Q: What is a MOOC?

July 30, 2014 by

A:  A “Massive Open On-line Course.”

Have you ever taken one?

I’m enrolled in one right now:  “Exercise Physiology:  Understanding the Athlete Within,”   taught by Professor Mark Hargreaves from the University of Melbourne.  I think it is the fourth MOOC I’ve ever taken, and it is the first one that has any direct relation to my profession.  The course began last week, and I was able to do most of my lecture viewing this past weekend.  While my kids are enjoying their summer vacation at an overnight camp, I’m back in school!

Before I get much further, I suppose I should spend a moment describing, at least in my terms, what a MOOC is, most especially for those folks that ticked “No” in the poll above.

Massive Open On-line Courses (MOOCs) have been around now for a few years.  I believe there are several providers, the largest ones being Coursera and edX.   One can better understand the nature of a MOOC by deconstructing the phrase itself:  MOOCs are typically ‘massive’ (they have large enrollments);  ‘open’ (they are typically free, and enrolling is a matter of  simply ‘signing up’); ‘on line’  (you’ll need internet access); courses (they are educational sessions which last for several weeks, and include syllabi, lectures, assignments).

edX describes itself on its twitter home page thus: “A global community committed to bringing quality education to everyone across the globe through an innovative MOOC platform–founded by Harvard and MIT.” Read more of this post

Filed under CJSM Polls, Exercise Science, General Interest Tagged with , , ,

Gender Issues in Sport

April 15, 2014 by 2 Comments

I was taken by an editorial that I read in the New York Times this weekend:  The Trouble With Too Much T.  If you didn’t have the chance to see it yourself already, by all means click on the link and read this piece.

20090819_Caster_Semenya_polished

Caster Semenya, South African Olympian

The authors, Katrina Karkazis and Rebecca Jordan-Young, give a broad overview of how current sports governing bodies determine if an athlete is ‘really’ female.  Of note, Karkazis and Jordan-Young are also the principal authors of  The American Journal of Bioethics critique of the current gender-testing policies of the IOC, IAAF and other governing  bodies.

They lead with the well-known story of Caster Semenya, the South African woman who, in 2009, was barred from international competition and was compelled to undergo testing after the Berlin World Championships (she has subsequently been reinstated, and in the 2012 London Olympics was the flag-bearer for the S. African team and earned a silver medal in the 800m).  After the uproar that ensued over the Semanya case, the previously mentioned sports governing bodies instituted new gender-testing policies and interventions to redress the ‘problem.’

The new policies, as described in the editorial, are arguably no improvement and, it seems, a step in the wrong direction.

In the editorial, the authors tell the story of four female athletes with endogenously high levels of testosterone (‘T’) who all went through a battery of tests: physical examination (including genital inspections), blood tests, MRI, and psychosexual histories.  They then underwent surgery:  gonadectomy and (inexplicably) clitoral surgery.  They were required to do this to lower their levels of T, and they all subsequently were allowed to return to competition.

The essence of the current gender policies is 1) an identification of abnormally high levels of endogenous T; 2) a ‘therapeutic proposal’ which would be offered to athletes who test ‘too high’ and which include medications and/or surgery; 3) a disqualification from elite sport for women who elect not to have their T altered with said ‘therapeutic proposal.’

We’ve discussed some aspects of this issue in a previous blog post, our review of David Epstein’s sublime book ‘The Sports Gene.’ Epstein devotes an entire chapter (‘Why Men Have Nipples’) to female athleticism, and the powerful role that testosterone can often play in elite performance.  After reading this editorial, I thought it was time to write another post and poll the readership about aspects of this issue.

I can sympathize with the need to screen for use of exogenous testosterone, the systemic abuse of which led to most of the superior performances produced by East German athletes in the 1970’s.   Read more of this post

Filed under CJSM Polls, Doping in Sport, Elite sport, Ethics and probity in SEM, Female Athletes, Women in Sport Tagged with

What to do about concussions?

March 19, 2014 by 1 Comment

clairey

Calling aspiring
blog post writers!

There is a lot of discussion about concussions in the world of primary care sports medicine.

Breaking news?  Not!

But truly the conversation extends and deepens by the month, it seems to me.  It might be my personal, professional myopia–during football season possibly 25% of the patients in my clinic are youth athletes with sport-related concussions (SRCs).  As a consequence of that, I try to stay on top of the literature and have begun doing research in the area myself.

I hope you all have been as interested as I have over the March CJSM offerings in this area.  The journal opens with an editorial, Time to Re-think the Zurich Guidelines?  It continues with an interesting study looking at the use of those same guidelines along with the Buffalo Concussion Treadmill Test in determining return to play in adolescents following concussion.

And this blog has profiled the Zurich guidelines as well in a recent post and podcast, our first in what will be an on-going offering here at CJSM.

We are aware that there is much more to clinical sports medicine than concussion, and we make a concerted effort at the Editorial Board level to offer a continuing, rich, and diverse set of research focussed on the panoply of sport conditions we might see as clinicians.  As we move forward, we are always interested hearing from you about areas in the world of clinical sport medicine that are of special interest to you.

You can comment on these pages, tweet us @cjsmonline, or if you are especially eager and want to take the bull by the horns:  consider being a guest blog post writer for an issue that is of special interest to you.  Our blog post guidelines can be found here and include instructions on how to contact us if you are interested.

In the mean time, take the poll here (offered concurrently on the CJSM main website).  As you know, we love to hear from you!

Filed under CJSM Polls, Concussion in Sport, General Interest

Snow Worries: Sochi Olympics, Second Week

February 18, 2014 by

SONY DSC

Winter in Sochi 🙂

I was reading the Washington Post the other day, and came across an article with a clever title:  “At Sochi Olympics, Finding Risk is Snow Problem.”

It took your less than clever blogger here a moment to get that…….

Now that I do, I’m modifying the word play for this post’s title.

But the story under the headline I ‘got’ right away.  The Post reporter was arguing that the Sochi snow (quality and quantity) was a danger to competitors, and was possibly increasing the incidence and severity of injuries seen this Olympics.

Like most of you, I have followed the Sochi Olympics with great interest.  The sport is central to my enjoyment; but I also am intoxicated by the scenes of the beautiful Caucasus mountains set so close to a warm, subtropical coastline.  I don’t know if any other Winter Games have been hosted in a city with palm trees.

So, the snow:  so central to a Winter Olympics.  Is it a problem?  We can wait to tally up IOC medical charts, but you can also weigh in with your opinion on our poll below!

And if you’re especially enterprising–and you’re collecting data on this or other epidemiologic issues central to the Sochi Olympics–by all means submit a manuscript to the journal!  We frequently publish studies looking at the Olympics or the effect of sporting surface on injury rates.  We’d love to hear from clinicians/researchers/epidemiologists who have written up their studies and are looking for a quality journal to review their work.

Until then:  take the poll!

*poll can also be found on the journal’s main website

Filed under CJSM Polls, Epidemiology, General Interest, Injury Prevention, Polls Tagged with ,

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