Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are widely accepted in developing countries as a crucial organizational asset. They combine entrepreneurship, provision of quasi-government services and donor financing, but their conceptual status is unclear. Are they the organizational embodiments of social capital, generating cohesion and superior…

This qualitative study investigated the impact of using blogs on the clinical reasoning and meta-cognitive skills of undergraduate physiotherapy students in a fieldwork education program. A blog is a web based document that enables individuals to enter comments and read each others' comments in a dynamic and interactive manner. In this study,…

This paper reports on a pilot project of the Turnitin plagiarism detection software, which was implemented to determine the impact of the software on the level of plagiarism among University of Botswana (UB) students. Students' assignments were first submitted to the software without their knowledge so as to gauge their level of plagiarism. The…

The purpose of this study was to determine in what ways the quality of plans developed by individualized family service plan (IFSP) teams changed following targeted revisions to the IFSP form and instruction manual. IFSPs were collected from 94 family service coordinators, one IFSP from each before and one from each after the form revision. The…

Research on assessment in medical education has strongly focused on individual measurement instruments and their psychometric quality. Without detracting from the value of this research, such an approach is not sufficient to high quality assessment of competence as a whole. A programmatic approach is advocated which presupposes criteria for…

The development of, and adherence to, performance standards is imperative for success in today's competitive global market. This is as true for academic programmes in higher education as it is for the manufacturing and service sectors. Just like their counterparts in business and industry, it is important that graduate career preparation…

Sample surveys are widely used in the social sciences and business. The news media almost daily quote from them, yet they are widely misused. Using students with prior managerial experience embarking on an MBA course, we show that common sample survey results are misunderstood even by those managers who have previously done a statistics course. In…

On April 20, 2010, a massive explosion killed 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Survivors of this explosion recounted terrifying near-death experiences and mourned the loss of coworkers and friends who had perished. Shock and grief spread through small coastal communities composed mostly of fishers and oil workers. However, this was…

This article presents remarks by E. Gordon Gee, the president of the Ohio State University, at the 10th annual National Outreach Scholarship Conference. He talks about his realization that the time had come for higher education institutions to reinvigorate and expand their commitment to communities. Upon returning to Ohio State, he thought hard…

Almost every Finnish child and adolescent takes an interest in music in some form. However, many young people feel dissatisfaction with what music education institutions provide and fail to find them motivating. According to the results of a series of empirical studies, school music education can have a negative effect on many pupils and undermine…

For readers outside North America, the concept of "honors education" may be confusing (since the word honours features in British and Commonwealth degree titles) or obscure (bringing to mind associations with aristocratic privilege or elitist competition). But in the United States the development of honors programs in colleges, and later honors…

Aim: Although inclusive education of disabled children is now an accepted practice, it is often challenged by negative peer attitudes. We undertook an interventional study aimed at improving students' attitudes towards their disabled peers. Method: The participants were students from the 7th grade of twelve paired schools (1509 students from 62…

Newborn screening is a test done on every child born in the US shortly after birth to detect diseases where, if not diagnosed and treated in the newborn period, the child will suffer significant trauma, disability or die. A few drops of blood from each baby's heel is put on a card and sent to the state's public health lab for testing. Most states…

Research on the efficacy of mediated suicide awareness campaigns is limited. The impacts of a state-wide media campaign on call volumes to a national hotline were analyzed to determine if the advertisements have raised awareness of the hotline. We use a quasi-experimental design to compare call volumes from ZIP codes where and when the campaign is…

Rural versus urban rates of suicide in current patients of a large area mental health service in Australia were compared. Suicide deaths were identified from compulsory root cause analyses of deaths, 2003-2007. Age-standardized rates of suicide were calculated for rural versus urban mental health service and compared using variance of…