ABSTRACT
Design critiques are a central component of the design studio. In engineering education, where the design studio pedagogy is becoming increasingly popular, peer-led critiques can play an important role to support and complement the feedback student teams receive from instructors and clients. In capstone design courses, peer critiques are typically delivered in face-to-face, synchronous environments, where students can demo their design progress and engage in constructive back-and-forth discussion with their peers. The disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused many design courses to be held remotely, has forced instructors to re-imagine how peer critique can be delivered in a virtual, mostly asynchronous setting. In this paper, we describe and evaluate an asynchronous and virtual implementation of peer critiques that are delivered using a text-based discussion forum. Taking a question-asking lens, we analyze hundreds of questions posed by students in asynchronous peer critiques of a capstone design course, and compare the distributions of low-level, deep reasoning, and generative design questions to results of prior studies that have produced analogous distributions in conventional face-to-face settings. We find that a larger portion of peer inquiry that is delivered in written form in asynchronous critiques is composed of generative design questions, which serve to expand the design space, and which have been previously found to be highly valued by design teams. Our findings serve to not only evaluate the effectiveness of the written, asynchronous approach to design critiques, but also support a discussion on how some of its features can be useful even when in-person peer design critiques are feasible. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE: Women with recurrent urinary tract infections (rUTI) managed with antibiotics, suffer morbidity, while society is burdened with significant costs and the rising specter of antibiotic resistance. We report a game-changing vaccine, MV140, for the prevention of rUTI in women. METHODS: The novel mechanism of action of MV140 is examined. Results from 1. early uncontrolled studies, 2. the first phase III multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled RCT (randomized women with rUTI to 6 months placebo or MV140 for 3 or 6 months with 12 months total follow-up), 3. ongoing safety monitoring from special access programs (SAP;2014-2020) and 4. the first in North America (NA) clinical experience evaluating the novel sublingual vaccine MV140 (Uromune) for prevention of rUTI in women are reported. Major endpoints for the reported clinical studies were number of UTIs, UTI-free rate and safety following 3 months vaccine administration. RESULTS: Stimulation of sublingual mucosa with MV140 (Uromune), a polybacterial sublingual vaccine consisting of whole inactivated bacteria (E. coli, K. pneumoniae, E. faecalis, P. vulgaris) induces induction of a T-cell specific adaptive as well as innate immune response at the level of the genitourinary tract. In 5 uncontrolled studies 1,408 women treated with MV140 had significantly higher UTI-free rates (35 to 90%) than 499 women treated with antibiotic prophylaxis (0-9%). In the pivotal RCT (240 women randomized), the median number of UTI episodes for 9 months post-vaccination was 3.0 [IQR, 0.5-6.0] in placebo compared to 0.0 [IQR, 0.0-1.0] in both groups receiving MV140 (p <0.001). UTI-free rates of 55.7% and 58.0% were observed in subjects receiving MV140 for 3 or 6 months, respectively compared to 25.0% in placebo group (p <0.001). Only 5 (2 with placebo;3 with MV140) subjects reported non-serious adverse reactions (A/R). The ongoing SAP safety study documented A/R's in 1.7% of over 20,500 patients. Subjects enrolled in the NA study prior to pre-Covid-19 mandatory recruitment shutdown (n=25) experienced a 48% UTI-free rate (with overall 82% reduction in UTI episodes compared to pre-vaccination) in the 9 months following 3 month vaccination period with one subject having 2 mild vaccine associated A/Rs. CONCLUSIONS: Clinical studies confirm the theoretical benefits of MV140 vaccine as a safe and effective strategy to reduce the incidence and/or prevent rUTI in women. Physicians who treat rUTI and women who suffer from rUTI will soon have an evidence-based alternative to antibiotic management.