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Undergraduate nursing students’ perceptions of computer based testing
Get PDFBackground & Purpose: The National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN) is a computer adaptive licensure examination that nursing students are eligible to write upon completion of their undergraduate nursing degree. Success on this exam is a requirement for Registered Nurse practice. Historically, the Canadian licensure examination was a paper-based exam. However, in 2015 the NCLEX-RN was adopted. Initially Canadian pass rates declined and nursing schools have been seeking strategies to better prepare students for this exam. Practice with computer based testing (CBT) may be one approach. However, CBT has not been widely used and many nursing programs continue with paper-based exams. Recently CBT was integrated into a third year undergraduate nursing course in Alberta, Canada. The purpose of this qualitative study was to gain an understanding of undergraduate nursing student experiences with and perceptions of CBT. Specifically, the goals were to inform personal teaching and evaluative practices, positively contribute to changes to future course testing approaches, and share knowledge with other educators who may be considering the integration of CBT into their courses. Sharing this knowledge may contribute to the body of literature and serve as a foundation on which further research on this topic area could be conducted.
Method: Through purposive sampling, data was collected from 38 students who completed a set of reflective questions. Data was analyzed by thematic analysis.
Results: Four themes were generated: immediacy matters, distrust of self, navigating the new, and high stakes on the horizon. Findings including the benefits, challenges, and recommendations are discussed.
Conclusion: There are advantages and disadvantages to CBT. Providing CBT opportunities may encourage students to reflect on their learning, test-preparation, and test-taking strategies promoting reflection upon how they prepare for and engage in future computerized exams
Dark Net Markets: White House Market Drug Trades
Get PDFDark net markets (DNMs) are underground markets that ship goods and services globally. A main component of DNMs is the distribution of illegal drugs, these markets offer a wide range of drugs to users all over the world. Using data from the White House Market, a DNM site, this paper examines the price, amount, type, origin and destination countries of drug listings starting from January 6th to January 19th, 2020. It was found that there are restrictions on distribution based on the country of origin, with some countries having a higher rate of orders being shipped globally, potentially due to more lax standards in customs. DNMs appear to be a better alternative to conduct drug sale transactions than physical transactions as they add a substantial layer of protection from detection. This research also found that the drugs offered on DNMs are more pure, cheaper, and there is a significantly reduced chance of encountering physical violence
Program & Abstracts, 6th Annual Research Day (2019)
No full textProgram and abstracts from the Faculty of Science and Technology 6th Annual Research Day (2019). The research presented here encompasses both independent research projects and research in the classroom. In this volume you will find 82 abstracts authored by MRU students covering with a variety of disciplines including Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Geography, Environmental Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science. This compilation is a testimony to our students’ hard work, and their professors’ diligent guidance
“On behalf of the great mass of the public”: The Citizens’ Committee of 1,000, Constituted Authority, and the Capitalist State in the Winnipeg General Strike
No full textThroughout the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, ‘constituted authority’ served as a rhetorical banner under which the interests of the state and capital overlapped. Throughout the six-week walkout, representatives of all three levels of the state and members of the shadowy Citizens’ Committee of 1,000 repeatedly returned to the language of ‘constituted authority’ in order to illustrate what was threatened by the strikers. Tapping into post-war fears of ‘enemy aliens,’ Bolsheviks, and Soviet revolution, the Winnipeg Citizen, capital’s mouthpiece during the strike, was adept at conflating the goals of the strikers with those of an attempted revolution. Even when the Western Labour News, the newspaper of the strikers, emphasized that the strike’s goal was simply an increase in the standard of living conditions – one particularly blunt edition of the paper spelled out in clear terms “WHAT WE WANT” and “WHAT WE DO NOT WANT” – the Citizens’ Committee of 1,000 was particularly efficient at manipulating appearances so as to turn both public sentiment and that of various statesmen against the strike. In this manner, one effect of the General Strike was to expose the mechanisms of the democratic state in the early 20th century. Capitalists and statesmen comprised the upper echelons of Canadian society, and as such the democratic state consistently moved against labour in defense of capital. The ‘constituted authority’ that the Citizens’ Committee of 1,000 was so concerned with defending was the upper class’s ability to defend its interests at the expense of labour
Physiological and cognitive measures during prolonged sitting: Comparisons between a standard and multi-axial office chair
No full textProlonged sitting, common in many workplaces, reduces blood flow to the lower limb and has negative health outcomes. CoreChair is an active-sitting chair that encourages increased movement to help mitigate these outcomes. Physiological and cognitive measures were recorded in ten participants over four hours of sitting in both the CoreChair and a traditional office chair. Sitting in both chairs led to increases in calf circumference (p<0.0001), reduced tactile sensitivity (p=0.02), and a cognitive decline in attention (p=0.035) over time. However, the increase in calf circumference was smaller in the CoreChair at the second (p= 0.017) and third hour (p= 0.012) compared to the traditional chair. Additionally, for the attention task, the traditional chair generated more attention-task errors (p=0.005), while no changes were observed with the CoreChair (p=0.13). These findings suggest that during prolonged sitting CoreChair may have modest physiological and cognitive benefits compared to a traditional chair
A Review of Intimate Partner Violence in Canada
No full textIntimate partner violence (IPV) occurs frequently in Canada, with 35 percent of all women experiencing IPV at some point in their lifetime. Through the consideration of historical social and legal factors, a background for the prevalence of IPV in Canadian society is established. An examination of the current state based on statistics and research is also considered. An analysis on the responses of the Federal Government and some provincial provisions is also conducted. The resulting suggestions concern government spending, educational provisions, and law enforcement practices
Development of a questionnaire to assess dietary restrictions runners use to mitigate gastrointestinal symptoms
No full textBackground - Exercise induced gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms can plague athletes, especially runners. Sport nutrition recommendations are nutrient rather than foods focused and do not adequately address strategies to reduce GI symptoms. The objective was to develop a valid and reliable questionnaire to evaluate pre-training and pre-racing voluntary food restrictions/choices, reasons for avoiding foods, and gastrointestinal symptoms in endurance runners.
Methods - Validity testing occurred through four Registered Dietitians, three of whom possess Master’s degrees, and a dietetic trainee who provided initial feedback. Additionally, one Registered Dietitian is a Board Certified Specialist in Sports Dietetics (CSSD), and another has an International Olympic Committee Diploma in Sports Nutrition. The second version was sent out to nine different experts who rated each question using a Likert scale and provided additional comments. For reliability testing, the questionnaire was administered to 39 participants in a test re-test format. Kappa statistics and the prevalence-adjusted bias-adjusted kappa (PABAK) were used to assess the reliability.
Results - All questions had an average Likert scale rating of 4/5 or greater. All test re-test results falling under basic information exhibited substantial agreement (kappa ≥0.61). All medical questions including food allergies and intolerances had moderate (kappa ≥0.41) or higher agreement. Responses were less consistent for food avoidances while training (5/28 outcomes) versus racing (0/28 outcomes) with a kappa below 0.41. All reasons for avoiding foods were deemed reliable. Regarding symptoms, side stitch while training and gas while racing were the only flagged categories.
Conclusions - Overall, the questionnaire is a valid and reliable tool to evaluate voluntary dietary restrictions among endurance runners. Future studies can use the questionnaire to assess dietary strategies runners employ to reduce GI distress and optimize performance
#aboerjc: The Alberta OER Journal Club
Get PDFThis presentation was given at the 2019 Alberta OER Summit, at NorQuest College, Edmonton.The Alberta OER Journal Club was started in Autumn of 2018 as a way of continuing the OER discussion in Alberta, following the end of the provincial government's one-time funding. The journal club hosts monthly Twitter chats where guest facilitators guide a discussion on a piece of OER literature. This presentation will review the background and development of this project, provide an overview of the format and best practices, and highlight the project's significance and surprises
Foreword [to The Grounded Instruction Librarian: Participating in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning]
No full textThis is the foreword for a collection of chapters at the intersection of SoTL and librarianship.The book in your hand represents an exciting moment in academic librarianship.
Collectively, the work explicitly recognizes the deep connections between the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and the scholarly work of librarians. Individually, the essays and case studies demonstrate a remarkable range of how these connections support
and strengthen our contributions to academic and student learning. SoTL provides a way of grounding our scholarly teaching within theories of learning both established and developing. It is a framework for contextualizing the learning we see (or don’t) through
research conducted across the disciplines and a portal through which we can enter wider discourses about teaching. In turn, participating in SoTL work, from informal discussions to publication, showcases our expertise in teaching to the broader academic community
and perhaps helps us see ourselves differently
Prospective: A Data-Driven Technique to Predict Web Service Response Time Percentiles
No full textDelivering fast response times for user transactions is a critical requirement for Web services. Often, a Web service has Service Level Agreements (SLA) with its users that quantify how quickly the service has to respond to a user transaction. Typically, SLAs stipulate requirements for Web service response time percentiles, e.g., a specified target for the 95th percentile of response time. Violating SLAs can have adverse consequences for a Web service operator. Consequently, operators require systematic techniques to predict Web service response time percentiles. Existing prediction techniques are very time consuming since they often involve manual construction of queuing or machine learning models. To address this problem, we propose Prospective, a data-driven approach for predicting Web service response time percentiles. Given a specification for workload expected at the Web service over a planning horizon, Prospective uses historical data to offer predictions for response time percentiles of interest. At the core of Prospective is a lightweight simulator that uses collaborative filtering to estimate response time behaviour of the service based on behaviour observed historically. Results show that Prospective significantly outperforms other baseline techniques for a wide variety of workloads. In particular, the technique provides accurate estimates even for workload scenarios not directly observed in the historical data. We also show that Prospective can provide a Web service operator with accurate estimates of the types and numbers of Web service instances needed to avoid SLA violations