No abstract

Over the years, many innovative and successful ideas related to educational research and teaching practice have been reported in engineering journals and conferences and at various conferences within the engineering disciplines. However, finding or creating an environment within one's own institution to apply these ideas is often difficult.A source of this diffculty may be that implementation of such ideas typically requires resources or support that may not be available. The purpose of this paper is to discuss a bottom-up, faculty-driven approach to changing teaching that allows faculty to support each other in the process. Specifically, a rationale is developed for use of peer facilituted reflective teaching practice within education, a particular model, the Reflective Teaching Model (RTM) is introduced and a pilot conducted within a University computer science program is described.

The Editorial Board of the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing uoted at the last board meeting to add a column on cirlttirnl issues. Z am delighted to introduce the column as section editor. As Z began looking around the country for topics and authors, I attmded a workshop hosted by the People of Color Leadership Institute located in Washington, DC.Joyce Thomas, RN, MPH, moderated a panel of speakers who provided an overuiezu of topics on culturally competent mental health assessment of children.As a result of that workslzop, Z was able to invite Dr. &thy Sanders-Phillips, a psychologist who has con-duct& research on African-American arid Hispanic ad@ lescents, to speak at the Salt Diego conference, and Joyce Thomas is contributing an article on child abuse prevention and intervention in the African-Anzerican community to the journal. I7714s, what began as an idea for a coluinn in the journal has expanded into a variety of ways to enhance our practice arid cultural awareness. 1 am committed to this as a sustained focus in all of our ACAPN endeavors. focus on cultural issues in the journal was related to my teaching assignment ouer the past three years, "Health Care in Diverse Popula tiorzs," a required course for second-year nursing students. I have learned so much by being in the course and it h s furthered my resolve that knozoleiige of culture is essential fo the practice of nursing. As the Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nurses (ACAPN) becomes international in scope, arid as information technology connects us in a truly "global village," the possibilities for topics in the column are unlimited. M y hope is that Cultural Perspectives will attract qualify pieces that can help meet the need for content specifically related to the emotional care of children and adolescents, their families, and their communities. One of the reasons Z zuas interested in adding a specificA f t e r teaching the culture course using a combination of large lecture classes and small seminar discussion groups, a member of the teaching team attended a conference on using technology in teaching. One of the sessions demonstrated how electronic "discussions" provide an additional form of pedagogy. These on-line conversations promote writing skills, encourage a different kind of dialogue among students, and may produce interesting new learning results and interaction among students (Harris, 1995). We were fortunate that the teaching team supported the idea of pilot testing this form of teaching in the culture course.As we contemplated the idea of an on-line discussion, we examined several options. First, there is simple e-mail. Many faculty are adding e-mail to their teaching repertoire. E-mail has advantages, particularly for commuter students who have less access to faculty during office hours. E-mail is a form of "asynchronous" communication, meaning that one person sends a message at h i s h e r convenience and the receiver gets the message at his/her convenience. The disadvantage is that the ...