The topic of engagement has been attracting increasing amounts of attention in the field of e-learning. Research shows that multifarious benefits occur when students are engaged in their own learning, including increased motivation and achievement. Previous studies have proposed many scales for measuring student engagement. However, very few have been developed to measure engagement in e-learning environments. Thus, developing an instrument for measuring student engagement in e-learning environments is the purpose of this study. The participants of this study were 737 Korean online university students. Initial items were designed based on the literature. The instrument items were reduced from an initial 48 to 24 items after obtaining expert opinion and then validity and reliability analysis. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were also conducted. Six factors, including psychological motivation, peer collaboration, cognitive problem solving, interaction with instructors, community support, and learning management emerged in the 24-item scale. This scale is expected to help instructors and curriculum designers to find conditions to improve student engagement in e-learning environments, and ultimately prevent students from dropping out of online courses.
CTLA-4 is a negative regulator of T-cell activation, and its inhibitory effects can be accomplished either by competition with CD28 or by transmitting negative signals through its intracellular domain. To utilize the cytoplasmic domain of CTLA-4 to suppress allergic inflammation, we fused it to a novel protein-transduction domain in the human transcriptional factor Hph-1. Transduction efficiency was verified in vitro and in vivo after ocular, intranasal and intradermal administration. After transduction into T cells, the Hph-1-ctCTLA-4 fusion protein inhibited the production of interleukin (IL)-2, and downregulated CD69 and CD25. Intranasal administration of Hph-1-ctCTLA-4 resulted in markedly reduced infiltration of inflammatory cells, secretion of T helper type 2 (T(H)2) cytokines, serum IgE levels and airway hyper-responsiveness in a mouse model of allergic airway inflammation. These results indicated that Hph-1-ctCTLA-4 constitutes an effective immunosuppressive protein drug for potential use in the treatment of allergic asthma, via nasal administration.
Reflective-thinking skills are important in problem-based learning environments as they help learners become deeply engaged in learning. The literature suggests several instructional-design factors (e.g., environment, teaching methods, scaffolding tools) that may prompt reflection in learners. However, it is unclear whether these factors differ based on age or developmental stage. The results of this study indicate that middle-school students perceive the learning environment factor as more important to prompting their thinking, while college students perceive the scaffolding methods factor as more important. While the elements clustered into two factors, most college students disagreed with their helpfulness in prompting reflective thinking, a finding opposite to that obtained for middle-school students. Different patterns were also found between learners' perceptions of the most helpful elements within each factor. Based on these results, suggestions are given for designing developmentally and age-appropriate PBL learning environments that support reflective thinking.
Previous studies have suggested that there is a genetic basis to restless legs syndrome (RLS) development. Occurrence of antipsychotic-induced RLS could also be due to differences in genetic susceptibility. We investigated whether CLOCK and NPAS2 gene polymorphisms are associated with RLS in schizophrenic patients on antipsychotics because RLS symptoms usually manifest during the evening and night. We assessed symptoms of RLS in 190 Korean schizophrenic patients on antipsychotics and divided the subjects into two groups according to the International Restless Legs Syndrome Study Group diagnostic criteria: (i) subjects who met all the criteria and (ii) the remaining subjects who did not meet all the criteria. We found a significant difference in the number of subjects with different genotype and allele carrier frequencies for the CLOCK gene (rs2412646) between the two groups (p = 0.031 and 0.010, respectively). Distribution of CLOCK haplotypes (rs2412646-rs1801260) was significantly different between schizophrenic patients with and without RLS (p = 0.021). However, the distributions of allelic, genotypic, and haplotypic variants of NPAS2 (rs2305160 and rs6725296) were not significantly different between the two groups. Our results suggest that CLOCK polymorphisms are associated with increased susceptibility of schizophrenic patients to RLS. We hypothesize that RLS in schizophrenia patients treated with antipsychotics may be a very mild akathisia that manifests during the night and is under control of circadian oscillation.
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