Bridging Systems, Building a Coalition, and Centering Students: A Collaborative Multi-Campus Approach to Orientation in the Time of COVID-19

This manuscript tells the story of how a multi-campus, public, Research I institution in the Mid-Atlantic pivoted from in-person orientation to a Virtual Orientation in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. We share how our university came together to offer a Virtual Orientation for twenty undergraduate campuses and 17,000 students in less than 100 days, review lessons learned, and offer insight into how planning for future orientation programs will be influenced because of this unusual year.

Lateral occipitotemporal cortex encodes perceptual components of social actions rather than abstract representations of sociality

Neuroimaging studies suggest that areas in the lateral occipitotemporal cortex (LOTC) play an important role in the perception of social actions. However, it is unclear what precisely about social actions these areas represent: perceptual features that may be indicative of social actions – such as the presence of persons in a scene, their orientation toward each other, and in particular the directedness of action movements toward persons or other targets – or more abstract representations that capture whether an action is meant to be social. In two fMRI experiments, we used representational similarity analysis (RSA) to test whether LOTC is sensitive to perceptual action components important for social interpretation and/or more general representations of sociality (Experiment 1) and implied person-directedness (Experiment 2). We found that LOTC is sensitive to perceptual action components (person presence, person orientation, and action directedness toward different types of recipients). By contrast, more general levels of sociality and implied person-directedness were not captured by LOTC. Our findings suggest that regions in LOTC provide the perceptual basis for social action interpretation but challenge accounts that posit specialization at more general levels sensitive to social actions and sociality as such. We propose that the interpretation of an action – in terms of sociality or other intentional aspects – arises from the interaction of multiple areas in processing relevant action components in a situation-dependent manner.

Haridas Chaudhuri's Contributions to Integral Psychology

This article provides a summary of Haridas Chaudhuri’s contributions to the field of integral psychology. First an outline and a brief discussion of his principal tenets and triadic principle of integral psychology are presented, followed by a review of Chaudhuri’s critical reflections on some aspects of early transpersonal psychology. The article concludes with a reflection on recent trends in the field of transpersonal psychology and its evolution toward a whole person orientation compatible with integral psychology.

Building Community in an Online Graduate Program: Exploring the Role of an In-Person Orientation

Orientations help students transition into academic programs. At orientation, students learn how to navigate the university, and access support services, and build rapport with faculty, staff and other students. Few studies have explored the role of orientation in online programs. This qualitative case study explores the ways in which a three-day, in-person orientation impacted students’ sense of community in one online graduate program. Findings indicate that providing online students with unstructured, in-person opportunities for interaction helped them develop a sense of community.

Manikin-based simulation: online orientation and student anxiety

Objective: This study examined changes in anxiety associated with different modes of student orientation to a manikin-based simulation lab. It was purposed that the addition of an online orientation prior to the actual lab would save time for more learning content during the session. Methods: Anxiety scores were gathered from groups of interns, using a visual analog scale. Some students experienced a 30-minute in-person orientation while others completed an online module. One-way analysis of variance and the Kruskal-Wallis test were used for analysis. Results: Mean anxiety scores were not statistically different (χ2 = 2.51, p = .29) between the group that received a 30-minute in-person orientation and the online group. At the end of the entire introductory phase, there was a significant difference between year cohorts (F = 9.61, p < .001), indicating overall higher anxiety for one of the years receiving in-person orientation. However, when looking at the remaining in-person orientation year vs the online module year, there was no significant difference seen (p = .56). Conclusions: Successful transition, resulting in substantial gain to learning time, was observed by changing an in-person orientation to an online format. Anxiety levels were noted to fluctuate significantly from year to year regardless of orientation method.