Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Introducción: Las epidemias de enfermedades emergentes desconocidas ponen a prueba la capacidad técnica y humana de los profesionales de la salud y de la sociedad en general.Objetivo: Caracterizar el evento de COVID-19 en la residencia estudiantil de la Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de Holguín, en 2021.Método: Se desarrolló un estudio observacional descriptivo de una serie de casos confirmados de la COVID-19, se determinó la tasa de ataque secundario y el índice básico de reproducción que se estimó con el modelo clásico de Kermack y Mckendrick. Se identificaron las zonas calientes y fueron enunciadas las principales medidas anti epidémicas.Resultados: Predominaron los estudiantes masculinos con el 76,9%, la tasa de ataque secundario entre angolanos fue 25,49%, el cuarto piso fue la zona más caliente, la historia epidemiológica identificó la fuente de infección en el 100% de los casos, con el 38,46% de asintomáticos, los principales síntomas fueron la pérdida del gusto y el olfato, la cefalea y la fiebre, el índice R0 alcanzó el valor de 1,31 y el día 16 del brote, comenzó a extinguirse.Conclusiones: El brote de la COVID-19 fue controlado rápidamente con oportunas y efectivas medidas anti epidémicas, sin extensión a la comunidad y nos dejó importantes lecciones aprendidas para futuras emergencias sanitarias.Palabras clave: SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, enfermedades emergentes, brote, pandemia, sindemia, índice básico de reproducción.

A pesar de su importancia, la enseñanza de las Ciencias Básicas Biomédicas enfrenta grandes retos para garantizar su pertinencia en la formación del médico, al ser cuestionada la preparación de los estudiantes al llegar a los escenarios clínicos y su aplicación en la práctica profesional. Se realizó una revisión de la literatura sobre el tema, publicada después del año 2000 junto a los documentos del Plan de estudio “D”. Se encontró que éste es un tema polémico de atención por los profesionales dedicados a la educación médica y se identificaron los principales aspectos estudiados por ellos, que constituyen posibles aspectos a investigar. Se precisaron los aportes que las Ciencias Básicas Biomédicas brindan al estudiante de medicina durante su formación y se encontró que prevalece el criterio de que las mismas brindan al estudiante importantes elementos de contenido y metodológicos para fundamentar su razonamiento y para su actuación profesional.Palabras clave: educación médica, ciencias básicas biomédicas, enseñanza-aprendizaje

In this paper I present the results of a study carried out in order to assess the oral production skills of distance learning students enrolled in a university degree, and their experience with digital resources to produce their assessment tasks. Both the practice of speaking in a foreign language and the assessment of oral production skills constitute an important endeavor that often meets methodological and technological difficulties in traditional face-to-face learning environments, but more particularly in distance learning ones. After analyzing students’ needs and peculiarities coming from a distance learning context, some research has been conducted in order to test and propose an activity where the students individually design and produce a video in which they explain a topic of their choice as a continuous evaluation task. They then receive the teacher's feedback by means of a rubric which allows them to improve their learning at the same time that it enables teachers to obtain valuable information about students’ progress as regards oral productive skills. The results of the study show how students can improve their oral production skills with self-study and how the preparation of this assessment activity has a positive effect on their language proficiency as well as on their digital competence.

In the European context, language assistants (LAs) have been key actors in foreign language classes for over a century. Language assistants, nowadays considered a valuable resource for learners, work in similar contexts throughout the continent (schools, universities, language schools) and, theoretically, should perform the same roles in all host countries. In practice, however, the main features and expected roles might differ. The aim of this study is twofold: first, to compare functions of language assistants in four European countries (France, Italy, Spain, and Austria). To this end, guides published by the host countries and addressed to LAs were taken as a reference. Second, to highlight the features which better identify and define language assistants in Europe. For this analysis, a comparative cross- national study following the Grounded Theory approach with MAXQDA software was used. Findings indicate that language assistants are usually young people coming from different educational backgrounds who have received basic information about the host country as well as pedagogical and methodological issues. They are mainly considered as language and culture ambassadors who work in association with a mentor teacher or supervisor who leads the class. The study is hoped to contribute to the creation of a European profile in the 21st century useful for current and future language assistants and their supervisors, and also to policy makers in need to update guides addressed to this valuable asset.

The current increase in the use of mobile devices in the foreign language classroom has expanded the presence of lexical tools such as free-access online bilingual dictionaries. Unfortunately, their use is not adequately explained and regulated yet. This lack of pedagogical intentionality gave rise to a research study focused on the curricular integration of these types of dictionaries in the context of teaching English as a foreign language at the higher education level. This article documents the process that was carried out to design and implement a triangulation matrix that allowed an integrative synthesis of the data provided by the sample made up of four  EFL  university  teachers  through  three  data  collection instruments. This integrative synthesis facilitated the identification of a series of factors associated with the curricular integration of bilingual online dictionaries. This identification led to a series of administrative, pedagogical, and didactic proposals aimed at strengthening said process in foreign language teaching contexts.

One of the main responsibilities of researchers is the circulation and dissemination of scientific knowledge. However, this task has evolved over time, and new forms of digital communication have emerged. This study  explores  the  science  communication  strategies  used  by researchers in an emerging digital genre, the Twitter conference presentation. A corpus of 55 presentations (300 tweets) was analysed under the theoretical and methodological lenses of genre analysis and semiotic resources analysis. Results showed that researchers relied on their previous rhetorical knowledge of other spoken research genres at the macro- structural level, while the micro-structural level encompassed a higher level of rhetorical dynamism. Concerning semiotic resources, embedding attachments in the form of images and hyperlinks was the preferred strategy by the authors. The most common interrelation functions between text and other semiotic resources were concurrence and complementarity. Consequently, the authors were able to reinforce the ideas mentioned in the text and offer additional information to further explore their research topics. This study’s findings contribute to the ongoing investigation of science communication with the description and analysis of emerging digital genres.

This study investigated the nature and extent of support provided by six primary school English as a foreign language (EFL) learners (10 to 12 years old) during mixed-age (M-A) peer interactions on common classroom tasks targeting lexical chunks. Grounded in sociocultural theory and drawing on audio recordings of pair work, video recordings of the whole class, pre- and posttests and analysis of students’ written work, the primary aim of this study was to examine moment-to- moment interaction and identify the types of support that peers provide to one another within M-A peer interactions. The secondary aim was to draw links between peer support and learning outcomes. The findings reveal that peers provided cognitive, linguistic, and social-emotional support to each other. However, the nature and extent of this support differed widely across pairs and appeared to be a major factor in mediating learning outcomes. The implications for further research and pedagogy are discussed. This study contributes to the interactional research in instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) by showing how young learners (YL) in EFL classrooms support each other during their interactions and how their support promotes language learning.

This study analyzes students’ perceptions of their own learning of Spanish as a second language (L2) when comparing face-to-face (F2F) courses to online (OL) environments before the pandemic. It appears that most students are satisfied learning Spanish in either OL or F2F classes, but their self-reported perception of learning is lower for OL students than F2F participants. It also seems that a higher percentage of F2F participants are more satisfied with the format of their classes (F2F vs OL). It is argued that incorporating more asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) and teacher presence among this particular population of students may increase satisfaction with both learning environment and perception of learning. A further analysis compared Spanish final-exam scores among OL and F2F participants; the results showed that participants in F2F classes obtained statistically significant higher scores than participants in OL classes. Some pedagogical suggestions are presented for this particular population of Spanish as L2 online students.

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