Streetwise Asia, a practical guide for the conservation and revitalisation of heritage cities and towns in Asia.

This is a practical and accessible guide for residents and professionals concerned to preserve and revitalise heritage cities in Asia. Heritage cities (many listed by UNESCO) are of course of major interest to one of the world's largest industries, tourism. Using inset colour photographs to complement the text, the realities of destructive and constructive development, repairs, restoration and usage are made clear. Legal, financial, administrative, historical and educational aspects of conservation policies, incentives and implementations are discussed. With outlines for strategy, goals and bibliography.

A practical approach to monitoring nutrient supplement intake of Australian adults

The adoption, in mid-1995, of the revised food Standard A9, which permits the more liberal addition of nutrients to a range of food products, highlighted the need to obtain information on nutrient intake from supplements to complement the i 995 National Nutrition Survey data on nutrient intake from food. This paper describes the method used to obtain quantitative information on nutrient supplement intake and reports on the prevalence of supplement use in different subgroups of the Australian population. Information on supplement intake was obtained in two Australian Bureau of Statistics Population Survey Monitor surveys in August 1995 and February 1996 using the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) registration numbers to identify individual products. Approximately 18% of men and 29% of women aged 18 years and over reported consuming a nutrient supplement on the day before the survey and these proportions increased to 25% and 35% respectively for consumption during the two weeks before the survey. The prevalence of supplement intake increased with age, education level, socioeconomic status, employment status and with fruit and vegetable intake. The substantial proportion of Australian adults who consume nutrient supplements, and the rapidly changing composition of the Australian food supply in response to changes in food regulation, indicate that there is a need for regular monitoring of nutrient intake from supplements. The use of TGA registration numbers to identify supplements provides a practical way to address this need.

Current situation of practical work in secondary school biology (VCE biology) in Victoria state, Australia

In secondary school biology in Victoria State, Australia, practical work including laboratory exercises, fieldwork and other research activities is carried out more frequently than in Japanese senior high school biology. The authors examined the contents of the practical work and how often such practical work is carried out in some urban and rural secondary schools in Victoria. The topics of biology practical work were based on the VCE Biology Study Design which was published by the Victorian Board of Studies. Some of the activities continued for some weeks. Sometimes students went out from their school for fieldwork for a few days. The average number of practical work per credit was about 4. This number is consider ably larger than the value (2.3 per credit) which was reported on senior high schools in Osaka Prefecture. Why so often can the practical work be carried out? The main reason is that as well as the scores of ordinary paper tests, the evaluation of each practical work is taken into consideration at the entrance examination of universities and other tertiary education institutes in Victoria State.

Distance learning for laboratory practical work in microcontrollers

This paper presents a simple and relatively straightforward solution to the problems of equity in laboratory practical exposure between distance-education students and their traditional, on-campus, fellow cohort. This system has been implemented for the past five years in a university that is amongst the leaders in distance education delivery and has proved to be extremely successful and very well accepted by all students. While the intention was to allow distance education students easy access to the required laboratory practical content of the course, the solution found has proved to have many advantages for the on-campus students. Although this specific implementation is based upon microcontroller technology units in an engineering degree course, the methodology is easily transferable to other disciplines and courses.

A scale-model room as a practical teaching experiment

A practical experiment is described which was used to help university students increase their understanding of the effect of construction methods and window design on passive solar heating and electrical heating. A number of one tenth scale model rooms were constructed by students and sited out-of-doors in the late autumn. The models were fabricated to mimic available commercial construction techniques with careful consideration being given to window size and placement for solar access. Each model had a thermostatically controlled electric heating element. The temperatures and electricity use of the models were recorded using data-loggers over a two week period. The performances of the models based on energy consumption and internal temperature were compared with each other and with predictions based upon thermal mass and R-values. Examples of questions used by students to facilitate this process are included. The effect of scaling on thermal properties was analysed using Buckingham’s p-theorem.

The power of practical andragogues

In the tertiary education environment, educators might assume or suggest they should have the most significant influence over the way andragogical theory is translated into online education products. The continuing growth of online education indicates a need to be sure we understand who really does have the greatest influence in this area. This paper introduces a model of the broader development process of online learning resources and the ways educators, learners and resource developers interact in the process. It reveals a backbone of practical andragogy which is currently dominated by resource developers due to their central technological translational expertise. There are implications in this for learners, educators and contractors/financiers of online education products. Understanding the development process reveals at least one critical bearing point where few but the resource developers have andragogical input. This paper examines and analyses the educator-learner-developer triad through the lens of four case study organisations actively applying andragogy in the development of management learning resources in an online format.

A practical condition for migration dynamic recrystallization

A readily evaluated condition for migration dynamic recrystallization is developed. It is based on the postulate that “the distance traversed by the boundary of a hypothetical growing grain in the time taken for the attainment of a recovery steady state must exceed the size of a critical nucleus”. A method for estimating the boundary mobility based on the kinetics of static recrystallization is also developed to facilitate evaluation of the condition. The derivation focuses first on developing an upper limit for the dynamically recrystallized grain size. This upper limit is only slightly higher than experimental values. The critical condition also agrees well with a limited set of experimental data. These data include the occurrence (and, in two cases, suppression) of dynamic recrystallization in Cu, Ni, Mg, α-Fe, γ-Fe and Al.

Sharing good teaching practice: Practical strategies to integrate ICT into the classroom

Situated in regional areas of Victoria, a group of 16 primary and secondary teachers participated in an intensive program of professional development designed to assist them in embedding lCT into their classroom practice. Most teachers made significant changes to their teaching practice becoming risk-takers and problem solvers.This paper reports on the strategic innovations introduced by the teachers including training, preparation, curriculum planning, software evaluation and selection, classroom management strategies, cooperative learning strategies and embedded assessment tasks. The paper will explore the ways these innovations responded to a variety of constraints including limited resources, time and support.

Providing a practical education for off-campus engineering students

This paper considers the provision of laboratory-practicals for distance-education students in engineering degree programmes. The authors discuss the role of laboratory-practical work in the curriculum and reflect on five methods that can be used to ensure off-campus students have an equivalent practical experience as the traditional on-campus cohort. On-campus sessions, videotapes (or ‘on-line’ movie-clips), computer simulations, home experiment kits and laboratories controlled over the internet are covered. Some examples are given to show how these can be incorporated into the curriculum. A case study then discusses the problem of (and an exemplar solution to) delivering the laboratory-practical components of two microcontroller units offered at Deakin University – a leading provider of distance-education in Australia. In doing so, it leads the reader through the solution process and cites some constraints that drive the choice of model - for example, cost considerations and the need for relevant didactic materials.