Nontechnical skills for crisis resource management improved with training, as measured by the Anesthetists' Non-Technical Skills scale. Crisis resource management can be taught, with measurable improvements. Effective teaching of nontechnical skills can be achieved through formative self-assessment even when instructors are not available.

Teaching, and education in general, remain firmly rooted in the practices of the past and continue to resist the implementation of strategies and theories arising from educational research. Consequently, significant reforms have been slow to take hold in educational systems around the world. Much of the reluctance can be attributed to a widely-held misconception of the nature of learning. This project attempts to address this misconception through the development of Professional Development Learning Environments (PDLEs are a series of learning tasks and a video-based case study) embedded in an online learning environment that requires the collaboration of users to solve problems. To use a Problem-Based-Learning (PBL) approach in an online context requires a major paradigm shift as well as using tools that were not designed specifically for such a student-driven, process-centred pedagogical paradigm. This becomes a problem when online resources and systems are used for supporting inservice teacher in their pursuit of furthering their education. Although the current theories of learning and teaching may present the philosophical content of such courses, the online strategies used often conflict with the theory. To study the formal implementation of PBL as a social-constructivist pedagogical approach, into an online learning environment to provide the tools for e-learning that would be closer in design to the current thinking on the very nature of learning, the PDLEs were modified to become small reusable video clips with a structure designed to facilitate PBL and focus learners attention on higher order thinking skills rather than specifically on content. These modified PDLEs are referred to as Problem-Based Learning Objects (PBLOs). The PBLOs were embedded into a prototype of a Collaborative Online Learning Environment (COLE) which was developed simultaneously. The entire system was pilot tested with small groups. Preliminary results show that although many technical difficulties remain to be solved, using the environment does show evidence of some effect on beliefs about personal theories of learning, causing shifts from technical issues to those surrounding processes of learning. Our preliminary research has called attention to the potential ability of PBLO/COLE to disrupt conventional, transmission-based conceptions of online learning as content delivery. At the same time, however, our preliminary work has also indicated that learners who are not used to the collaborative opportunities provided within PBLO/COLE may still hold traditional orientations to teaching and learning as a gold standard to which all other options are compared. A purposeful direction for our future research will entail working with learners in PBLO/COLE over a sustained period so that they may engage in an online experience grounded in principles of socio-constructivism.

Depuis plusieurs années, dans la littérature, on peut sentir un besoin de préciser l’ensemble de connaissances et de compétences relatives aux ordinateurs nécessaires à l’enseignement et à l’apprentissage. Dans ce contexte, cette recherche vise à développer un modèle global qui permettrait de classer à la fois les outils, leurs usages, leurs incidences ainsi que les connaissances et compétences impliquées dans l’intégration des TIC en éducation de façon à pouvoir comprendre les diverses relations qui existent entre chacune de ces composantes. Une première opérationnalisation de ce modèle a donné lieu au développement d’un instrument permettant de recueillir les représentations des enseignants quant à leurs compétences. Cet article présente le modèle élaboré, le questionnaire qui en a découlé et les résultats des premières analyses statistiques des profils recueillis auprès de plus de 600 enseignants francophones de l’Ontario.

Managing the pedagogical aspects of the 'computational turn' that is occurring within the Humanities in general and the disciplines associated with cognitive science and neuroscience in particular, first implies facing the challenge of introducing students to computation. This paper presents what has proven to be an efficient approach to bringing undergraduate Humanities students to reach insight into the nature of computation and its bearing on reflecting upon the mind in general, and the brain in particular. It is set within the context of a course on the topic of sensory perception featuring a laboratory component aimed at guiding students to develop neuronal networking skills. In this course, students are asked to design, test and discuss the neurophysiological, psychological and philosophical implications of the neuronal blueprints of a virtual creature's brain which they are challenged to 'wire' themselves in such a way as to allow it to 'see the world' within which they choose to place it. The insight on which we are reporting here is simply that a basic competence in using a spreadsheet application is all that is required to allow implementing and testing of virtual brains made of basic formal neurones, bringing the miracle of computer simulation within the reach of even the most computer-shy undergraduates. Once introduced to basic neuronal networks (two 90-minute laboratory sessions), two laboratory sessions are sufficient to bring groups of up to some 50 undergraduates to manipulate the basic spreadsheet operations successfully and understand how virtual brains consisting of basic formal neurones can be implemented in terms of these basic spreadsheet operations. It is the 'flattening' to which the virtual (formal neuronal) brains are thus subjected, as they are turned into spreadsheets that led to coining the concept of a 'flatbrain spreadsheet'. The students are then challenged to develop and implement their very own virtual creature's flatbrain spreadsheets, and gently tutored into noticing the key problems out of which arise the great debates in cognitive science about such issues as consciousness, qualia, categorisation, induction, computational explanation and the like. Empirical evidence gathered over the course of the last 6 years strongly suggests that the construction of flatbrain spreadsheets by students does make a difference in the classroom.

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