10/31/96
The following Ohio University professors are available for insightful interviews on topics in the news. Please contact Dwight Woodward at 614/593-1886 to arrange an interview.
NATIONAL HOME CARE MONTH: November is "National Home Care Month," a month designated to educate the public about the growing importance of home health care. Ruth Waibel, an assistant professor of health sciences in Ohio University's College of Health and Human Services, says home health care is increasingly important as the population ages and hospital stays are shortened. "Just as we are concerned about the increasing cost of health care in hospitals, we must also be concerned about patients who are being sent home earlier and sicker. That means home-care visits have escalated and care that was once given in the hospital is now administered in the home," said Waibel, a former hospital administrator who oversaw home health care for children. "Families are taking on the role of care giver that was once provided by medical professionals while relying on professionals from health care agencies for education on a range of health-care procedures, from changing a bandage to management of home ventilators."
NEW STUDY INDICATES INTERNET USE ENHANCES LEARNING: E-mail and Internet use in the college classroom can enhance students' learning, according to a recent Ohio University study. Forty percent of students participating in an Ohio University project reported that use of electronic communication contributed to learning in courses ranging from mathematics to music, according to Karin Sandell, director of the university's Center for Teaching Excellence. Sandell surveyed more than 700 students in 13 classes about their e-mail use patterns, attitudes about technology and how much they learned in their classes. "The more students communicate electronically, the more they gain from their courses and the more they are becoming prepared to enter a world where computer-mediated communication is increasingly the norm," said Sandell, author of the study published in the October 1996 issue of To Improve the Academy, a publication of the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education.
EDUCATION IMPROVES PARENT-CHILD BOND FOLLOWING DIVORCE:
A new study by researchers at Ohio University suggests that divorcing parents who receive educational materials before the divorce is final may have a stronger relationship with their children than parents who never receive the information. Researchers mailed a guide with suggestions for reducing the trauma of divorce on children to half of all parents filing for divorce in a Cleveland domestic relations court over a 12-week period. Follow-up interviews over the next year found that parents who received the information were less likely to encourage their children to favor one parent or speak negatively about their ex-spouses. Don Gordon and Jack Arbuthnot, psychology professors at Ohio University and co-founders of the Center for Divorce Education, wrote the booklet What About the Children: A Guide for Divorced and Divorcing Parents and published the study in Journal of Divorce & Remarriage.