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The learning environment comprises the psychological, social, cultural and physical setting in which learning occurs and has an influence on student motivation and success. The purpose of the present study was to explore qualitatively, from the perspectives of both students and faculty, the key elements of the learning environment that supported and hindered student learning. We recruited a total of 22 students and 9 faculty to participate in either a focus group or an individual interview session about their perceptions of the learning environment at their university. We analyzed the data using a directed content analysis and organized the themes around the three key dimensions of personal development, relationships, and institutional culture. Within each of these dimensions, we identified subthemes that facilitated or impeded student learning and faculty work. We also identified and discussed similarities in subthemes identified by students and faculty.

The importance of the study is to further expand on the relationship between different types of self-talk and video games. Self-talk has been shown to be beneficial in sports performance, but has yet to be studied in relation to video game performance. With video games becoming popular, we are aiming to extend the research on sports performance to video game performance.

In our study, we hope to investigate if there are similarities in the traits and behaviours associated with masculinity and femininity between men and women.

Given the rise in technology, access to different forms of media and entertainment has become very simple. One example of this is access to music; therefore, it is not surprising that many students and workers listen to music while completing their work (Ballard, 2003; Beentjes et al., 1996; Harris, 2013; Pool, 2002; Shih et al., 2009). This led to an interest in studying the effects of music on cognitive performance, and in 1993, the Mozart Effect was put forth (Jenkins, 2001). The Mozart Effect suggests that listening to Mozart’s classical music (specifically the Sonata K448) leads to enhanced spatial ability performance and changes in brain activity (Jaušovec & Habe, 2005; Rauscher et al., 1994). Continued research on this topic, however, provided findings that were very mixed. For example, studies by Roth and Smith (2008) as well as Wilson and Brown (1997) both found that while Mozart’s classical music led to enhanced cognitive task performance, so did other auditory conditions, which goes against a Mozart-specific effect. Additionally, other studies found no performance enhancements as compared to the silent control condition (Flores, 2021; McKelvie & Low, 2002). Due to such mixed results, it raises the question of whether other variables may also be having an impact on the relationship between music and cognitive performance. According to Eysenck’s Theory of Cortical Arousal, introverts tend to be over-stimulated and extroverts under-stimulated. Thus, further stimulation, such as through music, would lower the performance of introverts and enhance the performance of extroverts on reasonably difficult tasks or exams (Dobbs et al., 2011). Given this, if the Mozart Effect and Eysenck’s Theory are supported, it would mean that the Mozart Effect is only present among extroverts, which could explain some of these mixed findings in past literature that did not account for personality. However, what about other music types? As already mentioned, some research found that other auditory conditions also led to enhanced cognitive performance (Roth & Smith, 2008; Wilson & Brown, 1997). Lo-fi music is a genre that is very new to the music and research scene, though it has been gaining a lot of popularity as it is fully accessible through multiple online platforms (Benzonana & de Dios, 2020; Casumbal et al., 2019; Winston & Saywood, 2019). Given this, it would be of interest to see whether the Mozart Effect also applies to lo-fi music. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to investigate the effects of different music genres (classical music, lo-fi music, and silence) as well as the extroversion and introversion personalities on participant performance in spatial ability, reading comprehension, and numerical reasoning exam types. The Mozart Effect suggests that listening to Mozart’s Classical music leads to better spatial ability performance and a change in the activity of the brain (Flores, 2021; Jaušovec & Habe, 2005). Studies that examined the Mozart Effect all resulted in mixed findings (Flores, 2021; Jaušovec & Habe, 2005; Rauscher et al., 1994; Roth & Smith, 2008; Wilson & Brown, 1997). Since this is so, studies tried to see if introversion and extroversion personalities have an effect on whether playing background music during exams enhance performance, which again showed mixed results (Dobbs et al., 2011; Furnham & Bradley, 1997; Kou et al., 2018; Lim et al., 2021). Another musical genre that is a little less looked at in literature is Lo-Fi music. Because this genre does seem to share similarities with Classical music in musical characteristics, such as long-term periodicity (Jenkins, 2001), it would be interesting to see if the Mozart Effect also does apply here. Therefore, this research study aims to examine the effects of music genres (Classical music, Lo-Fi music, and silent control) and personality (introversion and extroversion) on exam performance in different exam types.

The desire to support student learning and professional development, in combination with accreditation requirements, necessitates the need to evaluate the learning environment of educational programs. The Health Education Learning Environment Survey (HELES) is a recently-developed global measure of the learning environment for health professions programs. This paper provides evidence of the applicability of the HELES for evaluating the learning environment across four health professions programs: medicine, nursing, occupational therapy and pharmaceutical sciences. Two consecutive years of HELES data were collected from each program at a single university (year 1 = 552 students; year 2 = 745 students) using an anonymous online survey. Reliability analyses across programs and administration years supported the reliability of the tool. Two-way factorial ANOVAs with program and administration year as the independent variables indicated statistically- and practically-significant differences across programs for four of the seven scales. Overall, these results support the use of the HELES to evaluate student perceptions of the learning environment multiple of health professions programs.

The EuroMoonMars Etna campaign (EMM-Etna) took place on Mt. Etna in Sicily between the 6th and 11th of July 2021. The scouting campaign was organised by ten students of the International Lunar Exploration Working Group (ILEWG) EuroMoonMars program [1-3] in preparation for the DLR ARCHES (Autonomous Robotic Networks to Help Modern Societies) campaign and the ExoMars launch in 2022. During the ARCHES campaign on Mt. Etna in the summer of 2022, a team of robotics engineers will test various moon landing scenarios to show the capabilities of heterogeneous, autonomous, and interconnected robotic systems [4]. For the EMM-Etna campaign, the team simulated the landing of the REMMI Rover [5] on Mt. Etna as a Mars-analogue site, using a 360-degree remote-controlled camera holder to replicate a panoramic camera. Furthermore, samples were collected and analysed using an Ocean Optics UV-Vis-NIR spectrometer, a Field Raman, and a portable microscope. When working with a team of scientists and engineers the planning and organisation of the campaign are vital. Therefore, every crew member had their distinctive role during the mission, starting from being responsible for individual instruments or the outreach during the campaign to roles such as planner and data officer. Additionally, a mission protocol for the operational steps of the landing of the rover in the volcanic environment was implemented to assure smooth operation in the field.References:[1] https://moonbasealliance.com/ilewg[2] https://euromoonmars.space/[3] H. Reilly et al. "Instruments Operations, Science and Innovation in Expedition Support: EuroMoonMars-Etna campaign 2021", European Planetary Science Congress 2021, online, 13–24 Sep 2021, EPSC2021-848, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2021-848, 2021.[4] M. J. Schuster et al. "The ARCHES Space-Analogue Demonstration Mission: Towards Heterogeneous Teams of Autonomous Robots for Collaborative Scientific Sampling in Planetary Exploration", IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 5.4 (2020): 5315-5322.[5] C. Mohan et al. "Rover testing for lunar science and innovation", European Planetary Science Congress 2021, online, 13–24 Sep 2021, EPSC2021-850, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2021-850, 2021.

Evidence-informed healthcare (EIHC) is a systematic approach to clinical problem solving that facilitates the integration of the best available research evidence with clinical expertise and our patient’s unique values and circumstances.1 To become an EIHC practitioner requires knowledge, skills and practice. The five-step model of EIHC (asking answerable clinical questions, acquiring the evidence, appraising the evidence, applying the evidence and assessing performance as an EIHC practitioner) forms the basis for both teaching EIHC and clinical practice.2 Despite many EIHC success stories, variation in the adoption of evidence-based practice remains a problem.3 Barriers to implementing EIHC are well documented, with lack of resources being the most common barrier,4 followed by lack of knowledge and skills about appraisal, negative perceptions about research, lack of resources and time, low self-efficacy, inadequate access to the literature and financial barriers.4 5 Some of these barriers are directly related to the steps of EIHC, indicating that there is a clear need to improve the teaching of EIHC across all professions. Interventions using multiple methods are most likely to improve knowledge and skills compared with single interventions or no interventions,6 with the most effective teaching strategies being those that are interactive and clinically integrated.7 Online learning with high levels of interactivity is increasingly used as a learning intervention8 and is as effective a strategy as lecture-based teaching.9 Online learning has the added advantage of providing learner-centred access to course materials at a time and place convenient to them and to tailor their learning to their own timing, pace and needs.8 Virtual patient cases are designed to represent real-life clinical scenarios and are well suited for facilitating the development of clinical reasoning skills,10 an essential element of EIHC. Cases designed using a problem-oriented training approach increase the …

We compared student- and teacher-formed teams on aspects of group dynamics, satisfaction, and performance. Two sections of an introductory psychology research methods course were randomly assigned to either student-formed or teacher-formed teams. We conducted t tests on 10 measures related to group dynamics, satisfaction, and success. Academic performance and group work contribution were the only measures found to be statistically different, with the student-formed teams scoring higher than the teacher-formed teams. Follow-up individual interviews or focus groups conducted with 13 students suggested a slight preference for the teacher-formed method because it was transparent and eliminated the stress of having to choose one’s team members. We further recommend this method because of its simplicity and closer approximation to real-world scenarios. Several factors identified as being important for effective team functioning, regardless of group formation method, are also discussed.

The learning environment can be broadly conceptualized as the physical, social, and psychological context in which learning and socialization takes place. While there is now an expectation that health professions education programs should monitor the quality of their learning environment, existing measures have been criticized for lacking a theoretical foundation and sufficient validity evidence. Guided by Moos’s learning environment framework, this study developed and preliminarily validated a global measure of the learning environment. Three pilot tests, conducted on 1,040 undergraduate medical students, refined the measure into the 35-item Health Education Learning Environment Survey (HELES), which consists of six subscales: peer relationships, faculty relationships, work–life balance, clinical skills development, expectations, and educational setting and resources. A final validation study conducted on another sample of 347 medical students confirmed its factor structure and examined its reliability and relation of the HELES to the Medical School Learning Environment Survey (MSLES). Subscale reliabilities ranged from .78 to .89. The HELES correlated with the MSLES at .79. These results indicate that the HELES can provide a valid and reliable assessment of the learning environment of medical students and, as such, can be used to inform accreditation and program planning in health professions programs.