Communication and the casualisation of nursing : a critical ethnography

The contemporary working environment is being rapidly reshaped by technological, industrial and political forces. Increased global competitiveness and an emphasis on productivity have led to the appearance of alternative methods of employment, such as part-time, casual and itinerant work, allowing greater flexibility. This allows for the development of a core permanent staff and the simultaneous utilisation of casual staff according to business needs. Flexible workers across industries are generally referred to as the non-standard workforce and full-time permanent workers as the standard workforce. Even though labour flexibility favours the employer, increased opportunity for flexible work has been embraced by women for many reasons, including the gender struggle for greater economic independence and social equality. Consequently, the largely female nursing industry, both nationally and internationally, has been caught up in this wave of change. This ageing workforce has been at the forefront of the push for flexibility with recent figures showing almost half the nursing workforce is employed in non-standard capacity. In part, this has allowed women to fulfil caring roles outside their work, to ease off nearing retirement and to supplement the family income. More significantly, however, flexibility has developed as an economic management initiative, as a strategy for cost constraint. The result has been the development of a dual workforce and as suggested by Pocock, Buchanan and Campbell (2004), associated deep-seated resentment and the marginalisation of part-time and casual workers by their full-time colleagues and managers. Additionally, as nursing currently faces serious recruitment and retention problems there is urgent need to understand the factors which are underlying present discontent in the nursing profession. There is an identified gap in nursing knowledge surrounding the issues relating to recruitment and retention. Communication involves speaking, listening, reading and writing and is an interactive process which is central to the lives of humans. Workplace communication refers to human interaction, information technology, and multimedia and print. It is the means to relationship building between workers, management, and their external environment and is critical to organisational effectiveness. Communication and language are integral to nursing performance (Hall, 2005), in twenty-four hour service however increasing fragmentation due to part-time and casual work in the nursing industry means that effective communication management has become increasingly difficult. More broadly it is known that disruption to communication systems impacts negatively on consumer outcomes. Because of this gap in understanding how nurses view their contemporary nursing world, an interpretative ethnographic study which progressed to a critical ethnographic study, based on the conceptual framework of constructionism and interpretativism was used. The study site was a division within an acute health care facility, and the relationship between increasing casualisation of the nursing workforce and the experiences of communication of standard and non-standard nurses was explored. For this study, full-time standard nurses were those employed to work in a specific unit for forty hours per week. Non-standard nurses were those employed part-time in specific units or those nurses employed to work as relief pool nurses for shift short falls where needed. Nurses employed by external agencies, but required to fill in for shifts at the facility were excluded from this research. This study involved an analysis of observational, interview and focus group data of standard and non-standard nurses within this facility. Three analytical findings - the organisation of nursing work; constructing the casual nurse as other; and the function of space, situate communication within a broader discussion about non-standard work and organisational culture. The study results suggest that a significant culture of marginalisation exists for nurses who work in a non-standard capacity and that this affects communication for nurses and has implications for the quality of patient care. The discussion draws on the seven elements of marginalisation described by Hall, Stephen and Melius (1994). The arguments propose that these elements underpin a culture which supports remnants of the historically gendered stereotype "the good nurse" and these cultural values contribute to practices and behaviour which marginalise all nurses, particularly those who work less than full-time. Gender inequality is argued to be at the heart of marginalising practices because of long standing subordination of nurses by the powerful medical profession, paralleling historical subordination of women in society. This has denied nurses adequate representation and voice in decision making. The new knowledge emanating from this study extends current knowledge of factors surrounding recruitment and retention and as such contributes to an understanding of the current and complex nursing environment.

Effects of introducing an interactive teaching and learning activity (TLA) in the engineering classroom

This research study examines qualitatively and quantitatively the influence of introducing an activity in the traditional engineering classroom. It studies instances of active learning and its relationship with the student learning outcomes. The primary purpose of this study was to compare the learning outcomes of students who were involved in an active TLA with those students who were not, instead they learned under traditional teaching and studying approaches. I present the argument that the introduction of a TLA in class stimulates student engagement bringing enormous benefits to student learning. The outcomes of this study were measured using qualitative and quantitative data to evaluate the levels of student engagement, achievement and satisfaction in the terms of Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs). Results indicate that students held positive attitude towards the activities in class and also, that a positive link between TLA, learning approach and learning outcome exist. It also provides insights about the potential benefits of active learning when compared with traditional, passive and teacher-centred methods of teaching & learning.

‘Connect and create’ : young people, YouTube and graffiti communities

Dominant discourses around young people and social networking in the mass media are littered with negative connotations and moral panics. While some scholars challenge this negativity, their focus has predominantly been upon the formation of friendships, the construction of identity and the presentation of the self online. We argue that as well as engaging in such areas, young people are also appropriating social networking sites, such as YouTube, as spaces in which they can engage in what Jean Burgess terms, ‘Vernacular Creativity’ – a way of describing and surfacing creative practices that emerge from non-elite, specific everyday contexts. Using case study material we consider the processes of Vernacular Creativity as engaged with by young people in relation to doing graffiti with YouTube. Through this, and given that graffiti is a cultural practise traditionally associated with physical space, we also consider points of continuity and discontinuity in relation to Vernacular Creativity mediated with YouTube and the significance of such things in enabling young people to connect and create with like-minded others.

Enhanced skin self-examination : a novel approach to skin cancer monitoring and follow-up

Advances in mobile telephone technology and available dermoscopic attachments for mobile telephones have created a unique opportunity for consumer-initiated mobile teledermoscopy. At least 2 companies market a dermoscope attachment for an iPhone (Apple), forming a mobile teledermoscope. These devices and the corresponding software applications (apps) enable (1) lesion magnification (at least ×20) and visualization with polarized light; (2) photographic documentation using the telephone camera; (3) lesion measurement (ruler); (4) adding of image and lesion details; and (5) e-mail data to a teledermatologist for review. For lesion assessment, the asymmetry-color (AC) rule has 94% sensitivity and 62 specificity for melanoma identification by consumers [1]. Thus, consumers can be educated to recognize asymmetry and color patterns in suspect lesions. However, we know little about consumers' use of mobile teledermoscopy for lesion assessment.

Connected learning in the library as a product of hacking, making, social diversity and messiness

Learning is most effective when intrinsically motivated through personal interest, and situated in a supportive socio-cultural context. This paper reports on findings from a study that explored implications for design of interactive learning environments through 18 months of ethnographic observations of people’s interactions at “Hack The Evening” (HTE). HTE is a meetup group initiated at the State Library of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and dedicated to provide visitors with opportunities for connected learning in relation to hacking, making and do-it-yourself technology. The results provide insights into factors that contributed to HTE as a social, interactive and participatory environment for learning – knowledge is created and co-created through uncoordinated interactions among participants that come from a diversity of backgrounds, skills and areas of expertise. The insights also reveal challenges and barriers that the HTE group faced in regards to connected learning. Four dimensions of design opportunities are presented to overcome those challenges and barriers towards improving connected learning in library buildings and other free-choice learning environments that seek to embody a more interactive and participatory culture among their users. The insights are relevant for librarians as well as designers, managers and decision makers of other interactive and free-choice learning environments.

Ethics and social networking sites : a disclosive analysis of Facebook

Purpose – This paper aims to provide insights into the moral values embodied by a popular social networking site (SNS), Facebook. Design/methodology/approach – This study is based upon qualitative fieldwork, involving participant observation, conducted over a two-year period. The authors adopt the position that technology as well as humans has a moral character in order to disclose ethical concerns that are not transparent to users of the site. Findings – Much research on the ethics of information systems has focused on the way that people deploy particular technologies, and the consequences arising, with a view to making policy recommendations and ethical interventions. By focusing on technology as a moral actor with reach across and beyond the internet, the authors reveal the complex and diffuse nature of ethical responsibility and the consequent implications for governance of SNS. Research limitations/implications – The authors situate their research in a body of work known as disclosive ethics, and argue for an ongoing process of evaluating SNS to reveal their moral importance. Along with that of other authors in the genre, this work is largely descriptive, but the paper engages with prior research by Brey and Introna to highlight the scope for theory development. Practical implications – Governance measures that require the developers of social networking sites to revise their designs fail to address the diffuse nature of ethical responsibility in this case. Such technologies need to be opened up to scrutiny on a regular basis to increase public awareness of the issues and thereby disclose concerns to a wider audience. The authors suggest that there is value in studying the development and use of these technologies in their infancy, or if established, in the experiences of novice users. Furthermore, flash points in technological trajectories can prove useful sites of investigation. Originality/value – Existing research on social networking sites either fails to address ethical concerns head on or adopts a tool view of the technologies so that the focus is on the ethical behaviour of users. The authors focus upon the agency, and hence the moral character, of technology to show both the possibilities for, and limitations of, ethical interventions in such cases.

The Convergence Review and the principle of Australians' access to and opportunities for participation

The recent Australian Convergence Review’s second principle states: “Australians should have access to and opportunities for participation in a diverse mix of services, voices, views and information”. However, in failing to define its own use and understanding of the terms ‘access’ and ‘participation’ the Convergence Review exposes itself to criticism. These terms would no doubt be made unambiguously clear should the Review’s recommendations move towards policy, and this paper contributes to this discussion by framing access and participation, from the perspective of the ‘produser’ (Bruns, 2008), around three separate but related issues: the failure to frame the discussion that will be undertaken by the Australian Law Reform Commission’s 2012 2013 Copyright Inquiry; the prioritising of the market over and above media accountability and the health of the public sphere; and the missed opportunity to develop a national framework for digital literacy and advanced digital citizenry.

Social Media Sites as Online Information Grounds : An exploratory study of the ways in which Information Technology (IT) professionals experience social media

Social media tools are often the result of innovations in Information Technology and developed by IT professionals and innovators. Nevertheless, IT professionals, many of whom are responsible for designing and building social media technologies, have not been investigated on how they themselves use or experience social media for professional purposes. This study will use Information Grounds Theory (Pettigrew, 1998) as a framework to study IT professionals’ experience in using social media for professional purposes. Information grounds facilitates the opportunistic discovery of information within social settings created temporarily at a place where people gather for a specific purpose (e.g., doctors’ waiting rooms, office tea rooms etc.), but the social atmosphere stimulates spontaneous sharing of information (Pettigrew, 1999). This study proposes that social media has the qualities that make it a rich information grounds; people participate from separate “places” in cyberspace in a synchronous manner in real-time, making it almost as dynamic and unplanned as physical information grounds. There is limited research on how social media platforms are perceived as a “place,” (a place to go to, a place to gather, or a place to be seen in) that is comparable to physical spaces. There is also no empirical study on how IT professionals use or “experience” social media. The data for this study is being collected through a study of IT professionals who currently use Twitter. A digital ethnography approach is being taken wherein the researcher uses online observations and “follows” the participants online and observes their behaviours and interactions on social media. Next, a sub-set of participants will be interviewed on their experiences with and within social media and how social media compares with traditional methods of information grounds, information communication, and collaborative environments. An Evolved Grounded Theory (Glaser, 1992) approach will be used to analyse tweets data and interviews and to map the findings against the Information Ground Theory. Findings from this study will provide foundational understanding of IT professionals’ experiences within social media, and can help both professionals and researchers understand this fast-evolving method of communications.

Hybrid placemaking in the library : designing digital technology to enhance users’ on-site experience

This paper presents research findings and design strategies that illustrate how digital technology can be applied as a tool for hybrid placemaking in ways that would not be possible in purely digital or physical space. Digital technology has revolutionised the way people learn and gather new information. This trend has challenged the role of the library as a physical place, as well as the interplay of digital and physical aspects of the library. The paper provides an overview of how the penetration of digital technology into everyday life has affected the library as a place, both as designed by place makers, and, as perceived by library users. It then identifies a gap in current library research about the use of digital technology as a tool for placemaking, and reports results from a study of Gelatine – a custom built user check-in system that displays real-time user information on a set of public screens. Gelatine and its evaluation at The Edge, at State Library of Queensland illustrates how combining affordances of social, spatial and digital space can improve the connected learning experience among on-site visitors. Future design strategies involving gamifying the user experience in libraries are described based on Gelatine’s infrastructure. The presented design ideas and concepts are relevant for managers and designers of libraries as well as other informal, social learning environments.

Discovering interesting information with advances in web technology

The Web is a steadily evolving resource comprising much more than mere HTML pages. With its ever-growing data sources in a variety of formats, it provides great potential for knowledge discovery. In this article, we shed light on some interesting phenomena of the Web: the deep Web, which surfaces database records as Web pages; the Semantic Web, which de�nes meaningful data exchange formats; XML, which has established itself as a lingua franca for Web data exchange; and domain-speci�c markup languages, which are designed based on XML syntax with the goal of preserving semantics in targeted domains. We detail these four developments in Web technology, and explain how they can be used for data mining. Our goal is to show that all these areas can be as useful for knowledge discovery as the HTML-based part of the Web.

The remediation of the personal photograph and the politics of self-representation in digital storytelling

Over the past couple of decades, the cultural field formerly known as ‘domestic’, and later ‘personal’ photography has been remediated and transformed as part of the social web, with its convergence of personal expression, interpersonal communication, and online social networks (most recently via platforms like Flickr, Facebook and Twitter). Meanwhile, the Digital Storytelling movement (involving the workshop-based production of short autobiographical videos) from its beginnings in the mid 1990s relied heavily on the narrative power of the personal photograph, often sourced from family albums, and later from online archives. This paper addresses the new issues arising for the politics of self-representation and personal photography in the era of social media, focusing particularly on the consequences of online image-sharing. It discusses in detail the practices of selection, curation, manipulation and editing of personal photographic images among a group of activist-oriented queer digital storytellers who have in common a stated desire to share their personal stories in pursuit of social change, and whose stories often aim to address both intimate and antagonistic publics.

Use of an on-line student response system : an analysis of adoption and continuance

The goal of this project was to initiate the use of an internet-based student response system in a large, first year chemistry class at a typical Australian university, and to verify its popularity and utility. A secondary goal was to influence other academic staff to adopt the system, initiating change at the discipline and Faculty level. The first goal was achieved with a high response rate using a commercial on-line system; however, the number of students engaging with the system dropped gradually during each class and over the course of the semester. Factors affecting student and staff adoption and continuance with technology are explored using established models.

Academics and activists in the policy process : engagement with Australian media inquiries 2011-13

After its narrow re-election in June 2010, the Australian Labor government undertook a series of public inquiries into reform of Australian media, communications and copyright laws. One important driver of policy reform was the government’s commitment to building a National Broadband Network (NBN), and the implications this had for existing broadcasting and telecommunications policy, as it would constitute a major driver of convergence of media and communications access devices and content platforms. These inquiries included: the Convergence Review of media and communications legislation; the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) review of the National Classification Scheme; the Independent Media Inquiry (Finkelstein Review) into Media and Media Regulation; and the ALRC review of Copyright and the Digital Economy. One unusual feature of this review process, discussed in the paper, was the degree to which academics were involved in the process, not simply as providers of expert opinion, but as review chairs seconded from their universities. This paper considers the role played by activist groups in all of these inquiries and their relationship to the various participants in the inquiries, as well as the implications of academics being engaged in such inquiries, not simply as activist-scholars, but as those primarily responsible for delivering policy review outcomes. The latter brings to the forefront issues arising in from direct engagement with governments and state agencies themselves, which challenges traditional understandings of the academic community as “critical outsiders” towards such policy processes.

Science and engineering for whole of life : integrating education, research and public engagement in a collaborative environment

Policy makers increasingly recognise that an educated workforce with a high proportion of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduates is a pre-requisite to a knowledge-based, innovative economy. Over the past ten years, the proportion of first university degrees awarded in Australia in STEM fields is below the global average and continues to decrease from 22.2% in 2002 to 18.8% in 2010 [1]. These trends are mirrored by declines between 20% and 30% in the proportions of high school students enrolled in science or maths. These trends are not unique to Australia but their impact is of concern throughout the policy-making community. To redress these demographic trends, QUT embarked upon a long-term investment strategy to integrate education and research into the physical and virtual infrastructure of the campus, recognising that expectations of students change as rapidly as technology and learning practices change. To implement this strategy, physical infrastructure refurbishment/re-building is accompanied by upgraded technologies not only for learning but also for research. QUT’s vision for its city-based campuses is to create vibrant and attractive places to learn and research and to link strongly to the wider surrounding community. Over a five year period, physical infrastructure at the Gardens Point campus was substantially reconfigured in two key stages: (a) a >$50m refurbishment of heritage-listed buildings to encompass public, retail and social spaces, learning and teaching “test beds” and research laboratories and (b) destruction of five buildings to be replaced by a $230m, >40,000m2 Science and Engineering Centre designed to accommodate retail, recreation, services, education and research in an integrated, coordinated precinct. This landmark project is characterised by (i) self-evident, collaborative spaces for learning, research and social engagement, (ii) sustainable building practices and sustainable ongoing operation and; (iii) dynamic and mobile re-configuration of spaces or staffing to meet demand. Innovative spaces allow for transformative, cohort-driven learning and the collaborative use of space to prosecute joint class projects. Research laboratories are aggregated, centralised and “on display” to the public, students and staff. A major visualisation space – the largest multi-touch, multi-user facility constructed to date – is a centrepiece feature that focuses on demonstrating scientific and engineering principles or science oriented scenes at large scale (e.g. the Great Barrier Reef). Content on this visualisation facility is integrated with the regional school curricula and supports an in-house schools program for student and teacher engagement. Researchers are accommodated in a combined open-plan and office floor-space (80% open plan) to encourage interdisciplinary engagement and cross-fertilisation of skills, ideas and projects. This combination of spaces re-invigorates the on-campus experience, extends educational engagement across all ages and rapidly enhances research collaboration.

Copyrights and copyfights : copyright law and the digital economy

This paper will consider questions around the reform of copyright law, and how they are increasingly being framed by the challenges of the digital economy. It discusses the review of copyright and the digital economy being undertaken by the Australian Law Reform Commission, with particular reference to the costs and benefits of copyright law to consumers and creative producers. We argue that there is a pressing need to develop fair copyright rules that encourage investment in the digital economy, allow widespread dissemination of knowledge through society, and support the innovative reuse of copyright works. To better align copyright law with these goals, we recommend that Australia introduce an open ended ‘fair use’ style copyright exception, and encourage the development of a digital copyright exchange of the sort discussed in the UK by the Hargreaves and Hooper Reports.