Peer leader led revision skills workshop – who benefits?

In response to student requests, a peer leader led revision skills workshop was run just prior to a mid-semester exam in pharmacology. This skills workshop was well attended and received by equal percentages of both accelerated and traditional students (who were in their 4th semester at university). This suggests that both accelerated and traditional students can benefit from peer led revision skills workshops.

Which accelerated nursing students withdraw and fail in their first year of a Bachelor of Nursing (BN)?

Accelerated students in nursing have their first experience of university entering into second year subjects such as pharmacology. These accelerated students may have a Diploma of Nursing or equivalent experience or may be domestic or international graduates in any subject area. We have previously shown that the withdrawal rates are higher for accelerated than traditional students. We now show that of the accelerated students, it is only the diploma students that have difficulty transitioning to a BN.

Reduced attrition of accelerated nursing students from pharmacology – is it associated with graduation?

In order to reduce the attrition of accelerated nursing students in bioscience/pharmacology, we introduced an innovation to help these students. Although this innovation was associated with reduced attritions from the units in their first year at university, we now show that there was a reduced graduation rate of the accelerated students who survived pharmacology, compared to the traditional students.

The popular mechanicals

In Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, six workers aspire to present a play for the Royal Wedding. We see their efforts and their antics in the framework of the Royal Court and the supernatural fairy world. We love them for their simplicity, laugh at their homespun ways and forgive their stumbles as they perform their play in the royal presence. In the marvellous irreverence of The Popular Mechanicals, Keith Robinson and Tony Taylor have thrown Shakespeare to the mercy of Australian larrikin humour and placed the lowly workers centre stage. This is A Midsummer Night's Dream without the Royals. Shakespeare's mechanicals become the stars, the kings of their own world, where dreams can come true, if only for a moment. With the innocence of clowns they love life, feel joy, know fear, bear sadness. In the end it is we the audience who become the Royal presence, to judge them if we dare.

Every face on Vanity Fair’s Hollywood covers 1995-2008

‘Every face on Vanity Fair’s Hollywood covers 1995-2008’ renders an ethnographic-like study of Hollywood celebrity as a cinematic experience. Viewers are presented with constantly mutating portraits that violently twist and shear into other faces, while an immersive soundscape echoes the turbulent painterly surface. Through technical processes of scaling, looping and image morphing; the work explores a positive affectual response to the seductive power of celebrity imagery. Conceptually, given Vanity Fair magazine’s prestigious stature, the work also performs an ethnographic-mapping of the popularity of Hollywood stars over time, while at the same time creating in-between, ‘mutant’ versions of their visages. The installation explores the potential for fan-based responses to pop culture to lead to artworks that enable a more critical response to the subjective and intersubjective dynamics of celebrity portraiture. Questions are raised about how these cultural forms impact pop culture fans, and their role in the mapping of culture and social experience.