discusses changes in research programs focused on underrepresented minorities over the last two decades, as well as the best practices that have not only enabled underrepresented minority participants to succeed in graduate school but also may improve the outcomes of any research program attempting to recruit and retain more undergraduates in STEM.

Discourse Processes, Nov 1, 1994

Three experiments illustrated that readers will not completely comprehend the sentences they read... more Three experiments illustrated that readers will not completely comprehend the sentences they read unless sufficiently motivated by situational demands. Complete comprehension of a topic is defined as the ability to accurately redescribe that topic in one's own words, and it entails three separate yet interdependent processing tasks: (a) activating the information contained in a topic, (b) resolving the topic as a new topic or as an anaphor referring to an old topic, and (c) modifying one's mental structures to organize the additional information that is received. Each process hinges on the outcome of those that preceded it, and comprehenders are not expected to initiate the next process in the sequence unless it is required or motivated by task demands. To test these predictions, three experiments were conducted in which participants were prompted to engage in one, two, or all three comprehension processes after reading two-clause conjunctive sentences. The results suggested that experimental participants had a strategy of minimal task satisfaction: They did not resolve anaphors, build structures, or draw inferences unless it was necessary for completion of the experiment.

Discourse Processes, Mar 1, 1995

Academic Medicine, Mar 1, 2013

Psychological Science, Mar 1, 1997

With increasing frequency, writers and speakers are ignoring grammatical proscription and using t... more With increasing frequency, writers and speakers are ignoring grammatical proscription and using the plural pronoun they to refer to singular antecedents. This change may, in part, be motivated by efforts to make language more gender inclusive. In the current study, two reading-time experiments demonstrated that singular they is a cognitively efficient substitute for generic he or she, particularly when the antecedent is nonreferential. In such instances, clauses containing they were read (a) much more quickly than clauses containing a gendered pronoun that went against the gender stereotype of the antecedent, and (b) just as quickly as clauses containing a gendered pronoun that matched the stereotype of the antecedent. However, with referential antecedents, for which the gender was presumably known, clauses containing singular they were not read as quickly as clauses containing a gendered pronoun that matched the antecedent's stereotypic gender. In speech we often solve the problem of the generic he by [using] a plural pronoun ... as in Everyone brought their books to class. But this construction violates the expectations of most readers, so it should be avoided in writing. (Fowler & Aaron, 1983, p. 195) In spite of proscriptions like this one, using the plural pronoun they to refer to a singular person of unknown gender has become ubiquitous, even in writing (

Institutions within the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions lack ... more Institutions within the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions lack sufficient resources and knowledge to take significant advantage of national and international computational resources available to advance computational science research and education. Such institutions, just like the USA's Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), can provide a critical yet untapped human resource potential. The US National Science Foundation's TeraGrid has attempted to define, promote and deliver an integrated set of high performance computing resources to the US academic research community. However, a gap persists in the connections between the TeraGrid program and non-TeraGrid national computational resources and data. For MSIs and other users, these circumstances hinder seamless, natural use of resources from local, campus infrastructure through national and international high performance computing research tools. In spite of impressive TeraGrid advances, its user community falls short of engaging a much broader potential community such as the MSI community. This paper promotes a campus-based integrated CyberInfrastructure (CI) to bridge this gap. Such can provide new dimensions to an institution's contributions to its national commitments especially in areas such as human and economic development and security.

Page 301. CHAPTER NINE Three models of discourse comprehension Morton Ann Gernsbacher Department ... more Page 301. CHAPTER NINE Three models of discourse comprehension Morton Ann Gernsbacher Department of Psychology. University of Wisconsin-Madison. USA Julie A. Foertsch The LEAD Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. ...

American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Oct 1, 2011

Background: Healthcare and public health systems are each transforming, resulting in a need for b... more Background: Healthcare and public health systems are each transforming, resulting in a need for better integration between clinical and population-based approaches to improve the health of populations. These changes also demand substantial transformations in the curriculum for medical students. Integrative Cases were designed for all fırst-and second-year medical students to provide them with more awareness, knowledge, and skills in integrating public health into clinical medicine. Each case examines basic science factors, clinical approaches, and public health determinants, including risk factors and direct and indirect contributing factors. Purpose: This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of Integrative Cases in the medical student curriculum. Methods: Integrative Cases were formatively evaluated using standardized online post-event questionnaires emailed to students after each case. The questionnaires focused on goals specifıc to each case, ratings of particular sessions and facilitators, general impressions of the case, and student suggestions for improvement. Results: Student evaluations indicate that Integrative Cases achieved their goals, especially providing experiences that offer a more expansive view of medicine and public health, stimulating interest and questions that anticipate future learning and making connections across basic science, medicine, and health. Students also indicated that these cases added to their understanding of public health issues and how to apply what they had learned to patient care. Conclusions: Integrative Cases demonstrate the effectiveness of a comprehensive approach that integrates clinical medicine with basic science and public health perspectives.

degree holders. In 1995, African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians made up 22.9 % of the... more degree holders. In 1995, African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians made up 22.9 % of the U.S. population but only 4.8 % of Ph.D. degree recipients in SMET disciplines (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1995; Science & Engineering Indicators, 1996). While some of our nation’s top scientists, mathematicians, and engineers have come from ethnic minority backgrounds, the scientific and technical fields that undergird our nation’s economic power and potential are dominated by White and Asian males. As achievement and skill in science and technology become ever-more important to indiv dual and national advancement in the high-tech economy of the 21st century, the need for American citizens from all backgrounds to contribute to scientific and technical innovation becomes all the more pressing. Although the underrepresentation of minorities SMET disciplines is a systemic problem that results in significant losses of potential students throughout the educational pipeline, a critical dispar...

Medical science educator, Mar 19, 2022

Introduction COVID-19 response efforts that began in March 2020 prompted an urgent need to transi... more Introduction COVID-19 response efforts that began in March 2020 prompted an urgent need to transition medical education from an in-person to a virtual format. Our aim is to provide evaluation of a virtual platform for a fully integrated curriculum to provide future guidance in teaching methods. Materials and Methods We used summative assessments and course evaluations from pre-and post-transition from in-person to virtual delivery of educational content to measure the impacts of this transition on student performance and perceptions. Additionally, we surveyed students about their in-person versus online educational preferences. Results There were no statistically significant differences in student knowledge acquisition as assessed by weighted averages of summative assessments when comparing an in-person to a virtual educational platform. While the transition to virtual learning was initially well-received by students, our studied cohorts gave lower scores for the overall learning experience after prolonged virtual learning (p < 0.001). Students had a strong preference that anatomy and other group sessions should be delivered in-person. There was no strong preference whether other learning modalities should be given in-person or virtually. Conclusions Although student knowledge acquisition remained stable on a virtual platform, the student learning experience varied. We recommend that when returning to a new normal after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, sessions that require 3-dimensional or group learning should remain in-person, while other educational activities may be offered on a virtual platform and that, whenever virtual learning is employed, attention be paid to ensuring ongoing social and academic engagement between learners and faculty.

Medical Science Educator, 2022

Introduction COVID-19 response efforts that began in March 2020 prompted an urgent need to transi... more Introduction COVID-19 response efforts that began in March 2020 prompted an urgent need to transition medical education from an in-person to a virtual format. Our aim is to provide evaluation of a virtual platform for a fully integrated curriculum to provide future guidance in teaching methods. Materials and Methods We used summative assessments and course evaluations from pre-and post-transition from in-person to virtual delivery of educational content to measure the impacts of this transition on student performance and perceptions. Additionally, we surveyed students about their in-person versus online educational preferences. Results There were no statistically significant differences in student knowledge acquisition as assessed by weighted averages of summative assessments when comparing an in-person to a virtual educational platform. While the transition to virtual learning was initially well-received by students, our studied cohorts gave lower scores for the overall learning experience after prolonged virtual learning (p < 0.001). Students had a strong preference that anatomy and other group sessions should be delivered in-person. There was no strong preference whether other learning modalities should be given in-person or virtually. Conclusions Although student knowledge acquisition remained stable on a virtual platform, the student learning experience varied. We recommend that when returning to a new normal after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, sessions that require 3-dimensional or group learning should remain in-person, while other educational activities may be offered on a virtual platform and that, whenever virtual learning is employed, attention be paid to ensuring ongoing social and academic engagement between learners and faculty.

Katzenmeyer for his encouragement to develop this project. The Learning Through Evaluation,

An eTEACH presentation combines a video frame (Microsoft MediaPlayer) with a slide frame (Microso... more An eTEACH presentation combines a video frame (Microsoft MediaPlayer) with a slide frame (Microsoft PowerPoint), an external web links frame, a dynamic table of contents that titles the major portions of the lecture and allows jumping to any portion, buttons that allow the lecture to be advanced or rewound 10 or 30 seconds, and fast forward and reverse buttons; all in an Internet Explorer window. The PowerPoint slides and web links automatically synchronize with the current position in the lecture video. eTEACH supports PowerPoint animation features for viewing in the browser. eTEACH supports accessibility features such as closed captioning and web page readers. eTEACH has been used extensively in reforming a large enrollment computer sciences course.

UI journal, 2020

Toxicology, as a profession, lacks diversity. Undergraduate students, and especially underreprese... more Toxicology, as a profession, lacks diversity. Undergraduate students, and especially underrepresented students, are not commonly introduced to toxicology at US colleges and universities. The Toxicology Mentoring and Skills Development Training Program (ToxMSDT) seeks to acquaint underrepresented undergraduates enrolled in STEM fields with toxicology fundamentals and skills to aid their entry into graduate programs and, ultimately, careers in toxicology. ToxMSDT is a collaboration among three universities. It is a year-long holistic training and mentoring program comprised of web resources accessible 24/7 and extensive one-to-one mentor-mentee interactions throughout the year. Evaluation of the two-year pilot program shows that students expressed a significant increase in knowledge about toxicology careers, networking with people involved in the field of toxicology, feelings of being part of the toxicology community, and seeing themselves as someone who will study toxicology, compare...

Council on Undergraduate Research Quarterly

Written Communication, Jul 1, 1995

What sort of approach should we use to teach writing skills in today's classrooms? Many socia... more What sort of approach should we use to teach writing skills in today's classrooms? Many socially oriented scholars think we should teach context-specific writing skills that address the text's social milieu, whereas cognitively inclined scholars think we should teach more general models that can be adapted to a wide variety of writing contexts. As a number of composition theorists (e.g., Carter, 1990; Flower, 1994; Nystrand, 1989) have argued, a genuine synthesis between the cognitive theorists' general knowledge perspective and the social theorists' local knowledge perspective is necessary if we wish to teach students of diverse backgrounds how to write successfully in a variety of present and future contexts. This article attempts to bridge the misleading dichotomy between local knowledge and general knowledge by applying what cognitive psychologists have discovered about memory, expertise, and the transfer-of-learning to the question of appropriate composition pedagogy.

PubMed, 2020

Toxicology, as a profession, lacks diversity. Undergraduate students, and especially underreprese... more Toxicology, as a profession, lacks diversity. Undergraduate students, and especially underrepresented students, are not commonly introduced to toxicology at US colleges and universities. The Toxicology Mentoring and Skills Development Training Program (ToxMSDT) seeks to acquaint underrepresented undergraduates enrolled in STEM fields with toxicology fundamentals and skills to aid their entry into graduate programs and, ultimately, careers in toxicology. ToxMSDT is a collaboration among three universities. It is a year-long holistic training and mentoring program comprised of web resources accessible 24/7 and extensive one-to-one mentor-mentee interactions throughout the year. Evaluation of the two-year pilot program shows that students expressed a significant increase in knowledge about toxicology careers, networking with people involved in the field of toxicology, feelings of being part of the toxicology community, and seeing themselves as someone who will study toxicology, compared with their feelings prior to their participation in the ToxMSDT program. Thirty students have completed the ToxMSDT program and all 10 (100%) of those who have graduated have joined graduate school in toxicology or toxicology-related STEM fields. Of the 20 (66.6%) program alumni still enrolled as undergraduates, five (25%) are in the process of applying to graduate programs and medical schools as of August 2019.

PubMed, 2008

A decade's worth of online education literature reveals a great deal of consensus on the pedagogi... more A decade's worth of online education literature reveals a great deal of consensus on the pedagogical practices necessary to make online courses at least as effective as the face-to-face courses they are replacing. As many authors have pointed out, the principles that govern effective online teaching are similar to those that underlie effective classroom-based teaching. Building from Chickering and Gamson's "Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" (1987), Chickering and Ehrmann (1996) and Graham et al. (2001) illustrate how these same principles apply to online education, in spite of the fact that online teachers and students rarely meet in person. All three articles argue that effective undergraduate education: 1. encourages contact between students and faculty, 2. develops reciprocity and cooperation among students, 3. encourages active learning, 4. gives prompt feedback, 5. emphasizes time on task, 6. communicates high expectations, and 7. respects diverse talents and ways of learning. Numerous college educators have incorporated one or more of these principles into their online courses. The Teaching, Learning, and Technology Group has cataloged hundreds of technology-assisted teaching and learning strategies that use Chickering and Gamson's seven principles, many of which are what the group describes as "low threshold"-that is, easy for faculty and institutions to implement. This compendium of successful strategies implemented by online instructors nationwide demonstrates the many ways in which the Internet can support critical thinking, student engagement, and productive group work as well as, and sometimes better than, the face-to-face classroom environment. In this article, we present the outcome of a formative evaluation of an online undergraduate course in psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) that not only adheres to the seven principles of effective teaching but also illustrates an eighth principle: It employs the unique benefits and constraints of online communication to prompt critical thinking about various facets of human communication, psychology, sociology, and human-computer interface design. Exploring Autism, an upper-level course offered entirely online, benefited from an illuminating association between its content-the cognitive and social experiences of autistic people-and its online environment, which effectively removed the nonverbal social cues that shape face-to-face communication. Being restricted to online communication helped students understand the complications of communicating when those nonverbal cues are absent or, as for autistic people, difficult or impossible to decode and enabled students to better understand both how those with autism flourish in online communication and the benefits and limitations of online communication for themselves. Course Goals and Design Exploring Autism was developed by psychology professor Morton Ann Gernsbacher to familiarize UW students with the latest research on the increasingly diagnosed class of developmental disabilities known as autism. The primary goals of this upper-level course for psychology majors are to expand students' http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=434

Council on Undergraduate Research quarterly, Dec 1, 2020

Two decades ago, when the author evaluated the impacts of Summer Research Opportunity Programs fo... more Two decades ago, when the author evaluated the impacts of Summer Research Opportunity Programs focused on minority undergraduates in STEM at 15 universities, blacks, Latinx/Hispanics, and Native Americans were dramatically underrepresented among PhD recipients in STEM fields. In the 20 years that followed, there have been significant increases in the representation of blacks and Latinx among STEM PhD recipients. The author discusses changes in research programs focused on underrepresented minorities over the last two decades, as well as the best practices that have not only enabled underrepresented minority participants to succeed in graduate school but also may improve the outcomes of any research program attempting to recruit and retain more undergraduates in STEM.

Discourse Processes, Nov 1, 1994

Three experiments illustrated that readers will not completely comprehend the sentences they read... more Three experiments illustrated that readers will not completely comprehend the sentences they read unless sufficiently motivated by situational demands. Complete comprehension of a topic is defined as the ability to accurately redescribe that topic in one's own words, and it entails three separate yet interdependent processing tasks: (a) activating the information contained in a topic, (b) resolving the topic as a new topic or as an anaphor referring to an old topic, and (c) modifying one's mental structures to organize the additional information that is received. Each process hinges on the outcome of those that preceded it, and comprehenders are not expected to initiate the next process in the sequence unless it is required or motivated by task demands. To test these predictions, three experiments were conducted in which participants were prompted to engage in one, two, or all three comprehension processes after reading two-clause conjunctive sentences. The results suggested that experimental participants had a strategy of minimal task satisfaction: They did not resolve anaphors, build structures, or draw inferences unless it was necessary for completion of the experiment.

Discourse Processes, Mar 1, 1995

Academic Medicine, Mar 1, 2013

Psychological Science, Mar 1, 1997

With increasing frequency, writers and speakers are ignoring grammatical proscription and using t... more With increasing frequency, writers and speakers are ignoring grammatical proscription and using the plural pronoun they to refer to singular antecedents. This change may, in part, be motivated by efforts to make language more gender inclusive. In the current study, two reading-time experiments demonstrated that singular they is a cognitively efficient substitute for generic he or she, particularly when the antecedent is nonreferential. In such instances, clauses containing they were read (a) much more quickly than clauses containing a gendered pronoun that went against the gender stereotype of the antecedent, and (b) just as quickly as clauses containing a gendered pronoun that matched the stereotype of the antecedent. However, with referential antecedents, for which the gender was presumably known, clauses containing singular they were not read as quickly as clauses containing a gendered pronoun that matched the antecedent's stereotypic gender. In speech we often solve the problem of the generic he by [using] a plural pronoun ... as in Everyone brought their books to class. But this construction violates the expectations of most readers, so it should be avoided in writing. (Fowler & Aaron, 1983, p. 195) In spite of proscriptions like this one, using the plural pronoun they to refer to a singular person of unknown gender has become ubiquitous, even in writing (

Institutions within the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions lack ... more Institutions within the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions lack sufficient resources and knowledge to take significant advantage of national and international computational resources available to advance computational science research and education. Such institutions, just like the USA's Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), can provide a critical yet untapped human resource potential. The US National Science Foundation's TeraGrid has attempted to define, promote and deliver an integrated set of high performance computing resources to the US academic research community. However, a gap persists in the connections between the TeraGrid program and non-TeraGrid national computational resources and data. For MSIs and other users, these circumstances hinder seamless, natural use of resources from local, campus infrastructure through national and international high performance computing research tools. In spite of impressive TeraGrid advances, its user community falls short of engaging a much broader potential community such as the MSI community. This paper promotes a campus-based integrated CyberInfrastructure (CI) to bridge this gap. Such can provide new dimensions to an institution's contributions to its national commitments especially in areas such as human and economic development and security.

Page 301. CHAPTER NINE Three models of discourse comprehension Morton Ann Gernsbacher Department ... more Page 301. CHAPTER NINE Three models of discourse comprehension Morton Ann Gernsbacher Department of Psychology. University of Wisconsin-Madison. USA Julie A. Foertsch The LEAD Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. ...

American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Oct 1, 2011

Background: Healthcare and public health systems are each transforming, resulting in a need for b... more Background: Healthcare and public health systems are each transforming, resulting in a need for better integration between clinical and population-based approaches to improve the health of populations. These changes also demand substantial transformations in the curriculum for medical students. Integrative Cases were designed for all fırst-and second-year medical students to provide them with more awareness, knowledge, and skills in integrating public health into clinical medicine. Each case examines basic science factors, clinical approaches, and public health determinants, including risk factors and direct and indirect contributing factors. Purpose: This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of Integrative Cases in the medical student curriculum. Methods: Integrative Cases were formatively evaluated using standardized online post-event questionnaires emailed to students after each case. The questionnaires focused on goals specifıc to each case, ratings of particular sessions and facilitators, general impressions of the case, and student suggestions for improvement. Results: Student evaluations indicate that Integrative Cases achieved their goals, especially providing experiences that offer a more expansive view of medicine and public health, stimulating interest and questions that anticipate future learning and making connections across basic science, medicine, and health. Students also indicated that these cases added to their understanding of public health issues and how to apply what they had learned to patient care. Conclusions: Integrative Cases demonstrate the effectiveness of a comprehensive approach that integrates clinical medicine with basic science and public health perspectives.

degree holders. In 1995, African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians made up 22.9 % of the... more degree holders. In 1995, African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians made up 22.9 % of the U.S. population but only 4.8 % of Ph.D. degree recipients in SMET disciplines (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1995; Science & Engineering Indicators, 1996). While some of our nation’s top scientists, mathematicians, and engineers have come from ethnic minority backgrounds, the scientific and technical fields that undergird our nation’s economic power and potential are dominated by White and Asian males. As achievement and skill in science and technology become ever-more important to indiv dual and national advancement in the high-tech economy of the 21st century, the need for American citizens from all backgrounds to contribute to scientific and technical innovation becomes all the more pressing. Although the underrepresentation of minorities SMET disciplines is a systemic problem that results in significant losses of potential students throughout the educational pipeline, a critical dispar...

Medical science educator, Mar 19, 2022

Introduction COVID-19 response efforts that began in March 2020 prompted an urgent need to transi... more Introduction COVID-19 response efforts that began in March 2020 prompted an urgent need to transition medical education from an in-person to a virtual format. Our aim is to provide evaluation of a virtual platform for a fully integrated curriculum to provide future guidance in teaching methods. Materials and Methods We used summative assessments and course evaluations from pre-and post-transition from in-person to virtual delivery of educational content to measure the impacts of this transition on student performance and perceptions. Additionally, we surveyed students about their in-person versus online educational preferences. Results There were no statistically significant differences in student knowledge acquisition as assessed by weighted averages of summative assessments when comparing an in-person to a virtual educational platform. While the transition to virtual learning was initially well-received by students, our studied cohorts gave lower scores for the overall learning experience after prolonged virtual learning (p < 0.001). Students had a strong preference that anatomy and other group sessions should be delivered in-person. There was no strong preference whether other learning modalities should be given in-person or virtually. Conclusions Although student knowledge acquisition remained stable on a virtual platform, the student learning experience varied. We recommend that when returning to a new normal after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, sessions that require 3-dimensional or group learning should remain in-person, while other educational activities may be offered on a virtual platform and that, whenever virtual learning is employed, attention be paid to ensuring ongoing social and academic engagement between learners and faculty.

Medical Science Educator, 2022

Introduction COVID-19 response efforts that began in March 2020 prompted an urgent need to transi... more Introduction COVID-19 response efforts that began in March 2020 prompted an urgent need to transition medical education from an in-person to a virtual format. Our aim is to provide evaluation of a virtual platform for a fully integrated curriculum to provide future guidance in teaching methods. Materials and Methods We used summative assessments and course evaluations from pre-and post-transition from in-person to virtual delivery of educational content to measure the impacts of this transition on student performance and perceptions. Additionally, we surveyed students about their in-person versus online educational preferences. Results There were no statistically significant differences in student knowledge acquisition as assessed by weighted averages of summative assessments when comparing an in-person to a virtual educational platform. While the transition to virtual learning was initially well-received by students, our studied cohorts gave lower scores for the overall learning experience after prolonged virtual learning (p < 0.001). Students had a strong preference that anatomy and other group sessions should be delivered in-person. There was no strong preference whether other learning modalities should be given in-person or virtually. Conclusions Although student knowledge acquisition remained stable on a virtual platform, the student learning experience varied. We recommend that when returning to a new normal after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, sessions that require 3-dimensional or group learning should remain in-person, while other educational activities may be offered on a virtual platform and that, whenever virtual learning is employed, attention be paid to ensuring ongoing social and academic engagement between learners and faculty.

Katzenmeyer for his encouragement to develop this project. The Learning Through Evaluation,

An eTEACH presentation combines a video frame (Microsoft MediaPlayer) with a slide frame (Microso... more An eTEACH presentation combines a video frame (Microsoft MediaPlayer) with a slide frame (Microsoft PowerPoint), an external web links frame, a dynamic table of contents that titles the major portions of the lecture and allows jumping to any portion, buttons that allow the lecture to be advanced or rewound 10 or 30 seconds, and fast forward and reverse buttons; all in an Internet Explorer window. The PowerPoint slides and web links automatically synchronize with the current position in the lecture video. eTEACH supports PowerPoint animation features for viewing in the browser. eTEACH supports accessibility features such as closed captioning and web page readers. eTEACH has been used extensively in reforming a large enrollment computer sciences course.

UI journal, 2020

Toxicology, as a profession, lacks diversity. Undergraduate students, and especially underreprese... more Toxicology, as a profession, lacks diversity. Undergraduate students, and especially underrepresented students, are not commonly introduced to toxicology at US colleges and universities. The Toxicology Mentoring and Skills Development Training Program (ToxMSDT) seeks to acquaint underrepresented undergraduates enrolled in STEM fields with toxicology fundamentals and skills to aid their entry into graduate programs and, ultimately, careers in toxicology. ToxMSDT is a collaboration among three universities. It is a year-long holistic training and mentoring program comprised of web resources accessible 24/7 and extensive one-to-one mentor-mentee interactions throughout the year. Evaluation of the two-year pilot program shows that students expressed a significant increase in knowledge about toxicology careers, networking with people involved in the field of toxicology, feelings of being part of the toxicology community, and seeing themselves as someone who will study toxicology, compare...

Council on Undergraduate Research Quarterly