The impact of community of inquiry and self-efficacy on student attitudes in sustained remote health professions learning environments.

BACKGROUND: Sustained remote learning environments, like those experienced in late 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, share characteristics with online courses but were not intentionally designed to delivered virtually. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of Community of Inquiry, a widely used online learning environment framework, and self-efficacy on perceived student attitudes within sustained remote learning environments. METHODS: An interinstitutional team of health professions education researchers collected survey data from 205 students representing a wide range of health professions in five U.S. institutions. Latent mediation models under structural equation modeling framework were used to examine whether student self-efficacy mediates the relationship between Community of Inquiry presence and student's favorability of sustained remote learning delivered in the prolonged stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. RESULTS: Higher levels of teaching presence and social presence in the remote learning environment were associated with higher levels of remote learning self-efficacy which, in turn, predicts variance in positive attitudes toward remote learning. When mediated by self-efficacy, significant variance in student's favorability of sustained remote learning was explained by teaching presence (61%), social presence (64%), and cognitive presence (88%) and self-efficacy. Significant direct and indirect effects for teaching and social presence, and only direct effects for cognitive presence were observed. CONCLUSIONS: This study establishes the Community of Inquiry and its three presence types as a relevant and stable framework for investigating sustained remote health professions teaching and learning environments, not only carefully designed online learning environments. Faculty may focus course design strategies which enhance presence and increase student self-efficacy for the sustained remote learning environment.

Exploring the impacts of learning modality changes: Validation of the learning modality change community of inquiry and self-efficacy scales.

The rapid learning environment transition initiated by the COVID-19 pandemic impacted students' perception of, comfort with, and self-efficacy in the online learning environment. Garrison's Community of Inquiry framework provides a lens for examining students' online learning experiences through three interdependent elements: social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence. Researchers in this study developed and validated the Learning Modality Change Community of Inquiry and Self-Efficacy scales to measure health professions students' self-efficacy with online learning, while exploring how cognitive, social, and teaching presence is experienced by students who transition from one learning environment to another. The two scales demonstrate strong validity and reliability evidence and can be used by educators to explore the impacts of learning modality changes on student learning experiences. As learning environments continue to evolve, understanding the impact of these transitions can inform how educators consider curriculum design and learning environment changes.

Facilitators and Barriers to Providing Clinical Education Experiences Through the Lens of Clinical Stakeholders.

INTRODUCTION: Although the provision of clinical education (CE) experiences affords many benefits to clinical stakeholders, little published literature exists regarding the factors influencing decisions of site coordinators of CE (SCCE), clinical administrators, and clinical instructors (CI) to provide CE. REVIEW OF LITERATURE: Site coordinators of CE and CIs navigate workplace expectations while making decisions about their engagement in CE experiences. The purpose of this study was to determine clinical stakeholders' perceptions of facilitators and barriers to the provision of CE experiences for entry-level Doctor of Physical Therapy students. SUBJECTS: This study used survey data from a previous study on perspectives related to payment for CE experiences. The survey questions analyzed included responses provided by 501 clinical administrators, 445 SCCEs, and 657 CIs. METHODS: Retrospective analysis of survey data included frequencies and percentages of responses for nominal and categorical data. Open-ended survey questions underwent content analysis to identify overarching concepts and subordinate categories. RESULTS: Clinicians are most motivated to serve as CIs by "enjoyment of teaching" (274, 49.4%) and a sense of "professional responsibility" (147, 26.5%). Site coordinators of CEs indicated that the top challenges faced in soliciting CIs were the ability to manage challenging students (347, 69.0%), lack of experience serving as a CI (227, 63.4%), ability to maintain productivity standards (220, 61.5%), and clinician burnout (219, 61.2%). Although all participants agreed that their organization promotes a culture of teaching, clinical administrators agreed at a higher percentage than SCCEs (97.8% vs 94.3%, respectively). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Clinical instructors identified values and benefits that were, at times, in contrast to the organizational culture. The discrepancies in perceptions among stakeholders that were uncovered by this research provide a unique lens that has not been addressed in the literature to date. To provide meaningful support for CIs, it is imperative that directors of CEs, clinical administrators, and SCCEs clearly understand the perceptions of the CI.

Synthesis and Characterization of Novel Hybridized CeO2@SiO2 Nanoparticles Based on Rice Husk and Their Application in Antibiotic Removal.

This work aims to synthesize a core-shell material of CeO2@SiO2 based on rice husk as a novel hybridized adsorbent for antibiotic removal. The phase structures of CeO2@SiO2 and CeO2 nanoparticles that were fabricated by a simple procedure were examined by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, while their interfacial characterizations were performed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) method, and ζ-potential measurements. The removal efficiency of the antibiotic amoxicillin (AMX) using CeO2@SiO2 nanoparticles was much greater than that using SiO2 and CeO2 materials in solutions of different pH values. The optimum conditions for AMX removal using CeO2@SiO2 including contact time and adsorbent dosage were 120 min and 5 mg/mL, respectively. The maximum AMX removal using CeO2@SiO2 reached 100% and the adsorption capacity was 12.5 mg/g. Adsorption isotherms of AMX onto CeO2@SiO2 were fitted by Langmuir, Freundlich, and two-step adsorption models, while the adsorption kinetics of AMX achieved a better fit by the pseudo-second-order model than the pseudo-first-order model. The electrostatic and nonelectrostatic interactions between the zwitterionic form of AMX and the positively charged CeO2@SiO2 surface were controlled by adsorption. The effects of different organics such as humic acid, ionic surfactants, and pharmaceutical substances on AMX removal using CeO2@SiO2 were also thoroughly investigated. The high AMX removal efficiencies of about 75% after four regenerations and about 70% from an actual water sample demonstrate that CeO2@SiO2-based rice husk is a hybrid nanomaterial for antibiotic removal from water environments.