TO: Dr. Ann Jones, Dean of the College of STEM
FROM: Dr. Heidi Hempel, Director of Distance Education in the College of STEM DATE: August 4, 2020 SUBJECT: Development of distance education courses in the College of STEM The new initiative to integrate distance learning into the STEM college, while timely and definitely beneficial to the university, must be organized and administrated in such a way as to serve the needs of our faculty and students, as well as ensure overall success of the program. While our faculty is among the very best of the science and technology teachers, their experience up to this point has been exclusively in classical, in-person classrooms and lecture formats. Successful distance learning courses have been shown have significant differences from these courses in organization, teaching, and learning theory application (Otte, 2019; Sangra, 2007). Professors who have not led online courses before may not be aware of these differences, not to mention the need to partner with IT professionals to an extra degree (Otte, 2019). Studies of distance pedagogy have found that course quality, cultural compatibility with the students, and transformational leadership on the part of the teachers all play a part in student fulfillment and success, and therefore must be made a priority when developing new online content (Aldholay et al., 2019). As such, our faculty are in desperate need of extra support and training as they develop online versions of their established courses, so as to prevent instructor frustration, ensure student success, and promote student retention. The following is a summary of some of the more relevant teaching and learning theories, and how they are applicable to this situation. Behaviorism Behaviorism applies objectivist theory, which states that there are indisputable, objective, and reliable facts, principles, and theories that the students need to learn, and that their learning of that content is observable through the rote iteration of those facts by the students (Bates, ch2, 2015). This is one of the oldest and most traditional forms of teaching and is often seen in very traditional lectures where the students simply memorize the information given them and repeat it on tests and quizzes. This is not an effective strategy for distance learning, as the platform already requires a great deal of student concentration and self-regulation, and the lack of active learning will weigh them down. Cognitivism Cognitivism is one of the most common forms of teaching seen in the undergraduate classroom today. Marked by the idea that humans have conscious thought and therefore must synthesize new knowledge and meaning into the context of their own inner world, cognitivists do not believe that simple recitation of facts truly reflects a student’s level of understanding (Bates, ch2, 2015). Many will recognize Bloom’s taxonomy, which is a hallmark of cognitive theory, and features the different levels of understanding: creating, evaluating, analyzing, applying, understanding, and remembering (Bates, ch2, 2015). While more effective in the context of distance learning than behaviorism, cognitivism does not allow for the added need for student-peer interaction and gathering of knowledge that is necessary in an e-learning context. Constructivism: Constructivism is touted by many as the most effective learning theory in the context of e-learning, as it focuses on the learning constructing new knowledge on the foundation of their previous experience (Koohang, 2009). This knowledge “construction” involves the students actively working to take the knowledge input they are receiving and from the outside world, and the teaching methodology is to provide experience with the knowledge construction process as well as multiple perspectives on that knowledge, embed learning in realistic and relevant contexts, encourage ownership of that knowledge, embed learning in a social context and experience, encourage the use of multiple modes of representation, and encourage self-awareness in the knowledge construction process (Koohang, 2009). Strengths of the constructivism approach include, that it helps ensure learning among the learners, makes learning an active process, group discussions push for an understanding of multiple points of view, and the learner's previous learning and perspectives are valued and taken into account. However, constructivism bears the weaknesses that it requires a lot of preparation and effort a lot of on the part of the teacher to design a course that requires students to be an active learner, puts a lot of impetus on the students to take an active role in their learning, and assessment can be complicated and needs to be designed in such a way that it involved self, team, and facilitator assessment (Koohang, 2009). Therefore, this method requires a great deal of training of faculty that do not have experience with this type of course design. Online Collaborative Learning (OCL) Online collaborative learning focuses on taking advantage of the skills already built by students who grew up with the technology of this digital age (Hararim, 2012). This style of teaching relies on collaborative learning processes, knowledge building, and internet use (Hararim, 2012). Many argue that this method reflects the new knowledge age mindset, where individuals must be able to seek the best way to solve a problem rather than follow instructions, resulting in knowledge now being redefined as innovating “know-how” as opposed to simply “know what to do already” (Hararim, 2012). Thus, the instructor gets redefined as a mediator between the learners and the knowledge community, simply correcting the students if they go astray as opposed to actually taking the lead in giving them that knowledge (Hararim, 2012). This strategy also addresses the need to recreate a peer-social learning atmosphere, as the students spend most of their time working with each other to get the knowledge they are seeking. The weaknesses of OCL are that teachers are not always equipped to use this strategy effectively, technology can get in the way of learning if it is not used well and intuitively, and students have to be able to tell the difference between good and bad information and sources. Thus, again, teachers need additional training and support on how to design and implement such a course, and how to train their students to seek profitable knowledge and discern false knowledge. Connectivism Connectivism is a relatively new learning theory that is also in response to the new knowledge economy and the continuously decreasing half-life of knowledge, and argues that knowledge today does not consist of what lies in the mind of the individual, but in the collective information network of the internet and individual experts (Bates, 2015.; Siemens, 2005). Here, there is little room for an instructor, and the student is solely responsible for constructing a knowledge network for their current and future use. The principles of connectivism include that learning and knowledge rest in diversity, the process of connecting specialized nodes of information sources, capacity to know is more important than current knowledge, the ability to see and maintain connections if vital to knowledge maintenance, and the ultimate goal is to maintain knowledge currency as it continues to grow and evolve in the world (Siemens, 2005). This style of learning is becoming particularly important in the corporate and professional world (especially in STEM fields), as workers today are continuously expected to be able to evolve and develop new skills as technology evolves (Bates, 2015). While this is not necessarily a good model for the courses taught at our university, it would be worth our time to train our instructors on honing these skills in their students in order to prepare them for the job market. Addressing the new training and support needs of our faculty How we can address the training needs of our faculty as they work to develop new online courses, using the content they are already so proficient in teaching? There are a number of strategies that can be used here. I would advise building a short, 1-2 week workshop, using a combination of in-person lectures by distance learning experts and constructivist, online content and group projects, in order to 1. Cater to the current learning skills already appreciated by the faculty, and 2. Expose the faculty to an example of collaborative online teaching and learning. It will also be necessary to develop a Community of Practice, which is a learning community where the environment is encouraging of improving and developing distance learning skills and techniques, both through peer communication and by continuous support and resources being offered by the Distance Education group, including IT workshops with our IT professionals, lunch-and-learn hours with distance learning veterans, and online help-resources to provide the faculty with as-needed training and support. Conclusion Distance education has become increasingly important in the education world, and as such is entirely appropriate to integrate into the College of STEM of our university. However, implementation of such a program is going to require a large investment on the part of our administration and our faculty. By building in additional training and support for our faculty as they build the new skills and strategies necessary to be effective distance educators, we will ensure not only that our faculty will succeed in their teaching goals, but our students will receive the best teaching and learning possible, as befits the reputation of our University. Bibliography Aldholay, A., Abdullah, Z., Isaac, O., & Mutahar, A. M. (2019). Perspective of Yemeni students on use of online learning: Extending the information systems success model with transformational leadership and compatibility. Information Technology & People, 33(1), 106–128. https://doi.org/10.1108/ITP-02-2018-0095 Bates, T. (n.d.). Teaching in a Digital Age. 2015, 583. Koohang, A., Riley, L., Smith, T., & Schreurs, J. (n.d.). E-Learning and Constructivism: From Theory to Application. 19. Otte, G. (2019). ONLINE LEARNING: NEW MODELS FOR LEADERSHIP AND ORGANIZATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION. Online Learning, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v10i2.1761 Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. 9. Sangra, A., Guardia, L., Gonzalez-Sanmamed, M., (2007). Making the Transition to E-Learning: Strategies and Issues. Ch. 17: Educational Design as a Key Issue in Planning for Quality Improvement. 284-299
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PatientsLikeMe is an online community of learning that allows patients to exchange personal medical information to facilitate both group learning and better informed individual medical decision making (Frost & Massagli, 2008). The site presents patients and their member connections with customized, disease-specific outcome and visualization tools to facilitate conversations and information exchange (Frost & Massagli, 2008). The goal of the community is to allow patients to build communities for support, as well as contribute to group and individual knowledge and eventually medical research.
PatientsLikeMe was originally built to connect ALS patients and allow them to exchange medical information and perform group citizen research (About us, n.d.). The community was founded by two brothers, Jamie and Ben Heywood, who’s third brother was diagnosed with ALS in 1998, and who felt the need to have access to the experience and knowledge of other patients who had experienced this devastating disease (About us, n.d.). The community quickly expanded, and in 2011 began accepting any patient with any disease in an effort to connect them to others with the same experience (About us, n.d.). In June of 2019, the group joined UnitedHealth Group’s Research and Development unit to facilitate the use of the medical data being collected through the site to advance medical research (About us, n.d.). The community today boasts over 750,000 people with 2,900 diseases, generating 43 million data points of potential use to medical research and learning (About us, n.d.). The PatientsLikeMe community is a classic example of connectivist learning, where the “students” use each other as resources to all gain needed knowledge, without the direction of a centralized “teacher” or expert (Siemens, 2005). Part of the success of this community lies in the extreme personal investment in the subject of the knowledge environments, motivating the patient members to do their own research, ask meaningful questions of the community, and contribute their own knowledge and experience for others’ learning. The community also benefits from the input of the many physicians giving advice to the individual patients, who then impart that knowledge to the community, which both gleans from that knowledge and helps the original patient to interpret and use that information themselves. Patients are directed to PatientsLikeMe by physicians, other patients, patient blogs, or google searched (Frost & Massagli, 2008). Upon joining, members fill out a combination of structured and un-structured data forms, which are then compiled by the site to present a health history and a summary graphical representation of disease progression (Frost & Massagli, 2008). Patient members communicate with each other using a number of platforms, including a forum, private messaging, and commenting on other patient’s profiles, which feature graphical representations of the patient’s disease progression. As described in Frost and Massagli, 2008, patients posted personal data of current treatments, symptoms, and outcomes, using the forum and patient profiles, as well as personal messaging (which was not accessed by the study personnel) (Frost & Massagli, 2008). The site is funded by the sale of medical data compiled by the site from the patient data, with personal identifiable information having been scrubbed out (PatientsLikeMe, 2018). In 2008, Jeana Frost and Michael Massagli of PatientsLikeMe wrote a research article studying how the PatientsLikeMe community contributed to patients’ disease self-management. ALS patient messages were studied using key phrases to understand the nature of interpersonal connections being made, as well as tally the number of comments that led to responses or conversations (Frost & Massagli, 2008). There were three main categories of conversations identified, namely targeted questions to others with relevant experience, advice and recommendations, and the forming and solidifying of relationships between patients based on similarity (Frost & Massagli, 2008). In the first example, patients were able to use other members as a resource to make more informed treatment decisions. In the cases of seeking specific advice or recommendations, patients offered each other input based not only on personal experience but also personal research. Finally, patient members were able to use the platform to build meaningful relationships not only based on shared experience, but also mutual interests outside of medical experience (Frost & Massagli, 2008). These three results all demonstrated that the patients used each other’s medical data and experience to facilitate detailed medical discussions to bring individual and group learning, which in turn allowed patients to make more informed personal medical decisions. Beyond the analysis already performed in the published study, Frost and Massagli make the point that the PatientsLikeMe community is made up of far more than the ALS community, and that deeper analysis into all of the disease communities represented on the site would be extremely informative (Frost & Massagli, 2008). It would also be interesting to do a detailed study of patient learning outcomes, where patient disease knowledge was assessed before and after participating in the community to determine if effective learning took place on a personal level. Finally, a study of patient disease outcomes with and without community participation would allow researchers to determine the clinical applications of such communities. PatientsLikeMe is an online learning community that uses connectivist theory in a practical manner, allowing patients to share medical information to build community as well as contribute to group knowledge in order to facilitate more individual medical decision making and drive medical research. As researchers have used key word analysis to study different aspects of one of the communities within the site, specifically the ALS community, there are indications that the patient members are using the medical data provided to them and contributed by them to thoughtfully discuss, learn, and make decisions. Therefore, this site is both an example of a successful online learning community, as well as a potential model that can be used to improve patient experiences and outcomes in the medical world. References About us. (n.d.). Retrieved July 21, 2020, from https://www.patientslikeme.com/about Frost, J. H., & Massagli, M. P. (2008). Social Uses of Personal Health Information Within PatientsLikeMe, an Online Patient Community: What Can Happen When Patients Have Access to One Another’s Data. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 10(3), e15. https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.1053 PatientsLikeMe January 15. (2018). How does PatientsLikeMe make money? Retrieved July 21, 2020, from https://support.patientslikeme.com/hc/en-us/articles/201245750 Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. 9. The first of the trends to discuss is corporate sponsorship of academic undergraduate programs. In certain industries, such as engineering, there has been a shortage of undergraduate students graduating with all of the skills sought by the corporations that represent a significant portion of the hiring market. One solution to meeting this growing need is to develop a partnership between corporate sponsors and academic institutions in order to facilitate employers giving feedback on the quality of graduates. Research is showing that corporate partnerships with academic engineering programs results in matching of need of students and employers, practical experience for the students before they have committed to the company, development of academic programs to produce more hirable graduates, and exposure of the students to real life industrial engineering challenges (Soltani et al., 2013). Upon exploration of the student, corporate, and academic perspectives of such a partnership, all three parties argue that the benefits outweigh the complications. Students link their sponsorships to large impacts on their learning development and gaining of industrial experience. Sponsors say that they prefer recruits that have a significant amount of experience in the field and that sponsorship helps ensure recruitment and retention of well-trained graduates. Meanwhile, academia considers close links with industry to strengthen their programs and increase student attraction to engineering. In summary, corporate sponsorship seems to meet significant needs of education in the new knowledge economy and is a trend worth consideration. Another trend that is significantly impacting education is the idea of merit-based pay of educators.
As Maurice Holt argues in his review of performance pay of teachers, “Of all the consequences of the standards movement, pay-by-performance will be the most destructive: of education, of teachers’ careers, of students’ opportunities” (Holt, 2001, page 1). The idea of merit-based pay of educators came out of the movement of standards education, which argued that students need to meet certain levels of testing to prove that they are all meeting national standards. Merit-based pay of the educators is supposed to play into that “standards testing”, where a business-type model of monetary incentive is supposed to motivate the teachers to meet those standards. This does not take into account that, in the business world, merit-based pay has been proven to result in a loss of product quality(Holt, 2001). Meanwhile, merit-based pay does not address two key issues: namely in the nature of the system of education, and the significance of performance (Holt, 2001). The nature of the system is that education is not easily reduced to a simple exchange of knowledge between learner and educator, but instead involved a system of the student or teacher’s outside circumstances and contexts affecting learning, the school’s infrastructure, and other factors (Holt, 2001). Meanwhile, academic performance does not necessarily reflect the other aspects of a teacher’s job, such as the development of the student as a responsible, thinking individual (Holt, 2001). Essentially, while merit-based pay may seem like a good idea on paper to a non-educator, it is a trend that does not meet the reality and needs of the educational system, unlike the final trend of distance education. Distance education can be defined as teaching and planned learning where the teacher and learner are physically distant, and where technology, institutional resources, and pedagogical techniques are uniquely applied to overcome social, spatial, and learning style challenges integral to the education style. Distance education has been a growing trend since the mid-1800’s, and has grown in popularity through to today due to its ability to meet the calls for temporal and geographical flexibility, as well as to increase access to education by lesser served groups such as women, minorities, or those at a lower social-economic status (Larreamendy-Joerns & Leinhardt, 2006). Distance education has also traditionally served the needs of different groups looking for skills education as opposed to more classical education (Larreamendy-Joerns & Leinhardt, 2006). As the knowledge economy has evolved, the world of higher distance education has expanded, with 69% of chief academic leaders in the U.S. listing online learning as critical to their long-term educational strategies in 2012, and higher education students enrolled in online courses increased from 21.3% to 29.0% of all higher education students from 2007 to 2010 (Kentnor, 2015). Distance education is potentially one of the fastest growing trends in modern education. Conclusion There are three main trends in education that have been discussed in this report, namely corporate sponsorship of academic programs for better preparation of students for the job market, merit-based pay of educators to meet the demands of the standards movement, and distance education to provide better education access regardless of time or geographic constraints or minority/social economic status. Of these trends, the first and the last are likely to bring positive change to meet the new demands of the knowledge economy of this modern digital world, while the second trend of merit-based pay is likely to bring detrimental effects both to the teachers as well as the students. Distance education in particular holds significant opportunity for career development of teachers, and is worth consideration as an area of exploration. References Education: Vault.com. 2020, access.vault.com/industries-professions/industries/education/current-trends-and-issues. Holt, Maurice. “Performance Pay for Teachers: The Standards Movement’s Last Stand?” Phi Delta Kappan 83, no. 4 (January 1, 2001): 312–17. Kentnor, Hope. “Distance Education and the Evolution of Online Learning in the United States,” n.d., 18. Larreamendy-Joerns, Jorge, and Gaea Leinhardt. “Going the Distance With Online Education.” Review of Educational Research 76, no. 4 (December 2006): 567–605. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543076004567. Soltani, Fakhteh, David Twigg, and John Dickens. “Sponsorship Works: Study of the Perceptions of Students, Employers, and Academics of Industrial Sponsorship.” Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice 139, no. 3 (July 2013): 171–76. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)EI.1943-5541.0000143. Education is a fast-changing field with the advent of a “knowledge economy”, where students not only need to be prepared with the knowledge needed for their field, but also the skills to evolve with that field. In addition, the ability to fund such programs is becoming increasingly difficult and complicated. Three of the trends in education at this time that are in response to these new needs are corporate sponsorship of academic programs, merit-based pay of teachers and educators, and implementation of distance education programs.
See next post for more... From the time of the ancient Greeks, access to education has marked the ability to raise oneself above your past, not only granting access to knowledge but also the skills to use that knowledge to its fullest. As society has grown and evolved, education has faced new pressures, and attempts have been made throughout history to limit education in order to limit or contain certain people groups such as the poor, women, or people of color. One of the many methods that have been used to get around these limitations is distance education. In fact, one could easily argue that one of the hallmarks of distance education is to grow and evolve in response to societal needs not addressed by classical education methods.
From the beginning, distance education has played a role in democratization, or “Increasing the access to higher education of populations that would be otherwise excluded”(Larreamendy-Joerns & Leinhardt, 2006). Founded in 1858, University of London began providing external study programs using correspondence courses, allowing access to higher education degree opportunities for women and racial minorities traditionally excluded because of political or personal circumstances (Haughey, 2010). In the US, the Ticknor’s Society of Encourage Studies at Home, which, in 1873, implemented one of the first correspondence learning programs, enlisted more than seven thousand women of different classes and geographical locations, at a time when women did not have access to classical education through formal universities. The university extensions model, which strongly influenced the development of other correspondence education programs of the time, was touted in the University of Chicago Annual Register of 1896-1897 as “being like the church” in how it reached for all classes and both sexes (Larreamendy-Joerns & Leinhardt, 2006). Such programs gained significant traction with institutions such as the University of Chicago or the University of Kansas, with the University of Chicago actually allowing students to complete up to a third of their bachelor’s coursework remotely. Later, distance education took on a different demographic in need of education, with a correspondence program founded by Thomas J. Foster. This program taught much needed safety skills to mine-workers, after a lack of mine-mapping education resulted in accidents such as the Avondale mine disaster of 1869 (Larreamendy-Joerns & Leinhardt, 2006). This program later evolved to become the International Correspondence School, later the Penn Foster Career School, which provides distance learning for a variety of different professions. Here, distance education served not only to promote education in traditional subjects such as literature and mathematics, but also to teach skills necessary for the improved safety and quality of life of lower-class workers. These and other examples strongly illustrate the strong connection between distance learning and societal needs unmet by classical education through history. Indeed, this tradition of distance education professionals seeking new societal boundaries to cross continues to this day. Haughey, M. (2010). Teaching and learning in distance education before the digital age. In (eds., M.F. Cleveland-Innes & D.R. Garrison) An introduction to distance education: Understanding teaching and learning in a new era. Routeledge, NY. (pp. 46-64) Larreamendy-Joerns, J., & Leinhardt, G. (2006). Going the Distance With Online Education. Review of Educational Research, 76(4), 567–605. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543076004567 Epistemology, which Bates defines as a branch of philosophy concerned with the natured and justification of knowledge, can be extremely useful in determining how one will best teach your subject matter (Bates, 2015). By looking at different epistemological theories of learning, one can define how best to present your subject for the better absorption and learning of the student. For example, when teaching anatomy, there is a definite ease to approaching it from an objectivism standpoint. There are general facts that need sharing, such as there is a human heart with a certain number of chambers that pump in a certain order to achieve optimum blood flow. The learning of this knowledge would be easily facilitated by behaviorist practices of having the students fill out a quiz and marking the answers as correct or incorrect to induce rightful behavior or thinking. Implementing these strategies is very similar in practice whether taught in person or remotely. This, however, does not take into account the work the student puts into learning the material, and can promote rote memorization that can result in the information being forgotten soon after the conclusion of the class.
One can incorporate a cognitive approach, which encourages the student to formulate the knowledge in their own heads using such as is illustrated in the thinking and creating layers of Bloom's taxonomy (Bates, 2015). This results in the students assimilating the information more deeply, and usually keeps the knowledge ingrained in their memories much longer than simply repeating facts. In distance learning, this can be achieved through course design and creation of activities that require the students to truly think through the information to synthesize an answer (Mohamed, 2008). One can also apply constructivism to the learning of anatomy, forcing the students to place the knowledge in the context of what they already know and how it applies to their own experience (Bates 2015). This falls under "application" in Bloom's taxonomy, and usually results in the longest memory of the information in the minds of the students (Mohamed, 2008). Finally, one could also apply connectivist theory, as the information on anatomy is widely available through knowledge networks, constantly evolving, and readily available to the students for the rest of their lives if they have been taught how to easily access it (Bates 2015). A. Bates (2015) Teaching in a digital age Chapter 2: The nature of knowledge and the implications for teaching 2nd ed. Obtained through https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/chapter-2-the-nature-of-knowledge-and-the-implications-for-teaching/ Ally, M. (2008). "Foundations of Educational Theory for Online Learning." from The Theory and Practice of Online Learning (online book). pp. 15-44 One of the first things I have learned during one of my first classes, is that the landscape of education is drastically changing with modern times.
The needs of students now not only lie in content, but also in learning the skills necessary to become life-long learners as modern careers are increasingly dependent on knowledge and change. In his book "Teaching in a Digital Age", Tony Bates writes that the skills students need to learn in a knowledge society include communication skills (including social and multi media skills), independent learning, ethics and responsibility, teamwork and flexibility, thinking skills, digital skills, and knowledge management skills. If educators are truly invested in the future success of their students, they are going to need to start reformatting their classes to teach these skills in addition to sharing the content they have already mastered in communicating. I am so excited to officially begin this journey into the world of online teaching and education!
This journey actually began many years ago, when I helped to develop an online version of a class I had TA'ed for in graduate school at Johns Hopkins. This was a unique opportunity, as the course, a two week camp graduate introduction to biomedical sciences and anatomy, was already formatted to be a very interacting and active learning environment. As I worked to convert this unique course into an online format, I had to get very creative to develop and utilize online resources that allowed the students to continue to learn in a collaborative and working group manner while working from all over the world! This experience got me so excited about the developing world of distance education: a world where a student in Maryland, USA could work with a student in China and a homeschooler in New York to build a group project and learn together! As I finished my Ph.D. and moved on into my research post-doctoral fellowship at NIH, my hunger to teach on the college level and my excitement at the growing world of online learning only grew. I switched to a combination post-doc, where I could continue finishing my research goals while also training in Science Education and Outreach with the NIH's National Human Genomics Research Institute's Education and Community Involvement Branch. With the new world of mandatory distance education during the Covid 19 crisis, my goals have solidified, and with the wonderful support of my mentor at NIH, I am now whole-heartedly pursuing a Masters in Distance Education and E-learning. |
AuthorHeidi Hempel received her Bachelors in Cellular Biology and Molecular Genetics from the University of Maryland, followed by her Ph.D. in Pathobiology from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.She completed a postdoc with NIH's NCI, and is currently and postdoc and trainee with NIH's NHGRI research and Community Involvement Branches, doing a hybrid fellowship in genetics research and science outreach and communications Archives
August 2020
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