ABSTRACT
Instructor evaluations are influenced by implicit age and gender bias, with lower ratings and negative feedback given to instructors believed to stray from stereotypical age and gender norms. Female instructors exhibiting typically male-associated qualities such as leadership and authority, are often negatively impacted. Implicit bias also influences evaluation of digital resources and instructors, regardless of students' positive learning outcomes. As digital learning resources become the norm in education, it is crucial to explore the impact of implicit bias at various educational levels. In this study, undergraduate and graduate students were randomly exposed to one of five digital tutorials; four experimental tutorials presenting identical anatomy content with narrators of different gender and age, and a control tutorial featuring origami (paper folding) instructions without audio. Learning outcomes were measured by pre-quiz vs. post-quiz comparisons using repeated measures MANOVA. Implicit bias was analyzed by evaluation response comparisons using repeated measures MANOVA and three-way MANOVA. Post-quiz scores increased significantly in the four experimental groups (P < 0.05) but not in the control (P = 0.99). The increased performance was not statistically different across the four experimental groups (P > 0.26), suggesting that learning occurred irrespective of the instructor gender and age. Students' evaluations were consistently higher for the experimental resources than the control. There was no significant difference in evaluations across the four experimental groups but compared to the control, younger male and younger female narrators received significantly higher ratings for approachability, acceptance, inclusivity, and care for student learning. The study highlights important considerations for digital resources development and interpretation of student evaluations.
Subject(s)
Ageism , Anatomy/education , Attitude of Health Personnel , Computer-Assisted Instruction , Learning , Sexism , Students, Dental/psychology , Teaching , Video Recording , Adolescent , Adult , Age Factors , Curriculum , Education, Dental , Educational Status , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Sex Factors , Young AdultABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: Subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS) is an effective treatment for improving the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease (PD). Overall, cognitive function remains stable after STN-DBS in most patients. However, cognitive decline, specifically in the verbal fluency domain, is seen in a subset of STN-DBS patients. Currently, predictors of cognitive decline in PD patients treated with STN-DBS are not well known. Thus, identification of presurgical predictors might provide an important clinical tool for better risk-to-benefit assessment. This study explores whether whole brain white matter lesion (WML) volume, or hippocampal and forebrain volumes, measured quantitatively on MRI, are associated with cognitive changes following STN-DBS in PD patients. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective study using presurgical, and ≥ 6-month postsurgical neuropsychological (NP) evaluation scores from 43 PD patients with STN-DBS. Mean pre/post NP test scores for measures of executive function, attention, verbal fluency, memory, and visuospatial function were analyzed and correlated with WML volume, and brain volumetric data. RESULTS: Although cognitive measures of verbal fluency, executive function, attention, memory, and visuospatial function showed declines following STN-DBS, we observed limited evidence that white matter lesion burden or cortical atrophy contributed to cognitive change following STN-DBS. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that post-STN-DBS cognitive changes may be unrelated to presurgical WML burden and presence of cortical atrophy.
