IT professionals' experience of ethics and its implications for IT education

This study investigates variation in IT professionals' experience of ethics with a view to enhancing their formation and support. This is explored through an examination of the experience of IT, IT professional ethics and IT professional ethics education. The study's principal contribution is the empirical study and description of IT professionals' experience of ethics. The empirical phase is preceded by a review of conceptions of IT and followed by an application of the findings to IT education. The study's empirical findings are based on 30 semi-structured interviews with IT professionals who represent a wide demographic, experience and IT sub-discipline range. Their experience of ethics is depicted as five citizenships: Citizenship of my world, Citizenship of the corporate world, Citizenship of a shared world, Citizenship of the client's world and Citizenship of the wider world. These signify an expanding awareness, which progressively accords rights to others and defines responsibility in terms of others. The empirical findings inform a Model of Ethical IT. This maps an IT professional space increasingly oriented towards others. Such a model provides a conceptual tool, available to prompt discussion and reflection, and which may be employed in pursuing formation aimed at experiential change. Its usefulness for the education of IT professionals with respect to ethics is explored. The research approach employed in this study is phenomenography. This method seeks to elicit and represent variation of experience. It understands experience as a relationship between a subject (IT professionals) and an object (ethics), and describes this relationship in terms of its foci and boundaries. The study's findings culminate in three observations, that change is indicated in the formation and support of IT professionals in: 1. IT professionals' experience of their discipline, moving towards a focus on information users; 2. IT professionals' experience of professional ethics, moving towards the adoption of other-centred attitudes; and 3. IT professionals' experience of professional development, moving towards an emphasis on a change in lived experience. Based on these results, employers, educators and professional bodies may want to evaluate how they approach professional formation and support, if they aim to promote a comprehensive awareness of ethics in IT professionals.

Connecting brands with consumers on the internet

There is value of using brands to build relationships with customers and improve brand performance on the web. Products and services are easily replicated; therefore to simplify the buyer decision making process, brands have become important. Building strong brands is important as they can create contrasts between other brands, connections to consumers, and relevance through building customer relationships. Branding in an online environment is important for three reasons: security, recognition and associated costs.

Public-private partnerships in ICT for education

A recent World Bank report notes that across the world, per capita economic growth is driven by three information and communication technology (ICT)-related factors: investments in equipment and infrastructure, investments in human capital (i.e. in education and innovation), and efficient use of labour (human resource) and capital that increases productivity (Schware 2005). These three factors have a direct impact on the provisioning of education. For one, the demand to adopt ICT-supported education services, or e-education, is outweighing the capacity of governments to adequately support education reform and expansion.

Value-oriented process modeling : integrating financial perspectives into business process re-design

Purpose – Financial information about costs and return on investments are of key importance to strategic decision-making but also in the context of process improvement or business engineering. In this paper we propose a value-oriented approach to business process modeling based on key concepts and metrics from operations and financial management, to aid decision making in process re-design projects on the basis of process models. Design/methodology/approach – We suggest a theoretically founded extension to current process modeling approaches, and delineate a framework as well as methodical support to incorporate financial information into process re-design. We use two case studies to evaluate the suggested approach. Findings – Based on two case studies, we show that the value-oriented process modeling approach facilitates and improves managerial decision-making in the context of process re-design. Research limitations / implications – We present design work and two case studies. More research is needed to more thoroughly evaluate the presented approach in a variety of real-life process modeling settings. Practical implications – We show how our approach enables decision makers to make investment decisions in process re-design projects, and also how other decisions, for instance in the context of enterprise architecture design, can be facilitated. Originality/value – This study reports on an attempt to integrate financial considerations into the act of process modeling, in order to provide more comprehensive decision making support in process re-design projects.

Advertising education in Australia: Looking back to the future

In Australia, advertising is a $13 billion industry which needs a supply of suitably skilled employees. Over the years, advertising education has developed from vocational based courses to degree courses across the country. This paper uses diffusion theory and various secondary sources and interviews to observe the development of advertising education in Australia from its early past, to its current day tertiary offerings, to discussing the issues that are arising in the near future. Six critical issues are identified, along with observations about the challenges and opportunities within Australia advertising education. By looking back to the future, it is hoped that this historical review provides lessons for other countries of similar educational structure or background, or even other marketing communication disciplines on a similar evolutionary path.

Inclusive Education Discussion Paper

The literature regarding the historical and international development of inclusive education is extensive. Analysis of the literature has provided some reoccurring themes that are used to frame this discussion paper.

Education for all : providing curriculum for students with disabilities in a standards-based environment : implications for Queensland schools

This report investigates lessons learned by educators in the United States when providing a standards-based curriculum for all students including Students with Disabilities (SWD). Assumptions about implementation of these lessons are then made to the Queensland school system. Queensland mainstream schools currently provide a standards-based curriculum for over sixteen thousand-four hundred students with mild-moderate disabilities and appear to be challenged by this new educational reform and its implications to school and teacher practices, beliefs and attitudes. The analysis of US research, literature and educational policy for this report, has provided some implications for Queensland schools in the areas of student participation, achievement and curriculum planning to provide an “education for all”. The analysis and comparison of legislation and policy, which demonstrates some significant similarities, provides greater validity for the application of lessons learned in the United States to the Queensland context. The key findings about lessons learned provides Queensland schools with some assumptions as to why and how they need to refocus school leader and teachers’ practices, beliefs and attitudes to provide an “education for all”. These lessons infer that school leaders and teachers to explicitly focus on equity, expectation, accountability, performance, alignment and collaboration so that effective curriculum is provided for SWD, indeed all students, in the Queensland standards-based curriculum environment.

Exploring the influence of a science content course incorporating explicit nature of science and argumentation instruction on preservice primary teachers' views of nature of science

There exists a general consensus in the science education literature around the goal of enhancing students. and teachers. views of nature of science (NOS). An emerging area of research in science education explores NOS and argumentation, and the aim of this study was to explore the effectiveness of a science content course incorporating explicit NOS and argumentation instruction on preservice primary teachers. views of NOS. A constructivist perspective guided the study, and the research strategy employed was case study research. Five preservice primary teachers were selected for intensive investigation in the study, which incorporated explicit NOS and argumentation instruction, and utilised scientific and socioscientific contexts for argumentation to provide opportunities for participants to apply their NOS understandings to their arguments. Four primary sources of data were used to provide evidence for the interpretations, recommendations, and implications that emerged from the study. These data sources included questionnaires and surveys, interviews, audio- and video-taped class sessions, and written artefacts. Data analysis involved the formation of various assertions that informed the major findings of the study, and a variety of validity and ethical protocols were considered during the analysis to ensure the findings and interpretations emerging from the data were valid. Results indicated that the science content course was effective in enabling four of the five participants. views of NOS to be changed. All of the participants expressed predominantly limited views of the majority of the examined NOS aspects at the commencement of the study. Many positive changes were evident at the end of the study with four of the five participants expressing partially informed and/or informed views of the majority of the examined NOS aspects. A critical analysis of the effectiveness of the various course components designed to facilitate the development of participants‟ views of NOS in the study, led to the identification of three factors that mediated the development of participants‟ NOS views: (a) contextual factors (including context of argumentation, and mode of argumentation), (b) task-specific factors (including argumentation scaffolds, epistemological probes, and consideration of alternative data and explanations), and (c) personal factors (including perceived previous knowledge about NOS, appreciation of the importance and utility value of NOS, and durability and persistence of pre-existing beliefs). A consideration of the above factors informs recommendations for future studies that seek to incorporate explicit NOS and argumentation instruction as a context for learning about NOS.

The place of writing in first grade Kuwaiti english education : a sociological case study

A hybridized society, Kuwait meshes Islamic ideologies with western culture. Linguistically, English exists across both foreign language and second language nomenclatures in the country due to globalization and internationalization which has seen increasing use of English in Kuwait. Originally consisting of listening, speaking, reading and writing, the first grade English curriculum in Kuwait was narrowed in 2002 to focus only on the development of oral English skills, and to exclude writing. Since that time, both Kuwaiti teachers and parents have expressed dissatisfaction with this curriculum on the basis that this model disadvantages their children. In first grade however, the teaching of pre-writing has remained as part of the curriculum. This research analyses the parameters of English pre-writing and writing instruction in first grade in Kuwaiti classrooms, investigates first grade English pre-writing and writing teaching, and gathers insights from parents, teachers and students regarding the appropriateness of the current curriculum. Through interviews and classroom observations, and an analysis of curriculum documents, this case study found that the relationship between oral and written language is more complex than suggested by either the Kuwaiti curriculum reform, or international literature concerning the delayed teaching of writing. Intended curriculum integration across Kuwait subjects is also far more complex than first believed, due to a developmental mismatch between English pre-writing skills and Arabic language capabilities. Findings suggest an alternative approach to teaching writing may be more appropriate and more effective for first Grade students in the current Kuwait curriculum context. They contribute also to an emerging interest in the second and foreign language fields in the teaching of writing to young learners.

ICT integration and teachers' confidence in using ICT for teaching and learning in Queensland state schools

Information and communication technology (ICT) curriculum integration is the apparent goal of an extensive array of educational initiatives in all Australian states and territories. However, ICT curriculum integration is neither value neutral nor universally understood. The literature indicates the complexity of rationales and terminology that underwrite various initiatives; various dimensions and stages of integration; inherent methodological difficulties; obstacles to integration; and significant issues relating to teacher professional development and ICT competencies (Jamieson-Proctor, Watson, & Finger, 2003). This paper investigates the overarching question: Are ICT integration initiatives making a significant impact on teaching and learning in Queensland state schools? It reports the results from a teacher survey that measures the quantity and quality of student use of ICT. Results from 929 teachers across all year levels and from 38 Queensland state schools indicate that female teachers (73% of the full time teachers in Queensland state schools in 2005) are significantly less confident than their male counterparts in using ICT with students for teaching and learning, and there is evidence of significant resistance to using ICT to align curriculum with new times and new technologies. This result supports the hypothesis that current initiatives with ICT are having uneven and less than the desired results system wide. These results require further urgent investigation in order to address the factors that currently constrain the use of ICT for teaching and learning.

Hypercapitalism: language, new media and social perceptions of value

Using examples from contemporary policy and business discourses, and exemplary historical texts dealing with the notion of value, I put forward an argument as to why a critical scholarship that draws on media history, language analysis, philosophy and political economy is necessary to understand the dynamics of what is being called 'the global knowledge economy'. I argue that the social changes associated with new modes of value determination are closely associated with new media forms.

The judicious utilization of new technologies through authentic learning in higher education : a case study

Though technology holds significant promise for enhanced teaching and learning it is unlikely to meet this promise without a principled approach to course design. There is burgeoning discourse about the use of technological tools and models in higher education, but much of the discussion is fixed upon distance learning or technology based courses. This paper will develop and propose a balanced model for effective teaching and learning for “on campus” higher education, with particular emphasis on the opportunities for revitalisation available through the judicious utilisation of new technologies. It will explore the opportunities available for the creation of more authentic learning environments through the principled design. Finally it will demonstrate with a case study how these have come together enabling the creation of an effective and authentic learning environment for one pre-service teacher education course at the University of Queensland.