An integrated approach to tourism planning in a developing nation : a case study from Beloi (Timor-Leste)

In this chapter we present a case study set in Beloi, a fishing village located on Ataúro Island, 30 km across the sea from Díli, capital of Timor-Leste (East-Timor). We explore the tension between tourism development, food security and marine conservation in a developing country context. In order to better understand the relationships between the social, ecological and economic issues that arise in tourism planning we use an approach and associated methodology based on storytelling, complexity theory and concept mapping. Through testing scenarios with this methodology we hope to evaluate which trade-offs are acceptable to local people in return for the hoped-for economic boost from increased tourist visitation and associated developments.

Developing research data management services at QUT

QUT Library and the High Performance Computing and Research Support (HPC) Team have been collaborating on developing and delivering a range of research support services, including those designed to assist researchers to manage their data. QUT’s Management of Research Data policy has been available since 2010 and is complemented by the Data Management Guidelines and Checklist. QUT has partnered with the Australian Research Data Service (ANDS) on a number of projects including Seeding the Commons, Metadata Hub (with Griffith University) and the Data Capture program. The HPC Team has also been developing the QUT Research Data Repository based on the Architecta Mediaflux system and have run several pilots with faculties. Library and HPC staff have been trained in the principles of research data management and are providing a range of research data management seminars and workshops for researchers and HDR students.

Whole life cycle costing for Malaysia residential property development : the cultural environment

As knowledge of the residential development costing impact on resource and budgeting use increase, developers are moving towards more sustainable solution by implementing whole life cycle costing. Property management requires an understanding of infrastructure management, service life planning and quality management. Today, people are beginning to realize that effective property management in high-rise residential property can sustain the property value and maintain high returns on their investment. The continuous growth of high-rise residential properties indicates that there is a need for an effective property management system to provide a sustainable high-rise residential property development. For such reasons, this paper attempts to study the culture that have been applied due the residential property development in Malaysia as to improve to the best and sustainable practice in providing the best cost effectiveness management system in residential property development.

School-based experiences : developing primary science preservice teachers' practice

Reviews into teacher education emphasise the need for preservice teachers to have more school-based experiences. In this study, a school-based experience was organised within a nine-week science curriculum university unit that allowed preservice teachers’ repeated experiences in teaching primary science. This research uses a survey, questionnaire with extended written responses, and researcher observations to investigate preservice teachers’ (n=38) learning experiences in two school settings. Survey results indicated that the majority of these preservice teachers either agreed or strongly agreed that school-based experiences developed their: personal-professional skill development (100%); system requirements (range: 81-100%); teaching practices (81-100%); student behaviour management (range: 94-100%); providing student feedback (89-94%); and reflection on practice (92-100%). Qualitative data provided insights into their development particularly for science content knowledge and receiving positive reinforcement on effective teaching behaviours. According to these preservice teachers, the school-based experiences facilitated “teachable moments – having the knowledge or skills to run with students’ questions or ideas” and allowed preservice teachers to “critically reflect between groups to make the task flow better”. Embedding school-based experiences needs to be part of each and every preservice teacher education unit so preservice teachers can develop confidence, knowledge and skills within authentic school contexts.

Australian ePortfolio Project–Stage 2 ePortfolio use by university students in Australia : Developing a sustainable community of practice Case studies extracted from the final project report December 2009

Fourteen sase studies extracted from the final project report - December 2009 Australian Flexible Learning Framework: E-portfolios Community of Practice (Aus) Personal learning plans and ePortfolio (Aus) RMIT University: Introducing ePortfolios (Aus) ePortfolio Practice: ALTC Exchange (Aus) Australian PebblePad User Group (APpUG) (Aus) ePortfolios in the library and information services sector (Aus) PDP and ePortfolios UK (UK) SURF NL Portfolio (Netherlands) University of Canterbury ePortfolio (NZ) AAEEBL: Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (USA) Midlands Eportfolio Group, West Midlands(UK) EPAC: Electronic Portfolio Action and Communication (USA) Scottish Higher Education PDP Forum (UK) Centre for Recording Achievement (CRA)(UK)

Strategy in developing cell based therapy for large bone

Regeneration of osseous defects by tissue-engineering approach provides a novel means of treatment utilizing cell biology, materials science, and molecular biology. The concept of in vitro cultured osteoblasts having an ability to induce new bone formation has been demonstrated in the critical size defects using small animal models. The bone derived cells can be incorporated into bioengineered scaffolds and synthesize bone matrix, which on implantation can induce new bone formation. In search of optimal cell delivery materials, the extracellular matrix as cell carriers for the repair and regeneration of tissues is receiving increased attention. We have investigated extracellular matrix formed by osteoblasts in vitro as a scaffold for osteoblasts transplantation and found a mineralized matrix, formed by human osteoblasts in vitro, can initiate bone formation by activating endogenous mesenchymal cells. To repair the large bone defects, osteogenic or stem cells need to be prefabricated in a large three dimensional scaffold usually made of synthetic biomaterials, which have inadequate interaction with cells and lead to in vivo foreign body reactions. The interstitial extracellular matrix has been applied to modify biomaterials surface and identified vitronectin, which binds the heparin domain and RGD (Arg-Gly-Asp) sequence can modulate cell spreading, migration and matrix formation on biomaterials. We also synthesized a tri-block copolymer, methoxy-terminated poly(ethylene glycol)(MPEG)-polyL-lactide(PLLA)-polylysine(PLL) for human osteoblasts delivery. We identified osteogenic activity can be regulated by the molecular weight and composition of the triblock copolymers. Due to the sequential loss of lineage differentiation potential during the culture of bone marrow stromal cells that hinderers their potential clinical application, we have developed a clonal culture system and established several stem cell clones with fast growing and multi-differentiation properties. Using proteomics and subtractive immunization, several differential proteins have been identified and verified their potential application in stem cell characterization and tissue regeneration

Nascent entrepreneurship and the developing individual : early entrepreneurial competence in adolescence and venture creation success during the career

What predicts a person's venture creation success over the course of the career, such as making progress in the venture creation process and multiple successful venture creations? Applying a life span approach of human development, this study examined the effect of early entrepreneurial competence in adolescence, which was gathered retrospectively by means of the Life History Calendar method. Human and social capitals during the founding process were investigated as mediators between adolescent competence and performance. Findings were derived from regression analyses on the basis of prospective and retrospective data from two independent samples (N = 88 nascent founders; N = 148 founders). We found that early entrepreneurial competence in adolescence had a positive effect on making progress in the venture creation process. Nascent founders' current human and social capital also had a direct effect, but it did not mediate the effect of early competences. Finally, the data revealed that early entrepreneurial competence in adolescence positively predicted habitual entrepreneurship (multiple successful venture creations) exhibited over a longer period of the individual career (specifically, 18 years). In line with the results from prospective longitudinal studies on early precursors of entrepreneurship, our findings underscore the long neglected importance of adolescent development in the explanation of entrepreneurial performance during the subsequent working life.

Developing the Practice of Early Intervention into Youth Homelessness

The Australian government has found that early intervention services related to youth homelessness expanded through the Reconnect program have been found to be quite effective and successful. The main things that a good early intervention practice requires are highlighted.

Developing trust networks based on user tagging information for recommendation making

Recommender systems are one of the recent inventions to deal with ever growing information overload. Collaborative filtering seems to be the most popular technique in recommender systems. With sufficient background information of item ratings, its performance is promising enough. But research shows that it performs very poor in a cold start situation where previous rating data is sparse. As an alternative, trust can be used for neighbor formation to generate automated recommendation. User assigned explicit trust rating such as how much they trust each other is used for this purpose. However, reliable explicit trust data is not always available. In this paper we propose a new method of developing trust networks based on user’s interest similarity in the absence of explicit trust data. To identify the interest similarity, we have used user’s personalized tagging information. This trust network can be used to find the neighbors to make automated recommendations. Our experiment result shows that the proposed trust based method outperforms the traditional collaborative filtering approach which uses users rating data. Its performance improves even further when we utilize trust propagation techniques to broaden the range of neighborhood.

An example of developing a business model for information and communication technologies (ICT) adoption on construction projects – the National Museum of Australia project

Effective use of information and communication technologies (ICT) is necessary for delivering efficiency and improved project delivery in the construction industry. Convincing clients or contracting organisations to embrace ICT is a difficult task, there are few templates of an ICT business model for the industry to use. ICT application in the construction industry is relatively low compared to automotive and aerospace industries. The National Museum of Australia project provides a unique opportunity for investigating and reporting on this deficiency in publicly available knowledge. Concentrates on the business model content and objectives, briefly indicates the evaluation framework that was used to evaluate ICT effectiveness.

Strategic management practices in the construction industry : a study of Indonesian enterprises

Since the establishment of the first national strategic development plan in the early 1970s, the construction industry has played an important role in terms of the economic, social and cultural development of Indonesia. The industry’s contribution to Indonesia’s gross domestic product (GDP) increased from 3.9% in 1973 to 7.7% in 2007. Business Monitoring International (2009) forecasts that Indonesia is home to one of the fastest-growing construction industries in Asia despite the average construction growth rate being expected to remain under 10% over the period 2006 – 2010. Similarly, Howlett and Powell (2006) place Indonesia as one of the 20 largest construction markets in 2010. Although the prospects for the Indonesian construction industry are now very promising, many local construction firms still face serious difficulties, such as poor performance and low competitiveness. There are two main reasons behind this problem: the environment that they face is not favourable; the other is the lack of strategic direction to improve competitiveness and performance. Furthermore, although strategic management has now become more widely used by many large construction firms in developed countries, practical examples and empirical studies related to the Indonesian construction industry remain scarce. In addition, research endeavours related to these topics in developing countries appear to be limited. This has potentially become one of the factors hampering efforts to guide Indonesian construction enterprises. This research aims to construct a conceptual model to enable Indonesian construction enterprises to develop a sound long-term corporate strategy that generates competitive advantage and superior performance. The conceptual model seeks to address the main prescription of a dynamic capabilities framework (Teece, Pisano & Shuen, 1997; Teece, 2007) within the context of the Indonesian construction industry. It is hypothesised that in a rapidly changing and varied environment, competitive success arises from the continuous development and reconfiguration of firm’s specific assets achieving competitive advantage is not only dependent on the exploitation of specific assets/capabilities, but on the exploitation of all of the assets and capabilities combinations in the dynamic capabilities framework. Thus, the model is refined through sequential statistical regression analyses of survey results with a sample size of 120 valid responses. The results of this study provide empirical evidence in support of the notion that a competitive advantage is achieved via the implementation of a dynamic capability framework as an important way for a construction enterprise to improve its organisational performance. The characteristics of asset-capability combinations were found to be significant determinants of the competitive advantage of the Indonesian construction enterprises, and that such advantage sequentially contributes to organisational performance. If a dynamic capabilities framework can work in the context of Indonesia, it suggests that the framework has potential applicability in other emerging and developing countries. This study also demonstrates the importance of the multi-stage nature of the model which provides a rich understanding of the dynamic process by which asset-capability should be exploited in combination by the construction firms operating in varying levels of hostility. Such findings are believed to be useful to both academics and practitioners, however, as this research represents a dynamic capabilities framework at the enterprise level, future studies should continue to explore and examine the framework in other levels of strategic management in construction as well as in other countries where different cultures or similar conditions prevails.

Do programs to improve business performance in small and medium manufacturing enterprise improve opportunity recognition?

Increasing awareness of the benefits of stimulating entrepreneurial behaviour in small and medium enterprises has fostered strong interest in innovation programs. Recently many western countries have invested in design innovation for better firm performance. This research presents some early findings from a study of companies which participated in an holistic approach to design innovation, where the outcomes include better business performance and better market positioning in global markets. Preliminary findings from in-depth semi-structured interviews indicate the importance of firm openness to new ways of working and developing new processes of strategic entrepreneurship. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.