Collaborative extension of biodiversity monitoring protocols in the bird watching community

Citizen science projects have demonstrated the advantages of people with limited relevant prior knowledge participating in research. However, there is a difference between engaging the general public in a scientific project and entering an established expert community to conduct research. This paper describes our ongoing acoustic biodiversity monitoring collaborations with the bird watching community. We report on findings gathered over six years from participation in bird walks, observing conservation efforts, and records of personal activities of experienced birders. We offer an empirical study into extending existing protocols through in-context collaborative design involving scientists and domain experts.

Student interactivity and teacher participation: An application of legitimate peripheral participation in higher education online learning environments

Lave and Wenger’s legitimate peripheral participation is an important aspect of online learning environments. It is common for teachers to scaffold varying levels of online participation in Web 2.0 contexts, such as online discussion forums and blogs. This study argues that legitimate peripheral participation needs to be redefined in response to students’ decentralised multiple interactions and non-linear engagement in hyperlinked learning environments. The study examines students’ levels of participation in online learning through theories of interactivity, distinguishing between five levels of student participation in the context of a first-year university course delivered via a learning management system. The data collection was implemented through two instruments: i) a questionnaire about students’ interactivity perception in the online reflective learning (n = 238) and then ii) an open discussion on the reason for the diverse perceptions of interactivity (n = 34). The study findings indicate that student participants, other than those who were active, need high levels of teacher or moderator intervention, which better enables legitimate peripheral participation to occur in online learning contexts.

Secondary user relations in emerging mobile computing environments

Mobile technologies are enabling access to information in diverse environ.ments, and are exposing a wider group of individuals to said technology. Therefore, this paper proposes that a wider view of user relations than is usually considered in information systems research is required. Specifically, we examine the potential effects of emerging mobile technologies on end-­‐user relations with a focus on the ‘secondary user’, those who are not intended to interact directly with the technology but are intended consumers of the technology’s output. For illustration, we draw on a study of a U.K. regional Fire and Rescue Service and deconstruct mobile technology use at Fire Service incidents. Our findings provide insights, which suggest that, because of the nature of mobile technologies and their context of use, secondary user relations in such emerging mobile environments are important and need further exploration.

Vision-based simultaneous localization and mapping in changing outdoor environments

For robots operating in outdoor environments, a number of factors, including weather, time of day, rough terrain, high speeds, and hardware limitations, make performing vision-based simultaneous localization and mapping with current techniques infeasible due to factors such as image blur and/or underexposure, especially on smaller platforms and low-cost hardware. In this paper, we present novel visual place-recognition and odometry techniques that address the challenges posed by low lighting, perceptual change, and low-cost cameras. Our primary contribution is a novel two-step algorithm that combines fast low-resolution whole image matching with a higher-resolution patch-verification step, as well as image saliency methods that simultaneously improve performance and decrease computing time. The algorithms are demonstrated using consumer cameras mounted on a small vehicle in a mixed urban and vegetated environment and a car traversing highway and suburban streets, at different times of day and night and in various weather conditions. The algorithms achieve reliable mapping over the course of a day, both when incrementally incorporating new visual scenes from different times of day into an existing map, and when using a static map comprising visual scenes captured at only one point in time. Using the two-step place-recognition process, we demonstrate for the first time single-image, error-free place recognition at recall rates above 50% across a day-night dataset without prior training or utilization of image sequences. This place-recognition performance enables topologically correct mapping across day-night cycles.

CubIT presentation and collaboration framework

Cubit is a public installation developed for QUT's Cube. It allows QUT staff and students to upload and exhibit media content on the Cube's display surfaces. Interact with the work of QUT's Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) research projects with CubIT, a unique system at the Cube that allows the general public to collaborate with and access research content shared by QUT's students and academics. QUT students and staff can easily present and share their work at The Cube on a set of large multi-touch displays. To access The Cube, all they need to do is swipe their staff or student card at the CubIT system. They will then be able to instantly upload presentations, videos or visualisation of their work. CubIT boasts a host of collaborative features that allows users to share content across user accounts, annotate content and create shared presentations. Interactive features allow the public to engage and collaborate with content hands-on. In addition to being accessible through The Cube, CubIT allows users to interact with their work through alternative mediums and devices, including mobile phones, tablets and Dropbox. Please note you must be on the QUT network to access CubIT. CubIT can be booked to appear on the Cube Level 5 at specfic times for student and staff purposes. Please email booking requests

20 Years of pacifying responses to environmental management

Using a state, pressure, response framework, we provide an evidence-based reflection on environmental outcomes in Australia and New Zealand across the domains of climate change, biodiversity, freshwater and marine management, emphasising the role of Indigenous and business perspectives. Significant developments have occurred in the past 20 years through affirmation of Indigenous rights and responsibilities. Responses to climate change have tended to emphasise passive risk management with unclear outcomes. Despite meeting biodiversity protection targets, outcomes are worsening, suggesting a need to challenge the dualistic preservation/production land categorisations. In freshwater and marine management, a mix of collaborative and market-based responses has emerged, although their efficacy remains untested. A reliance on voluntary approaches by business makes critical assessment of progress difficult. Thus, despite strong progress in some areas, the adaptiveness of environmental management remains limited, and many indicators suggest continuing decline in environmental condition. Our responses have been largely pacifying in nature, leading to perverse outcomes and failure to acknowledge alternatives that might address deteriorating environmental conditions. A shift is needed towards deliberative policy experimentation that truly values the application of novel and diversified approaches and facilitates integrated learning across environmental domains.

Wearable neuroimaging and emotion : investigating emotional responses to architectural environments with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)

Supported by contemporary theories of architectural aesthetics and neuro-aesthetics this paper presents a case for the use of portable fNIRS imaging in the assessment of emotional responses to spatial environments experienced by both blind and sighted. The aim of the paper is to outline the implications of fNIRS for spatial research and practice within the field of architecture, thereby suggesting a potential taxonomy of particular formations of space and affect. Empirical neurological study of affect and spatial experience from an architectural design perspective remains in many instances unchartered. Clinical research using the portable non-invasive neuro-imaging device, functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is proving convincing in its ability to detect emotional responses to visual, spatio-auditory and task based stimuli, providing a firm basis to potentially track cortical activity in the appraisal of architectural environments. Additionally, recent neurological studies have sought to explore the manifold sensory abilities of the visually impaired to better understand spatial perception in general. Key studies reveal that early blind participants perform as well as sighted due to higher auditory and somato-sensory spatial acuity. For instance, face vision enables the visually impaired to detect environments through skin pressure, enabling at times an instantaneous impression of the layout of an unfamiliar environment. Studies also report pleasant and unpleasant emotional responses such as ‘weightedness’ or ‘claustrophobia’ within certain interior environments, revealing a deeper perceptual sensitivity then would be expected. We conclude with justification that comparative fNIRS studies between the sighted and blind concerning spatial experience have the potential to provide greater understanding of emotional responses to architectural environments.

Supporting collaboration on very large-scale interactive wall surfaces

In this paper we describe CubIT, a multi-user presentation and collaboration system installed at the Queensland University of Technology’s (QUT) Cube facility. The ‘Cube’ is an interactive visualisation facility made up of five very large-scale interactive multi-panel wall displays, each consisting of up to twelve 55-inch multi-touch screens (48 screens in total) and massive projected display screens situated above the display panels. The paper outlines the unique design challenges, features, implementation and evaluation of CubIT. The system was built to make the Cube facility accessible to QUT’s academic and student population. CubIT enables users to easily upload and share their own media content, and allows multiple users to simultaneously interact with the Cube’s wall displays. The features of CubIT were implemented via three user interfaces, a multi-touch interface working on the wall displays, a mobile phone and tablet application and a web-based content management system. Each of these interfaces plays a different role and offers different interaction mechanisms. Together they support a wide range of collaborative features including multi-user shared workspaces, drag and drop upload and sharing between users, session management and dynamic state control between different parts of the system. The results of our evaluation study showed that CubIT was successfully used for a variety of tasks, and highlighted challenges with regards to user expectations regarding functionality as well as issues arising from public use.

Form-based planning and liveable urban environments

This review article discusses form-based planning an din details analise the following books: Stepehn Marshall (2012) Urban Coding and Planning (Routledge, New York, USA, 272pp. pISBN 1135689202). Emily Talen (2012) City Rules: How Regulations Affects Urban Form (Island Press, Washington DC, USA, 254 pp. ISBN 9781597266925). Richard Tomlinson (2012) Australia’s Unintended Cities: the Impact of Housing on Urban Development (CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Australia, 194pp. ISBN 9780643103771). The history of the city has been written and rewritten many times: the seminal works of Benevolo (1980) and Mumford (1989) reconstruct how settlements, particularly their urban form, have changed over centuries. Rowe and Koetter (1978), Kostof (1991, 1992), Krier (2003), and Rossi and Eisenmann (1982) address instead the components that shape the urban environment: the architect can aggregate and manipulate squares, streets, parks and public buildings to control urban design. Generally these studies aim to reveal the secret of the traditional city in contraposition to the contemporary townscape characterized by planning and zoning, which are generally regarded as problematic and sterile (Woodward, 2013). The ‘secret rules’ that have shaped our cities have a bearing on the relationship of spaces, mixed uses, public environments and walkability (Walters, 2011)...

Evaluation of legal capacity by doctors and lawyers : the need for collaborative assessment

• Balancing the interests of individual autonomy and protection is an escalating challenge confronting an ageing Australian society. • One way this is manifested is in the current ad hoc and unsatisfactory way that capacity is assessed in the context of wills, enduring powers of attorney and advance health directives. • The absence of nationally accepted assessment guidelines results in terminological and methodological miscommunication and misunderstanding between legal and medical professionals. • Expectations between legal and medical professionals can be clarified to provide satisfactory capacity assessments based upon the development of a sound assessment paradigm

Case Study 4: Education Doctoral Student - "An Exploratory Study of Online Social Networking within a Doctorate of Education Program"

Introduction The professional doctorate is specifically designed for professionals investigating real-world problems and relevant issues for a profession, industry, and/or the community. The focus is scholarly research into professional practices. The research programme bridges academia and the professions, and offers doctoral candidates the opportunity to investigate issues relevant to their own practices and to apply these understandings to their professional contexts. The study on which this article is based sought to track the scholarly skill development of a cohort of professional doctoral students who commenced the course in January 2008 at an Australian university. Because they hold positions of responsibility and are time-poor, many doctoral students have difficulty transitioning from professional practitioner to researcher and scholar. The struggle many experience is in the development of a theoretical or conceptual standpoint for argumentation (Lesham, 2007; Weese et al., 1999). It was thought that the use of a scaffolded learning environment that drew upon a blended learning approach incorporating face to face intensive blocks and collaborative knowledge-building tools such as wikis would provide a data source for understanding the development of scholarly skills. Wikis, weblogs and similar social networking software have the potential to support communities to share, learn, create and collaborate. The development of a wiki page by each candidate in the 2008 cohort was encouraged to provide the participants and the teaching team members with textual indicators of progress. Learning tasks were scaffolded with the expectation that the candidates would complete these tasks via the wikis. The expectation was that cohort members would comment on each other’s work, together with the supervisor and/or teaching team member who was allocated to each candidate. The supervisor is responsible for supervising the candidate’s work through to submission of the thesis for examination and the teaching team member provides support to both the supervisor and the candidate through to confirmation. This paper reports on the learning journey of a cohort of doctoral students during the first seven months of their professional doctoral programme to determine if there had been any qualitative shifts in understandings, expectations and perceptions regarding their developing knowledge and skills. The paper is grounded in the literature pertaining to doctoral studies and examines the structure of the professional doctoral programme. Following this is a discussion of the qualitative study that helped to unearth key themes regarding the participants’ learning journey.

Emotion and architectural environments : a case for Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) in assessing emotional responses to spatial environments

Collaboration between neuroscience and architecture is emerging as a key field of research as demonstrated in recent times by development of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA) and other societies. Neurological enquiry of affect and spatial experience from a design perspective remains in many instances unchartered. Research using portable near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRs) - an emerging non-invasive neuro-imaging device, is proving convincing in its ability to detect emotional responses to visual, spatio-auditory and task based stimuli. This innovation provides a firm basis to potentially track cortical activity in the appraisal of architectural environments. Additionally, recent neurological studies have sought to explore the manifold sensory abilities of the visually impaired to better understand spatial perception in general. Key studies reveal that early blind participants perform as well as sighted due to higher auditory and somato-sensory spatial acuity. Studies also report pleasant and unpleasant emotional responses within certain interior environments revealing a deeper perceptual sensitivity than would be expected. Comparative fNIRS studies between the sighted and blind concerning spatial experience has the potential to provide greater understanding of emotional responses to architectural environments. Supported by contemporary theories of architectural aesthetics, this paper presents a case for the use of portable fNIRS imaging in the assessment of emotional responses to spatial environments experienced by both blind and sighted. The aim of the paper is to outline the implications of fNIRS upon spatial research and practice within the field of architecture and points to a potential taxonomy of particular formations of space and affect.