Asia Pacific Business Process Management

First Asia Pacific Conference, AP-BPM 2013, Beijing, China, August 29-30, 2013. Selected Papers

Shaping lecturers’ beliefs about teaching and learning in higher education in the Pacific

The aim of this study was to describe the educational experiences shaping the teaching and learning beliefs held by a group of beginning lecturers in higher education at various tertiary institutions in the Pacific Island Countries (PICs). A total of sixty three essays written by participants in an online course on teaching in higher education comprised the data for the study. A modified version of narrative analysis was used. This is a powerful methodology in qualitative research that can provide remarkable insights into individuals’ beliefs. The critical experiences that were thought to shape their beliefs in teaching and learning were identified and discussed in the light of relevant literature. The participants described a range of influences that shaped their beliefs about teaching and learning including realisation about the need to work harder and know more, the importance of independence, support systems, curriculum, qualities of a teacher, teaching and learning process, teaching and learning strategies, and learning environments. This information was useful in teaching these students and for further courses.

Revolving kaleidoscope : site-specificity and the part object in contemporary installation art

This practice-led research project explores the possibilities for restaging and reconfiguring contemporary art installations in multiple and different locations. By exploring ideas and art that demonstrate a kaleidoscopic approach to creative practice, this project examines how analysing artists' particular processes can achieve new understandings and experiences of installation art. This project achieves this through reflection on, and analysis of creative works made throughout the research, and a critical examination of contemporary art practices.

Effects of a pediatric weight management program with and without active video games

Importance Active video games may offer an effective strategy to increase physical activity in overweight and obese children. However, the specific effects of active gaming when delivered within the context of a pediatric weight management program are unknown. Objective To evaluate the effects of active video gaming on physical activity and weight loss in children participating in an evidence-based weight management program delivered in the community. Design, Setting, and Participants Group-randomized clinical trial conducted during a 16-week period in YMCAs and schools located in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Texas. Seventy-five overweight or obese children (41 girls [55%], 34 whites [45%], 20 Hispanics [27%], and 17 blacks [23%]) enrolled in a community-based pediatric weight management program. Mean (SD) age of the participants was 10.0 (1.7) years; body mass index (BMI) z score, 2.15 (0.40); and percentage overweight from the median BMI for age and sex, 64.3% (19.9%). Interventions All participants received a comprehensive family-based pediatric weight management program (JOIN for ME). Participants in the program and active gaming group received hardware consisting of a game console and motion capture device and 1 active game at their second treatment session and a second game in week 9 of the program. Participants in the program-only group were given the hardware and 2 games at the completion of the 16-week program. Main Outcomes and Measures Objectively measured daily moderate-to-vigorous and vigorous physical activity, percentage overweight, and BMI z score. Results Participants in the program and active gaming group exhibited significant increases in moderate-to-vigorous (mean [SD], 7.4 [2.7] min/d) and vigorous (2.8 [0.9] min/d) physical activity at week 16 (P < .05). In the program-only group, a decline or no change was observed in the moderate-to-vigorous (mean [SD] net difference, 8.0 [3.8] min/d; P = .04) and vigorous (3.1 [1.3] min/d; P = .02) physical activity. Participants in both groups exhibited significant reductions in percentage overweight and BMI z scores at week 16. However, the program and active gaming group exhibited significantly greater reductions in percentage overweight (mean [SD], −10.9% [1.6%] vs −5.5% [1.5%]; P = .02) and BMI z score (−0.25 [0.03] vs −0.11 [0.03]; P < .001). Conclusions and Relevance Incorporating active video gaming into an evidence-based pediatric weight management program has positive effects on physical activity and relative weight.

Contemporary cultures of service delivery to families : implications for music therapy

Family-centred and early intervention and prevention programs are a strong focus of current policy objectives within Australia, and a significant area of practice within the music therapy community. Recent shifts in the culture of policy and practice increasingly reflect ecological understandings by focussing on integrated and place-based approaches to service delivery. Further, current funding opportunities are strongly concerned with the extent to which interventions are able to reach out to highly vulnerable families that typically do not engage with services easily. Music therapy holds unique promise within these cultural shifts and thus advocates must develop a solid understanding of the concepts and related language in order to confidently engage with both funding and service systems. This paper uses an integrative review to first define and summarise current knowledge in three key areas relevant to contemporary Australian policy and practice: hard-to-reach families, home visiting as assertive outreach, and integrated or place-based service delivery. Evidence for the effectiveness of music therapy in relation to these key themes is then presented. Finally, the paper discusses the implications for the future of music therapy within the current Australian early intervention and prevention policy context and makes recommendations for moving forward on both practice and research fronts. While there is growing evidence and theory to suggest that music therapy may be uniquely efficacious in this area, greater Australian Journal of Music Therapy Vol 25, 2014 149 advocacy, documentation, research and adjustment of practices and language will further cement the position of the industry.

The effect of multiplayer dynamic difficulty adjustment on the player experience of video games

Multiplayer Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (mDDA) is a method of reducing the difference in player performance and subsequent challenge in competitive multiplayer video games. As a balance of between player skill and challenge experienced is necessary for optimal player experience, this experimental study investigates the effects of mDDA and awareness of its presence on player performance and experience using subjective and biometric measures. Early analysis indicates that mDDA normalizes performance and challenge as expected, but awareness of its presence can reduce its effectiveness.

Urban knowledge and innovation spaces : concepts, conditions, and contexts

Innovation is one of the key determinants of growth in the globalised knowledge economy, and ‘urban knowledge and innovation spaces’ form the spatial foci for sustained innovation. This paper aims to explore concepts, conditions and contexts that substantiate the development of these spaces of innovation. The paper seeks to identify the foundational elements of knowledge- based urban development to outline the concept of urban knowledge and innovation spaces, and justify its meaning, unique characteristics and growing influence in the contemporary cities. It rationalises the relevance of the three underlying conditions—namely policy, place, and people— to better understand their contribution in the development of such spaces. This paper sheds light over the varied contexts shaping each urban knowledge and innovation space uniquely. The paper reveals the interplay between design and policies that is required for the creation of spaces of innovation that are economically strong, socially connected, spatially stimulating, and environmentally sustainable.

Locating people in video from semantic descriptions : a new database and approach

The location of previously unseen and unregistered individuals in complex camera networks from semantic descriptions is a time consuming and often inaccurate process carried out by human operators, or security staff on the ground. To promote the development and evaluation of automated semantic description based localisation systems, we present a new, publicly available, unconstrained 110 sequence database, collected from 6 stationary cameras. Each sequence contains detailed semantic information for a single search subject who appears in the clip (gender, age, height, build, hair and skin colour, clothing type, texture and colour), and between 21 and 290 frames for each clip are annotated with the target subject location (over 11,000 frames are annotated in total). A novel approach for localising a person given a semantic query is also proposed and demonstrated on this database. The proposed approach incorporates clothing colour and type (for clothing worn below the waist), as well as height and build to detect people. A method to assess the quality of candidate regions, as well as a symmetry driven approach to aid in modelling clothing on the lower half of the body, is proposed within this approach. An evaluation on the proposed dataset shows that a relative improvement in localisation accuracy of up to 21 is achieved over the baseline technique.

The responsibility to protect in the Asia-Pacific region

In 2005, governments around the world unanimously agreed to the principle of the responsibility to protect (R2P), which holds that all states have a responsibility to protect their populations from genocide and mass atrocities, that the international community should assist them to fulfil this duty, and that the international community should take timely and decisive measures to protect populations from such crimes when their host state fails to do so. Progressing R2P from words to deeds requires international consensus about the principle’s meaning and scope. To achieve a global consensus on this, we need to better understand the position of governments around the world, including in the Asia-Pacific region, which has long been associated with an enduring commitment to a traditional concept of sovereignty. The present article contributes to such an endeavour through its three sections. The first part charts the nature of the international consensus on R2P and examines the UN secretary-general’s approach. The second looks in detail at the positions of the Asia-Pacific region’s governments on the R2P principle. The final part explores the way forward for progressing the R2P principle in the Asia-Pacific region.

Directing experience : an exploration of active analysis and visual cognition theory in the training of contemporary directors

The focus of this research is the creation of a stage-directing training manual on the researcher's site at the National Institute of Dramatic Art. The directing procedures build on the work of Stanislavski's Active Analysis and findings from present-day visual cognition studies. Action research methodology and evidence-based data collection are employed to improve the efficacy of both the directing procedures and the pedagogical manual. The manual serves as a supplement to director training and a toolkit for the more experienced practitioner. The manual and research findings provide a unique and innovative contribution to the field of theatre directing.

Contemporary public spaces in urban knowledge precincts : observations from Brisbane, Australia

The advanced era of knowledge-based urban development has led to an unprecedented increase in mobility of people and the subsequent growth in the new typology of agglomerated enclaves of knowledge such as urban knowledge precincts. A new role has been assigned to contemporary public spaces of these precincts to attract and retain the mobile knowledge workforce for long by creating a sense of place for them. This paper sheds light over the place making in the globalised knowledge economy world which develops a sense of permanence spatio-temporally to knowledge workers displaying a set of particular characteristics and simultaneously is process-dependent getting developed by the internal and external flows and contributing substantially in the development of the broader context it stands in relation with. The paper highlights the observations from Australia’s new world city Brisbane to outline the application of urban design as a tool to create and sustain this bipartite place making in urban knowledge precincts, which caters diverse range of social, cultural and democratic needs. It seeks to analyse the modified permeable typology of public spaces that makes it more viable and adaptive as per the changing needs of the contemporary globalised or in other words knowledge society. This research has taken an overall process-based approach reflecting how urban design is an assemblage of the encompassing processes that underlay the resultant place making. It explores how the permeable design typology of these contemporary precincts in Brisbane develops a progressive sense of place that makes them stimulating, effervescent and vibrant.

Online video in education : acquisition, value & ROI

The session explores the potential for “Patron Driven Acquisition” (PDA) as a model for the acquisition of online video. Today, PDA has become a standard model of acquisition in the eBook market, more effectively aligning spend with use and increased return on investment (ROI). PDA is an unexplored model for acquisition of video, for which library collection development is complicated by higher storage and delivery costs, labor overheads for content selection and acquisition, and a dynamic film industry in which media and the technology that supports it is changing daily. Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and La Trobe University in Australia launched a research project in collaboration with Kanopy to explore the opportunity for PDA of video. The study relied on three data sources: (1) national surveys to compare the video purchasing and use practices of colleges, (2) on-campus pilot projects of PDA models to assess user engagement and behavior, and (3) testing of various user applications and features to support the model. The study incorporates usage statistics and survey data and builds upon a peer-reviewed research paper presented at the VALA 2014 conference in Melbourne, Australia. This session will be conducted by the researchers and will graphically present the results from the study. It will map out a future for video PDA, and how libraries can more cost-effectively acquire and maximize the discoverability of online video. The presenters will also solicit input and welcome questions from audience members.

Survey : video forensic tools

Due to extension of using CCTVs and the other video security systems in all areas, these sorts of devices have been introduced as the most important digital evidences to search and seizure crimes. Video forensics tools are developed as a part of digital forensics tools to analyze digital evidences and clear vague points of them for presenting in the courts Existing video forensics tools have been facilitated the investigation process by providing different features based on various video editing techniques. In this paper, some of the most popular video forensics tools are discussed and the strengths and shortages of them are compared and consequently, an alternative framework which includes the strengths of existing popular tools is introduced.

Asia Pacific Business Process Management

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Second Asia Pacific Conference on Business Process Management held in Brisbane, QLD, Australia, in July 2014. In all, 33 contributions from 12 countries were submitted. After each submission was reviewed by at least three Program Committee members, nine full papers were accepted for publication in this volume. These nine papers cover various topics that can be categorized under four main research focuses in BPM: process mining, process modeling and repositories, process model comparison, and process analysis.

Information Experience : Contemporary Perspectives

The purpose of this book is to open a conversation on the idea of information experience, which we understand to be a complex, multidimensional engagement with information. In developing the book we invited colleagues to propose a chapter on any aspect of information experience, for example conceptual, methodological or empirical. We invited them to express their interpretation of information experience, to contribute to the development of this concept. The book has thus become a vehicle for interested researchers and practitioners to explore their thinking around information experience, including relationships between information experience, learning experience, user experience and similar constructs. It represents a collective awareness of information experience in contemporary research and practice. Through this sharing of multiple perspectives, our insights into possible ways of interpreting information experience, and its relationship to other concepts in information research and practice, is enhanced. In this chapter, we introduce the idea of information experience. We also outline the book and its chapters, and bring together some emerging alternative views and approaches to this important idea.