EEG-Based Tool for Prediction of University Students' Cognitive Performance in the Classroom.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Ramirez-Moreno MA
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8227309 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:PurposeIt aimed to find if written test results improved for advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) taught in flipped classroom/team-based Learning (FC/TBL) vs. lecture-based (LB) control in University of California-Irvine School of Medicine, USA.MethodsMedical students took 2010 ACLS with FC/TBL (2015), compared to 3 classes in LB (2012-14) format. There were 27.5 hours of instruction for FC/TBL model (TBL 10.5, podcasts 9, small-group simulation 8 hours), and 20 (12 lecture, simulation 8 hours) in LB. TBL covered 13 cardiac cases; LB had none. Seven simulation cases and didactic content were the same by lecture (2012-14) or podcast (2015) as was testing: 50 multiple-choice questions (MCQ), 20 rhythm matchings, and 7 fill-in clinical cases.Results354 students took the course (259 [73.1%] in LB in 2012-14, and 95 [26.9%] in FC/TBL in 2015). Two of 3 tests (MCQ and fill-in) improved for FC/TBL. Overall, median scores increased from 93.5% (IQR 90.6, 95.4) to 95.1% (92.8, 96.7, P=0.0001). For the fill-in test: 94.1% for LB (89.6, 97.2) to 96.6% for FC/TBL (92.4, 99.20 P=0.0001). For MC: 88% for LB (84, 92) to 90% for FC/TBL (86, 94, P=0.0002). For the rhythm test: median 100% for both formats. More students failed 1 of 3 tests with LB vs. FC/TBL (24.7% vs. 14.7%), and 2 or 3 components (8.1% vs. 3.2%, P=0.006). Conversely, 82.1% passed all 3 with FC/TBL vs. 67.2% with LB (difference 14.9%, 95% CI 4.8-24.0%).ConclusionA FC/TBL format for ACLS marginally improved written test results.
| S-EPMC4789594 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Excessive sedentary behavior has been associated with many negative health outcomes. While an understudied health topic, there is evidence that university students are excessively sedentary. Sit-stand desks have been shown to reduce sedentary time among pre-university students (ages 5-18 years) and sedentary workers but have not been tested in university classrooms. This study tested the effects of introducing sit-stand desks into a university classroom on student's classroom sitting and standing behaviors. Using a cross-over design, students received access to both traditional seated desks and sit-stand desks for six weeks. Data were collected between September and December, 2016. We recruited 304 healthy undergraduate university students enrolled in one of two small (25 seats) classrooms at a large Midwestern university during the fall of 2016. Average minutes of standing/hour/student, average percent class time spent standing, and the number of sit-stand transitions/student/hour were directly observed with video camera surveillance. Participants stood significantly more (p < 0.001) when provided access to sit-stand desks (7.2 min/h/student; 9.3% of class time spent standing) compared to when they had access to seated desks (0.7 min/h/student; 1.6% of class time spent standing) but no differences were observed for the number of sit-stand transitions (p = 0.47). Students reported high favorability for the sit-stand desks and improvements in several student engagement and affective outcomes while using the sit-stand desks. These findings support introducing sit-stand desks in university classrooms as an approach to reduce sedentary behaviors of university students.
| S-EPMC5683670 | biostudies-literature
Project description:University students are the most employed category of participants in cognitive research. However, researchers cannot fully control what their participants do the night before the experiments (e.g., consumption of alcohol) and, unless the experiment specifically concerns the effects of alcohol consumption, they often do not ask about it. Despite previous studies demonstrating that alcohol consumption leads to decrements in next-day cognitive abilities, the potential confounding effect of hangover on the validity of cognitive research has never been addressed. To address this issue, in the present study, a test-retest design was used, with two groups of university students: at T0, one group was constituted by hungover participants, while the other group was constituted by non-hungover participants; at T1, both groups were re-tested in a non-hangover state. In particular, the tests used were two versions of a parity judgment task and an arithmetic verification task. The results highlight that: (a) the response times of university students experiencing a hangover are significantly slower than those of non-hangover students and (b) the response times of hungover students are slower than those of the same students when re-tested in a non-hangover state. Additionally, it was also observed that the prevalence of hungover students in the university campus varies depending on the day of the week, with a greater chance of enrolling hungover participants on specific days. In light of the latter result, the recruitment of university students as participants in cognitive experiments might lead researchers to erroneously attribute their results to the variables they are manipulating, ignoring the effects of the potential hangover state.
| S-EPMC7550527 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Pharmacological cognitive enhancement (PCE) refers to the nonmedical use of prescription or recreational drugs to enhance cognitive performance. Several concerns about PCE have been raised in the public. The aim of the present study was to investigate students' attitudes toward PCE. Students at three Swiss universities were invited by e-mail to participate in a web-based survey. Of the 29,282 students who were contacted, 3,056 participated. Of these students, 22% indicated that they had used prescription drugs (12%) or recreational substances including alcohol (14%) at least once for PCE. The use of prescription drugs or recreational substances including alcohol prior to the last exam was reported by 16%. Users of pharmacological cognitive enhancers were more likely to consider PCE fair (24%) compared with nonusers (11%). Only a minority of the participants agreed with the nonmedical use of prescription drugs by fellow students when assuming weak (7%) or hypothetically strong efficacy and availability to everyone (14%). Two-thirds (68%) considered performance that is obtained with PCE less worthy of recognition. Additionally, 80% disagreed that PCE is acceptable in a competitive environment. More than half (64%) agreed that PCE in academia is similar to doping in sports. Nearly half (48%) claimed that unregulated access to pharmacological cognitive enhancers increases the pressure to engage in PCE and educational inequality (55%). In conclusion, Swiss students' main concerns regarding PCE were related to coercion and fairness. As expected, these concerns were more prevalent among nonusers than among users of pharmacological cognitive enhancers. More balanced information on PCE should be shared with students, and future monitoring of PCE is recommended.
| S-EPMC4675521 | biostudies-literature
Project description:For K-12 students, obesity has been linked to student educational achievements. The study objective was to determine whether academic performance in university students is correlated with BMI. Students from two consecutive academic years (Jan-May 2013 and Jan-May 2014) were given an optional class survey in May, as extra credit. Of the 452 students that completed the survey, 204 females and 75 males (N = 279; 73% female and 27% male) consented to participate in the study. The number of correct answers to problem-solving questions (PSQs) and the overall final grade for the class were compared to the calculated BMI using linear regression with a Pearson's R correlation and unpaired t-tests. BMI was significantly negatively correlated with student's final grades (P = 0.001 Pearson's r = - 0.190) and PSQs were positively correlated with final grades (P < 0.001; Pearson's r = 0.357). Our findings show a correlation between healthy body weight and improved academic performance. Further, the data suggest that future research in the area of body weight, diet, and exercise and any correlations of these with academic performance in college students are warranted.
| S-EPMC5222954 | biostudies-literature
Project description:An effective physiological pain assessment method that complements the gold standard of self-report is highly desired in pain clinical research and practice. Recent studies have shown that pain-evoked electroencephalography (EEG) responses could be used as a readout of perceived pain intensity. Existing EEG-based pain assessment is normally achieved by cross-individual prediction (i.e., to train a prediction model from a group of individuals and to apply the model on a new individual), so its performance is seriously hampered by the substantial inter-individual variability in pain-evoked EEG responses. In this study, to reduce the inter-individual variability in pain-evoked EEG and to improve the accuracy of cross-individual pain prediction, we examined the relationship between pain-evoked EEG, spontaneous EEG, and pain perception on a pain EEG dataset, where a large number of laser pulses (>100) with a wide energy range were delivered. Motivated by our finding that an individual's pain-evoked EEG responses is significantly correlated with his/her spontaneous EEG in terms of magnitude, we proposed a normalization method for pain-evoked EEG responses using one's spontaneous EEG to reduce the inter-individual variability. In addition, a nonlinear relationship between the level of pain perception and pain-evoked EEG responses was obtained, which inspired us to further develop a new two-stage pain prediction strategy, a binary classification of low-pain and high-pain trials followed by a continuous prediction for high-pain trials only, both of which used spontaneous-EEG-normalized magnitudes of evoked EEG responses as features. Results show that the proposed normalization strategy can effectively reduce the inter-individual variability in pain-evoked responses, and the two-stage pain prediction method can lead to a higher prediction accuracy.
| S-EPMC4829613 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundNursing students struggle with anatomy and physiology course because of the complicated terminology and the difficulty in handling large amounts of information. New, innovative instructional strategies must be integrated into nursing education to improve nursing students' performance in this challenging bioscience course. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of an innovative teaching strategy, the flipped classroom, on the performance and satisfaction of Omani nursing students in an anatomy and physiology course.MethodsA quasi-experimental design was used with two classes of 112 first-year nursing students at the College of Nursing, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. Online videos and active-learning activities about the respiratory system were developed and implemented in an anatomy and physiology course with 53 first-semester nursing students. The control group consisted of a previous cohort of 59 students enrolled in the same course but taught with a traditional lecture approach. The impact of the flipped classroom strategy was measured by students' performance on the final examination and students' self-reported satisfaction. Wilcoxon signed-rank and Mann-Whitney U tests were used to compare students' academic performance.ResultsOur results showed that the performance of the flipped classroom group was better than that of the traditional lecture group. The mean scores of students instructed with the flipped classroom method on the respiratory system items in the final examination were significantly higher than those of the control group, U?=?1089.00, z?=?-?2.789, p?<?.005. Moreover, the results of a survey showed that nursing students were satisfied with the flipped classroom method. Overall, 68 to 78% of students agreed or strongly agreed that the flipped classroom method improved their learning and increased their interest in the course.ConclusionCompared with the didactic lecture format, flipped classroom strategy improved Omani nursing students' performance in and satisfaction with an anatomy and physiology course. These results show that the flipped classroom is an important teaching strategy in nursing education.
| S-EPMC7778794 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Global cognitive performance plays an important role in the diagnosis of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND), yet to date, there is no simple way to measure global cognitive performance in people with HIV (PWH). Here, we performed connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM) to pursue a neural biomarker of global cognitive performance in PWH based on whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity. We built a CPM model that successfully predicted individual differences in global cognitive performance in the training set of 67 PWH by using leave-one-out cross-validation. This model generalized to both 33 novel PWH in the testing set and a subset of 39 PWH who completed a follow-up visit two years later. Furthermore, network strengths identified by the CPM model were significantly different between PWH with HAND and without HAND. Together, these results demonstrate that whole-brain functional network strengths could serve as a potential neural biomarker of global cognitive performance in PWH.
| S-EPMC8102633 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Introduction: Teaching methodologies promoting active learning result in higher-order knowledge application, a desirable outcome in health disciplines like Physiology. Flipped-classroom (FC) promotes active learning and engagement in the classroom. Although specialized research keeps accumulating, the advantages of FC for improving academic outcome and ultimately patient care remain controversial and open to further analysis. Objective: This study evaluates the benefits of applying FC to the Neurophysiology module of a Human Physiology course. Methods:We compare final grades of students exposed to standard lecturing (five-years) vs. FC (six-years), and study the FC impact on student motivation, study time and rewards. Differing from conventional FC, we performed no pre-class/in-class assessments, relying on the students' internal motivation to experience our FC model. A printed student workbook was designed as pre-class material for each session. Reading times respect the expected daily study time of students in our system. Results and discussion: Concerning academic performance, our long-term study reports a significant increase in average scores for FC groups. Overall, students get better scores in multiple choice tests than in problem-solving questions. A more detailed analysis uncovers that our FC model helps students to obtain better scores, reducing variability in performance due to assessment methods. Based on our open-ended survey questions, most students rate the FC environment and in-class activities positively and perceive a positive effect of FC on teachers' performance. An objective automatic Sentiment analysis of open-ended answers reveals that FC is positively appreciated by students, associating positive perceptions to their understanding of physiological concepts, and negative evaluations to their time management.
| S-EPMC10749200 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundSleep disorders are composed of a group of diseases of increasing prevalence and with social-health implications to be considered a public health problem. Sleep habits and specific sleep behaviors have an influence on the academic success of students. However, the characteristics of sleep and sleep habits of university students as predictors of poor academic performance have been scarcely analyzed. In the present study, we aimed to investigate sleep habits and their influence on academic performance in a cohort of Nursing Degree students.MethodsThis was a cross-sectional and observational study. An anonymous and self-administered questionnaire was used, including different scales such as the 'Morningness and Eveningness scale', an author-generated sleep habit questionnaire, and certain variables aimed at studying the socio-familial and academic aspects of the Nursing students. The association of sleep habits and other variables with poor academic performance was investigated by logistic regression. The internal consistency and homogeneity of the 'sleep habits questionnaire' was assessed with the Cronbach's alpha test.ResultsOverall, 401 students (mean age of 22.1 ± 4.9 years, 74.8 % females) from the Nursing Degree were included. The homogeneity of the 'sleep habits questionnaire' was appropriate (Cronbach's alpha = 0.710). Nursing students were characterized by an evening chronotype (20.2 %) and a short sleep pattern. 30.4 % of the Nursing students had bad sleep habits. Regarding the academic performance, 47.9 % of the students showed a poor one. On multivariate logistic regression analysis, a short sleep pattern (adjusted OR = 1.53, 95 % CI 1.01-2.34), bad sleep habits (aOR = 1.76, 95 % CI 1.11-2.79), and age < 25 years (aOR = 2.27, 95 % CI 1.30-3.98) were independently associated with a higher probability of poor academic performance.ConclusionsAlmost 1/3 of the Nursing students were identified as having bad sleep habits, and these students were characterized by an evening chronotype and a short sleep pattern. A short sleep pattern, bad sleep habits, and age < 25 years, were independently associated with a higher risk of poor academic performance. This requires multifactorial approaches and the involvement of all the associated actors: teachers, academic institutions, health institutions, and the people in charge in university residences, among others.
| S-EPMC8212524 | biostudies-literature