Managing hostile environments : journalists and media workers : learning to survive the world's difficult, remote and hostile environments

The aim of this research is to examine the changing nature of risks that face journalists and media workers in the world's difficult, remote and hostile environments, and consider the 'adequacy' of managing hostile environment safety courses that some media organizations require prior to foreign assignments. The study utilizes several creative works and contributions to this area of analysis, which includes a documentary film production, course contributions, an emergency reference handbook, security and incident management reviews and a template for evacuation and contingency planning. The research acknowledges that employers have a 'duty of care' to personnel working in these environments, identifies the necessity for pre-deployment training and support, and provides a solution for organizations that wish to initiate a comprehensive framework to advise, monitor, protect and respond to incidents. Finally, it explores the possible development of a unique and holistic service to facilitate proactive and responsive support, in the form of a new profession of 'Editorial Logistics Officer' or 'Editorial Safety Officer' within media organizations. This area of research is vitally important to the profession, and the intended contribution is to introduce a simple and cost-efficient framework for media organizations that desire to implement pre-deployment training and field-support – as these programs save lives. The complete proactive and responsive services may be several years from implementation. However, this study demonstrates that the facilitation of Managing Hostile Environment (MHE) courses should be the minimum professional standard. These courses have saved lives in the past and they provide journalists with the tools to "cover the story, and not become the story."

Personal Access Tutor - helping students to learn MS Access

The paper describes Personal Access Tutor (PAT),an Intelligent Tutoring System which helps students to learn how to create forms and reports in MS Access. We present the architecture and components of PAT and also the services that PAT provides to the students. Results for an external (system) evaluation of PAT (both qualitative and quantitative data) are presented and discussed.

Learning to avoid indoor obstacles from optical flow

Optical flow (OF) is a powerful motion cue that captures the fusion of two important properties for the task of obstacle avoidance − 3D self-motion and 3D environmental surroundings. The problem of extracting such information for obstacle avoidance is commonly addressed through quantitative techniques such as time-to-contact and divergence, which are highly sensitive to noise in the OF image. This paper presents a new strategy towards obstacle avoidance in an indoor setting, using the combination of quantitative and structural properties of the OF field, coupled with the flexibility and efficiency of a machine learning system.The resulting system is able to effectively control the robot in real-time, avoiding obstacles in familiar and unfamiliar indoor environments, under given motion constraints. Furthermore, through the examination of the networks internal weights, we show how OF properties are being used toward the detection of these indoor obstacles.

Paving for diverse pathways : using industry-linked learning to support Performing Arts students in their transition to protean careers

Statistics presented in Australia Council reports such as Don’t Give Up Your Day Job (2003), and Artswork: A Report On Australians Working in the Arts 1 and 2 (1997, 2005), and in other studies on destinations for Performing Arts graduates, demonstrate the diversity of post-graduation pathways for our students, the prevalence of protean careers, and the challenges in developing a sense of professional identity in a context where a portfolio of work across performance making, producing, administration and teaching can make it difficult for young artists to establish career status and capital in conventional terms (cf. Dawn Bennett, “Academy and the Real World: Developing Realistic Notions of Career in the Performing Arts”, Arts & Humanities in Higher Education, 8.3, 2009). In this panel, academics from around Australia will consider the ways in which Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies as a discipline is deploying a variety of practical, professional and work-integrated teaching and learning activities – including performance-making projects, industry projects, industry placements and student-initiated projects – to connect students with the networks, industries and professional pathways that will support their progression into their career. The panellists include Bree Hadley (Queensland University of Technology), Meredith Rogers (La Trobe University), Janys Hayes (Woolongong University) and Teresa Izzard (Curtin University). The panelists will present insights into the activities they have found successful, and address a range of questions, including: How do we introduce students to performance-making and / or producing models they will be able to employ in their future practice, particularly in light of the increasingly limited funds, time and resources available to support students’ participation in full-scale productions under the stewardship of professional artists?; How and when do we introduce students to industry networks?; How do we cater for graduates who will work as performers, writers, directors or administrators in the non-subsidised sector, the subsidised sector, community arts and education?; How do we category cater for graduates who will go on to pursue their work in a practice-as-research context in a Higher Degree?; How do we assist graduates in developing a professional identity? How do we assist graduates in developing physical, professional and personal resilience?; How do we retain our connections with graduates as part of their life-long learning?; Do practices and processes need to differ for city or regionally based / theoretically or practically based degree programs?; How do our teaching and learning activities align with emergent policy and industrial frameworks such as the shift to the “Producer Model” in Performing Arts funding, or the new mentorship, project, production and enterprise development opportunities under the Australia Council for the Arts’ new Opportunities for Young and Emerging Artists policy framework?

Learning to act in uncertain environments : technical perspective

The problem of decision making in an uncertain environment arises in many diverse contexts: deciding whether to keep a hard drive spinning in a net-book; choosing which advertisement to post to a Web site visitor; choosing how many newspapers to order so as to maximize profits; or choosing a route to recommend to a driver given limited and possibly out-of-date information about traffic conditions. All are sequential decision problems, since earlier decisions affect subsequent performance; all require adaptive approaches, since they involve significant uncertainty. The key issue in effectively solving problems like these is known as the exploration/exploitation trade-off: If I am at a cross-roads, when should I go in the most advantageous direction among those that I have already explored, and when should I strike out in a new direction, in the hopes I will discover something better?

Teen content creators : experiences of using information to learn

As access to networked digital communities increases, a growing number of teens participate in digital communities by creating and sharing a variety of content. The affordances of social media - ease of use, ubiquitous access, and communal nature - have made creating and sharing content an appealing process for teens. Teens primarily learn the practices of encountering and using information through social interaction and participation within digital communities. This article adopts the position that information literacy is the experience of using information to learn. It reports on an investigation into teens experiences in the United States, as they use information to learn how to create content and participate within the context of social media. Teens that participate in sharing art on sites such as DeiviantArt, website creation, blogging, and/or posting edited videos via YouTube and Vimeo, were interviewed. The interviews explored teens' information experiences within particular social and digital contexts. Teens discussed the information they used, how information was gathered and accessed, and explored the process of using that information to participate in the communities.

Move it, use it : university-school collaboration for learning to teach physical education in primary schools

Reports of increasing numbers of obese Australian children and adolescents have raised the alarm to be proactive in reducing this so called epidemic. It has evoked a call for greater emphasis on teaching physical education in schools, as a measure for attaining fitness not only with obese students but for all students. This paper emphasises how preservice teachers need to be a key target for implementing physical education (PE) reform in schools, as many primary teachers will be generalists and may not be confident enough to implement PE effectively. Through a review of existing literature, teaching practices essential for the effective promotion and implementation of PE were identified under six broad categories: personal-professional skills development, addressing system requirements, pedagogical practices, managing student behaviour, providing feedback to students, and reflecting on practice. Subsequently, the development of these practices in preservice teachers is considered in the context of a university-school collaboration where preservice teachers taught physical education to primary school students for one day per week over a four week period. These authentic teaching experiences provided the preservice teachers with vital opportunities to put theory into practice and interact with “real-world” students. Self-evaluative data from 38 of these preservice teachers, in the form of a five-part Likert scale survey and extended response survey, demonstrated that they were able to develop the majority of the essential teaching practices identified by literature. In particular, the preservice teachers developed self efficacy, enthusiasm, and motivation for teaching PE, facets which are often found to be lacking in generalist primary teachers and yet are essential if children’s perceptions and habits regarding physical activity are to be changed.

Learning to lead : a social justice perspective on understanding elementary teacher leadership in Papua New Guinea

Leadership in elementary education is currently recognized as a political imperative in Papua New Guinea (PNG), as the nation develops strategies towards equitable access to schooling. One recent initiative aimed at building educational leadership was an intensive Australian Leadership Award Fellowship (ALAF) program funded by AusAID, involving a group of 10 teacher trainers from PNG. As part their involvement participants completed self-authored journal entries at the beginning and end of the leadership program. Participants were also involved in focus groups after completion of the initiative. Referring to the experiences of these teacher trainers, this paper draws on Nancy Fraser’s (2005, 2008) social justice framework to examine participants’ views of what constituted effective leadership in elementary education in PNG and how these views may have changed throughout the ALAF program. Key findings of this study included participants’ emphasis on relationships and valuing people in elementary education leadership contexts, participants’ concern about economic/financial barriers to effective leadership in the PNG context and participants’ perception of research as a way to support leadership roles.

Learning to think spatially : what do students 'see' in numeracy test items?

Learning to think spatially in mathematics involves developing proficiency with graphics. This paper reports on 2 investigations of spatial thinking and graphics. The first investigation explored the importance of graphics as 1 of 3 communication systems (i.e. text, symbols, graphics) used to provide information in numeracy test items. The results showed that graphics were embedded in at least 50 % of test items across 3 year levels. The second investigation examined 11 – 12-year-olds’ performance on 2 mathematical tasks which required substantial interpretation of graphics and spatial thinking. The outcomes revealed that many students lacked proficiency in the basic spatial skills of visual memory and spatial perception and the more advanced skills of spatial orientation and spatial visualisation. This paper concludes with a reaffirmation of the importance of spatial thinking in mathematics and proposes ways to capitalize on graphics in learning to think spatially.

Collaboration and competition on a Wiki : the praxis of online social learning to improve academic writing and research in under-graduate students

The number of internet users in Australia has been steadily increasing, with over 10.9 million people currently subscribed to an internet provider (ABS, 2011). Over the past year, the most avid users of the Internet were 15 – 24 year olds, with approximately 95% accessing the internet on a regular basis (ABS, Social Trends, 2011). While the internet, in particularly Web 2.0, has been described as fundamental to higher education students, social and leisure internet tools are also increasingly being used by these students to generate and maintain their social and professional networks and interactions (Duffy & Bruns, 2006). Rapid technological advancements have enabled greater and faster access to information for learning and education (Hemmi et al, 2009; Glassman & Kang, 2011). As such, we sought to integrate interactive, online social media into the assessment profile of a Public Health undergraduate cohort at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The aim of this exercise was to engage undergraduate students to both develop and showcase their research on a range of complex, contemporary health issues within the online forum of Wikispaces for review and critique by their peers. We applied Bandura’s Social Learning Theory (SLT) to analyse the interactive processes from which students developed deeper and more sustained learning, and via which their overall academic writing standards were enriched. This paper outlines the assessment task, and the students’ feedback on their learning outcomes in relation to the Attentional, Retentional, Motor Reproduction, and Motivational Processes outlined by Bandura in SLT. We conceptualise the findings in a theoretical model, and discuss the implications for this approach within the broader tertiary environment.

Preservice teachers’ views : Issues for learning to teach SOSE in an overcrowded curriculum

A cohort of third-year preservice teachers (n=24) was given the opportunity to observe and participate in Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE) in primary classrooms through a series of school visits during a semester-long unit. These visits were designed to give preservice teachers opportunities to connect SOSE teaching theories studied in the university setting to SOSE teaching practices within schools. This study investigates the extent of the preservice teachers’ opportunities to observe SOSE teaching in the primary school. Responses from a survey showed that the majority of preservice teachers only agreed with 6 of the 25 items associated with the six categories (personal-professional skill development, system requirements, teaching practices, student behavior, feedback to students, and reflection on practice). Written responses from the questionnaire concurred that most had not experienced SOSE teaching. Various issues are discussed around providing preservice teachers with SOSE teaching experiences. School executives, teachers and university staff need to be part of the process to ensure preservice teachers are receiving quality SOSE teaching experiences that will assist in their pedagogical development. A wider question is also raised through this paper. If preservice teachers are unable to experience quality SOSE teaching in school visits designed for such a purpose, does this signal a changing emphasis in education that leaves the social sciences and humanities off the education agenda?

Changing learning to improve practice : hand hygiene education in Queensland medical schools

The aim of Queensland Health’s ‘Clean hands are life savers’ program is to change the culture and behaviour of healthcare workers related to hand hygiene. Hand hygiene is considered to be the most effective means of preventing pathogen cross-transmission and healthcare-associated infections. Most hospitals throughout Queensland as well as Australia now manage a hand hygiene program to increase the hand hygiene compliance of all healthcare workers. Reports taken from routine hand hygiene observations reveal that doctors are usually less compliant in their hand-washing practices than other healthcare worker groups. The Centre for Healthcare Related Infection Surveillance and Prevention (CHRISP) has attempted to have an impact on this challenging group through their Medical Leadership Initiative. With education as a core component of the program, efforts were made to ensure our future doctors were receiving information that aligned with Queensland Health standards during their formative years at medical school. CHRISP met with university instructors to understand what infection prevention education was currently included in the curriculum and support the introduction of new learning activities that specifically focused on hand hygiene. This prompted change to the existing curriculum and a range of interventions were employed with mixed success. Although met with challenges, methods to integrate more infection prevention teaching were found.

STALKERBOT : learning to navigate dynamic human environments by following people

Service robots that operate in human environments will accomplish tasks most efficiently and least disruptively if they have the capability to mimic and understand the motion patterns of the people in their workspace. This work demonstrates how a robot can create a humancentric navigational map online, and that this map re ects changes in the environment that trigger altered motion patterns of people. An RGBD sensor mounted on the robot is used to detect and track people moving through the environment. The trajectories are clustered online and organised into a tree-like probabilistic data structure which can be used to detect anomalous trajectories. A costmap is reverse engineered from the clustered trajectories that can then inform the robot's onboard planning process. Results show that the resultant paths taken by the robot mimic expected human behaviour and can allow the robot to respond to altered human motion behaviours in the environment.