<p>Open educational resources (OER) are making their way into a variety of educational contexts from formal lesson planning to just in time learning. Educators and training professionals have been recognized as an important audience for these materials. The concepts of <em>self</em>-<em>efficacy</em> and <em>outcome judgment</em> from social cognitive learning theory serve as theoretical constructs to measure educator perceptions of OER. This study uses a path analysis, based on the technology acceptance model, to understand adoption of these resources by this audience with a particular emphasis on self-efficacy. Among the participants, three main groups were identified: K-12 educators, higher education professionals, and those involved in workplace training. A discriminant function analysis found that K-12 educators stood out as finding OER relevant to improving their practice. Recommendations are made in regards to an emphasis on easy to use designs to improve application self-efficacy of OER and instructional messaging for future K-12 educators.</p>
Though many service members will not directly seek mental health care due
to stigma and other factors, they may interact with the healthcare system in
other ways including contact with first responders, nurses and allied health
care professionals. However, little attention has been spent in this regard on
the educational needs of these professionals whose contact with service members
and veterans may provide the opportunity to assist veterans in need with
overcoming barriers to accessing mental health care. This qualitative study
investigates the educational training needs of first responders and health care
professionals in contact with military families and trauma survivors to
determine whether, and what type, of additional training is needed. A sample of
42 first responders and health care professionals including emergency medical
technicians, police officers, fire fighters, speech language pathologists,
occupational therapists, physical therapists, and nurses, were recruited to
participate in one of six focus groups. Sessions were audio-taped and
transcribed verbatim. Data analysis was guided by a thematic analysis approach.
Thematic analyses suggest there is a significant knowledge gap with unmet
educational needs of these professionals such as information on the invisible
wounds of war, military culture, and screening and referring patients who
present symptoms falling outside professionals’ scope of practice.
Findings point to a need and desire for more robust education for first
responders and health care providers around mental health concerns of military
populations, including topics such as trauma, military culture, and screening
tools. Efforts to develop curricula addressing these concerns are warranted.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.