Impacto de la docencia online en el rendimiento académico de estudiantes españoles de medicina / The impact of online teaching on the academic performance of spanish medical students

Introducción: El confinamiento derivado de la situación sanitaria a finales del primer trimestre de 2020 en España obligó a que la segunda parte del curso 2019-2020 de todos los niveles educativos pasara a formato online de una manera forzada e imprevista. Objetivo: Identificar el impacto de la docencia online en el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes de medicina en el curso 2019-2020. Métodos: El estudio fue de tipo transversal y utilizó datos públicos anonimizados sobre rendimiento académico de estudiantes de medicina en universidades españolas. A partir de la información pública de los sistemas de garantía interna de calidad de estas universidades, se analizaron los valores medios de las tasas de rendimiento y éxito de los cuatro cursos comprendidos entre 2015 y 2019 en 17 universidades españolas. Estos se compararon mediante una prueba t de Student con los obtenidos en el curso 2019-2020. Resultados: Las tasas de rendimiento y éxito fueron superiores en el curso 2019-2020 en comparación con la media de los cuatro cursos anteriores. Conclusiones: La situación de confinamiento y de cambio forzado a docencia online parece haber producido una mejora en el ya de por sí elevado rendimiento académico de los estudiantes de medicina, lo que sugiere niveles elevados de resiliencia y una buena capacidad de adaptación a una situación adversa como la experimentada en la segunda parte del curso 2019-2020 (AU)

Introduction: The lockdown derived from the health situation at the end of the first quarter of 2020 in Spain forced the second part of the 2019-2020 academic course of all educational levels to be move to the online modality in a compulsory and unforeseen way. Objective: To identify the impact of online teaching on the academic performance of medical students in the 2019-2020 academic year. Methods: The study was cross-sectional and used anonymized public data on the academic performance of medical students in Spanish universities. Based on public information from the internal quality assurance systems of these universities, the mean values of performance and success rates were analyzed for the four academic years between 2015 and 2019 in seventeen Spanish universities. Using a Student's t test, these were compared with those obtained in the 2019-2020 academic year. Results: The performance and success rates were higher in the 2019-2020 academic year compared to the average of the four previous academic years. Conclusions: The situation of lockdown and forced change to online teaching seems to have produced an improvement in the already high academic performance of medical students, being this suggestive of high levels of resilience and a good capacity to adapt to an adverse situation such as the one experienced in the second part of the 2019-2020 academic year(AU)

Analysis of Spanish Parents' Knowledge about ASD and Their Attitudes towards Inclusive Education.

To make possible the inclusion of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in mainstream settings, parental knowledge and attitudes towards the disorder play a key role between the home and the school setting. However, prior literature has not carried out an in-depth analysis of parents' knowledge about ASD and their attitudes toward the inclusion of children with this diagnosis. This study examined the parental attitudes towards inclusion and knowledge about ASD. Participants were parents of children with ASD (n = 75), parents of children without ASD whose children had prior or current contact with peers with ASD (n = 44), and parents of children with no previous interactions with a peer with ASD (n = 51). The Attitudes of Regular Educators Towards Inclusion for Students with Autism Survey and the Autism Knowledge Questionnaire were filled out. Nonparametric statistical tests were used. Results showed that parents of children with ASD have better knowledge about this disorder and hold more favorable attitudes towards the inclusion of children with ASD than the other parents. These findings suggest that the benefits of inclusive schooling are limited to the school setting and do not appear to affect families of children without ASD.

Symbolic Play among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Scoping Review.

Symbolic play is considered an early indicator in the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and its assessment. The objective of this study was to analyze the difficulties in symbolic play experienced by children with ASD and to determine the existence of differences in symbolic play among children with ASD, children with other neurodevelopmental disorders and children with typical development. A scoping review was carried out in the Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, ERIC, and PsycInfo databases, following the extension for scoping reviews of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement. The number of papers included in the review was 22. The results confirm that children with ASD have greater difficulties with symbolic play than children with other neurodevelopmental disorders and children with typical development, even when controlling for their verbal age. Difficulties are greater in situations of free or spontaneous play. Results evidenced that the absence or deficiency in the symbolic play can serve as an early indicator of ASD between the first and second year of life, the developmental moment in which this type of play begins.

Today Is My Day: Analysis of the Awareness Campaigns' Impact on Functional Diversity in the Press, on Google, and on Twitter.

(1) Every day, people with functional diversity face different kinds of difficulties that pose a barrier to their social inclusion. These difficulties often go unnoticed by most citizens. Social networks are a powerful tool to sensitize the population. With this objective, different organizations such as associations, federations, foundations, and other institutions have promoted campaigns through the celebration of world days for different types of functional diversity. This research aims to monitor and analyze the impact of these social campaigns in Spain, including Asperger's syndrome, rare diseases, Down syndrome, autism, hearing and visual impairment, cerebral palsy, dyslexia, ADHD, spina bifida, disability, and dyscalculia world days, between 2015 and 2020. (2) The impact of each campaign on the press, Google, and Twitter has been analyzed using: MyNews, Google Trends, and Trendinalia. (3) The results suggest a close relationship between the impact on the number of pieces of news generated in the press, the searches on Google, and the hashtags in high positions on Twitter. (4) The campaigns with the greatest levels of success are those whose diagnoses involve greater difficulties in adaptive behavior. These results can provide some practical implications for future campaigns.

Is It Possible to Educate, Intervene or "Cure" Autism Spectrum Disorder? A Content Analysis of YouTube Videos.

YouTube is one of the most well-known and widely accessed websites worldwide, thus having a powerful pedagogical potential. Nonetheless, the quality and the veracity of some YouTube videos are questionable. Doubts regarding the trustworthiness of factual content is a controversial factor that needs to be taken into account, especially when addressing public health issues. For this reason, the main objective of this work is to analyze the content of the most viewed videos in Spanish on YouTube related to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). To carry out this research, the terms "autism AND education", "autism AND intervention", and "autism AND cure" were used (in Spanish). The analysis of these searches results indicated that videos included in the "cure" category are shorter, and less valued by internet users, obtaining the lowest ratings on the "Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool" for audiovisual materials (PEMAT-A/V), in addition to present therapies that are in fact more harmful than videos in other categories. In general, videos containing recommendations for therapies that are harmful are the ones that have received most views, along with the videos that include alternative non-harmful therapies. Practical implications of these findings and recommendations for further research are discussed.

What Motivates Internet Users to Search for Asperger Syndrome and Autism on Google?

Social campaigns are carried out to promote autism spectrum disorder (ASD) awareness, normalization, and visibility. The internet helps to shape perceptions of Asperger syndrome and autism. In fact, these campaigns often coincide with the increase in searches for both diagnoses on Google. We have two study objectives: to use Google Trends to identify the annual time points from 2015 to 2019 with the highest Google search traffic in Spain for the terms "autism" and "Asperger", and to identify news and trending topics related to ASD that took place during the weeks with the highest number of Google searches for these terms. Google Trend, MyNews and Trendinalia were used to analyze the volume of searches and trending topics related to ASD. As a result, social marketing campaigns, social networks and the publication of news items act as powerful voices that can provide a realistic or sensationalist picture of the disorder. For this reason, we concluded that campaigns play an important role in the normalization of ASD, and that it is important for organizations concerned with the visibility and social inclusion of people with ASD to check the way ASD is portrayed through the internet, media, and social networks.

Interventions for Improving Reading Comprehension in Children with ASD: A Systematic Review.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have comorbid learning difficulties in reading comprehension, an essential skill in accessing any area of the curriculum. The aim of this systematic review is to analyze the effectiveness of reading comprehension interventions in students with ASD. We conducted a search for scientific articles published from 2000 to 2019 using the keyword "autis*" in combination with the terms "reading comprehension" and "intervention" or "instruction" in Psyc Info and Scopus databases. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 25 studies were selected. The content analysis of these studies shows that when specific interventions are carried out, students with ASD are able to take advantage of the instruction they receive and compensate for difficulties. Understanding inferences and the main idea of the text are the most common reading comprehension topics, and direct instruction is the most widely-used intervention method in the reviewed studies. Nonetheless, it must be kept in mind that some of the reviews do not specify which sub-processes are addressed in the intervention. Future work should include this aspect, consider the importance of the interventions being implemented by teachers, and take specific aspects of ICT into account that can contribute to improving reading comprehension.