Providing youth with skills, training and employment opportunities through ICT Initiatives

Youth population is increasing explosively particularly in developing countries as a result of rapid urbanization. This increase is bringing large number of social and economic problems. For instance the impacts of job and training availability, and the physical, social and cultural quality of urban environment on young people are enormous, and affect their health, lifestyles, and well-being (Gleeson and Sipe 2006). Besides this, globalization and technological developments are affecting youth in urban areas in all parts of the world, both positively and negatively (Robertson 1995). The rapidly advancing information and communications technologies (ICTs) helps in addressing social and economic problems caused by the rapid growth of urban youth populations in developing countries. ICTs offer opportunities to young people for learning, skill development and employment. But there are downsides: young people in many developing countries lack of having broad access to these new technologies, they are vulnerable to global market changes, and ICTs link them into global cultures which promote consumer goods, potentially eroding local cultures and community values (Manacorda and Petrongolo 1999). However we believe that the positives outweigh such negatives. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the world’s young population number more than they ever have. There are over a billion young people between the ages of 15 and 24, which 85 per cent of them live in developing countries and mainly in urban environments. Many of these young people are in the process of making, or have already made, the transition from school to work. During the last two decades all around the world, these young people, as new workers, have faced a number of challenges associated with globalization and technological advances on labour markets (United Nations 2004). The continuous decrease in the manufacturing employment is made many of the young people facing three options: getting jobs in the informal economy with insecurity and poor wages and working conditions, or getting jobs in the low-tier service industries, or developing their vocational skills to benefit from new opportunities in the professional and advanced technical/knowledge sectors. Moreover in developing countries a large portion of young people are not even lucky enough to choose among any of these options, and consequently facing long-term unemployment, which makes them highly vulnerable. The United Nations’ World Youth Employment report (2004) indicates that in almost all countries, females tend to be far more vulnerable than males in terms of long-term unemployment, and young people who have advanced qualifications are far less likely to experience long-term unemployment than others. In the limited opportunities of the formal labour market, those with limited vocational skills resort to forced entrepreneurship and selfemployment in the informal economy, often working for low pay under hazardous conditions, with only few prospects for the future (United Nations 2005a). The International Labour Organization’s research (2004) revealed that the labour force participation rates for young people decreased by almost four per cent (which is equivalent of 88 million young people) between 1993 and 2003. This is largely as a result of the increased number of young people attending school, high overall unemployment rates, and the fact that some young people gave up any hope of finding work and dropped out of the labour market. At the regional level, youth unemployment was highest in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) (25.6%) and sub-Saharan Africa (21%) and lowest in East Asia (7%) and the industrialized economies(13.4%) (International Labour Organization 2004). The youth in economically disadvantaged regions (e.g. the MENA region) face many challenges in education and training that delivers them the right set of skills and knowledge demanded by the labour market. As a consequence, the transition from school to work is mostly unsuccessful and young population end up either unemployed or underemployed in the informal sectors (United Nations 2005b). Unemployment and lack of economic prospects of the urban youth are pushing many of them into criminal acts, excessive alcohol use, substance addiction, and also in many cases resulting in processes of social or political violence (Fernandez-Maldonado 2004; United Nations 2005a). Long-term unemployment leads young people in a process of marginalisation and social exclusion (United Nations 2004). The sustained high rates of long-term youth unemployment have a number of negative effects on societies. First, it results in countries failing to take advantage of the human resources to increase their productive potential, at a time of transition to a globalized world that inexorably demands such leaps in productive capacity. Second, it reinforces the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Third, owing to the discrepancy between more education and exposure to the mass media and fewer employment opportunities, it may encourage the spread of disruptive behaviours, recourse to illegal alternatives for generating income and the loss of basic societal values, all of which erode public safety and social capital. Fourth, it may trigger violent and intractable political conflicts. And lastly, it may exacerbate intergenerational conflicts when young people perceive a lack of opportunity and meritocracy in a system that favours adults who have less formal education and training but more wealth, power and job stability (Hopenhayn 2002). To assist in addressing youth’s skill training and employment problems this paper scrutinises useful international practices, policies, initiatives and programs targeting youth skill training, particularly in ICTs. The MENA national governments and local authorities could consider implementing similar initiative and strategies to address some of the youth employment issues. The broader aim of this paper is to investigate the successful practice and strategies for the information and communication related income generation opportunities for young people to: promote youth entrepreneurship; promote public-private partnerships; target vulnerable groups of young people; narrow digital divide; and put young people in charge. The rest of this paper is organised in five parts. First, the paper provides an overview of the literature on the knowledge economy, skill, education and training issues. Secondly, it reviews the role of ICTs for vocational skill development and employability. Thirdly, it discusses the issues surrounding the development of the digital divide. Fourthly, the paper underlines types and the importance of developing ICT initiatives targeting young people, and reviews some of the successful policy implementations on ICT-based initiatives from both developed and developing countries that offer opportunities to young people for learning, skill development and employment. Then the paper concludes by providing useful generalised recommendations for the MENA region countries and cities in: advocating possible opportunities for ICT generated employment for young people; and discussing how ICT policies could be modified and adopted to meet young people’s needs.

The impact of “empirical facts” on legal scholarship and legal research training

Lawyers have traditionally viewed law as a closed system, and doctrinal research has been the research methodology used most widely in the profession. This reflects traditional concepts of legal reasoning. There is a wealth of reliable and valid social science data available to lawyers and judges. Judges in fact often refer to general facts about the world, society, institutions and human behaviour (‘empirical facts’). Legal education needs to prepare our students for this broader legal context. This paper examines how ‘empirical facts’ are used in Australian and other common law courts. Specifically, the paper argues that there is a need for enhanced training in non-doctrinal research methodologies across the law school curriculum. This should encompass a broad introduction to social science methods, with more attention being paid to a cross-section of methodologies such as content analysis, comparative law and surveys that are best applied to law.

Functional communication training for the treatment of multiply determined behaviour in two boys with autism

Functional communication training was used to replace multiply determined problem behaviour in two boys with autism. Experiment 1 involved a functional analysis of several topographies of problem behaviour using a variation of the procedures described by Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, and Richman. Results suggested that aggression, self-injury, and disruption were multiply determined (i.e., maintained by both attention and access to preferred objects). Experiment 2 involved a multiple-baseline design across subjects. The focus of intervention was to replace aggression, self-injury, and disruption with functionally equivalent communicative alternatives. Both boys were taught alternative “mands” to recruit attention and request preferred objects. Acquisition of these alternative communication skills was associated with concurrent decreases in aggression, self-injury, and disruption. Results suggest that multiply determined challenging behaviour can be decreased by teaching an alternative communication skill to replace each assessed function of the problem behaviour.

High impact training : achieving synergies between program management education and workplace practice

This paper addresses the challenges of transfer of training back to the workplace for programme and project managers who are being groomed for the leadership of large and complex projects. The paper draws on the experience of the development and delivery of Queensland University of Technology (QUT) education programs: an Executive Masters of Complex Project Management and a series of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) events for an Australian government agency, Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO). Drawing on notions of ‘far transfer’ (Laker 1990; Noe, 1986) and ‘transfer climate’ (Kozlowski & Salas, 1993; Yamnill & McLean, 2001), the paper describes the steps undertaken to achieve a design that ensures that programme and project leadership skills developed through these corporate education programs become successfully embedded back in the organisation. Further, the paper reports on a small qualitative study where the programme success was evaluated by the organisational sponsor, senior leaders and program participants. Nine interviews were conducted and analysed to identify the success of far transfer and transfer climate four months after the return of program participants from cohort 1 2008 to the workplace.

Creating and sustaining a basis for life-long learning in tertiary dancer training

This paper acknowledges the influences that a generation Y population brings to dance training methodologies and examines this impact in a tertiary context. Over the last 4 years, Queensland University of Technology has been modifying their curriculum for new students transitioning from the private dance studio into the prevocational university environment. An intensive training program was designed to empower the student creating effective entry points for common understandings in the learning and teaching of dance techniques with improved and accelerated learning outcomes. This paper shares these philosophies and practices in training for life-long learning that prepare the young dancer for longevity in the industry.

Smart grids : better performance through communication and algorithms

There has been a developing interest in smart grids, the possibility of significantly enhanced performance from remote measurements and intelligent controls. For transmission the use of PMU signals from remote sites and direct load shed controls can give significant enhancement for large system disturbances rather than relying on local measurements and linear controls. This lecture will emphasize what can be found from remote measurements and the mechanisms to get a smarter response to major disturbances. For distribution systems there has been a significant history in the area of distribution reconfiguration automation. This lecture will emphasize the incorporation of Distributed Generation into distribution networks and the impact on voltage/frequency control and protection. Overall the performance of both transmission and distribution will be impacted by demand side management and the capabilities built into the system. In particular, we consider different time scales of load communication and response and look to the benefits for system, energy and lines.

Robust speech recognition using speech enhancement

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) has matured into a technology which is becoming more common in our everyday lives, and is emerging as a necessity to minimise driver distraction when operating in-car systems such as navigation and infotainment. In “noise-free” environments, word recognition performance of these systems has been shown to approach 100%, however this performance degrades rapidly as the level of background noise is increased. Speech enhancement is a popular method for making ASR systems more ro- bust. Single-channel spectral subtraction was originally designed to improve hu- man speech intelligibility and many attempts have been made to optimise this algorithm in terms of signal-based metrics such as maximised Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) or minimised speech distortion. Such metrics are used to assess en- hancement performance for intelligibility not speech recognition, therefore mak- ing them sub-optimal ASR applications. This research investigates two methods for closely coupling subtractive-type enhancement algorithms with ASR: (a) a computationally-efficient Mel-filterbank noise subtraction technique based on likelihood-maximisation (LIMA), and (b) in- troducing phase spectrum information to enable spectral subtraction in the com- plex frequency domain. Likelihood-maximisation uses gradient-descent to optimise parameters of the enhancement algorithm to best fit the acoustic speech model given a word se- quence known a priori. Whilst this technique is shown to improve the ASR word accuracy performance, it is also identified to be particularly sensitive to non-noise mismatches between the training and testing data. Phase information has long been ignored in spectral subtraction as it is deemed to have little effect on human intelligibility. In this work it is shown that phase information is important in obtaining highly accurate estimates of clean speech magnitudes which are typically used in ASR feature extraction. Phase Estimation via Delay Projection is proposed based on the stationarity of sinusoidal signals, and demonstrates the potential to produce improvements in ASR word accuracy in a wide range of SNR. Throughout the dissertation, consideration is given to practical implemen- tation in vehicular environments which resulted in two novel contributions – a LIMA framework which takes advantage of the grounding procedure common to speech dialogue systems, and a resource-saving formulation of frequency-domain spectral subtraction for realisation in field-programmable gate array hardware. The techniques proposed in this dissertation were evaluated using the Aus- tralian English In-Car Speech Corpus which was collected as part of this work. This database is the first of its kind within Australia and captures real in-car speech of 50 native Australian speakers in seven driving conditions common to Australian environments.

Channel tracking algorithms for highly efficient wireless broadband communications in rural areas

High-speed broadband internet access is widely recognised as a catalyst to social and economic development, having a significant impact on global economy. Rural Australia’s inherent dispersed population over a large geographical area make the delivery of efficient, well-maintained and cost-effective internet a challenging task. The novel and highly-efficient Multi-User-Single-Antenna for MIMO (MUSA-MIMO) broadband wireless communication technology can effectively be used to deliver wireless broadband access to rural areas. This research aims to develop for the first time, an efficient and accurate algorithm for the tracking and prediction of Channel State Information (CSI) at the transmitter, by characterising time variation effects of the wireless communication channel on the performance of a highly-efficient MUSA-MIMO technology particularly suited for rural communities, improving their quality of life and economic prosperity.

Research training and national innovation systems in Australia, Finland and the United States : a policy and systems study supported by 30 case studies of research students in the fields of geospatial science, wireless communication, biosciences, and materials science and engineering

Reforms to the national research and research training system by the Commonwealth Government of Australia sought to effectively connect research conducted in universities to Australia's national innovation system. Research training has a key role in ensuring an adequate supply of highly skilled people for the national innovation system. During their studies, research students produce and disseminate a massive amount of new knowledge. Prior to this study, there was no research that examined the contribution of research training to Australia's national innovation system despite the existence of policy initiatives aiming to enhance this contribution. Given Australia's below average (but improving) innovation performance compared to other OECD countries, the inclusion of Finland and the United States provided further insights into the key research question. This study examined three obvious ways that research training contributes to the national innovation systems in the three countries: the international mobility and migration of research students and graduates, knowledge production and distribution by research students, and the impact of research training as advanced human capital formation on economic growth. Findings have informed the concept of a research training culture of innovation that aims to enhance the contribution of research training to Australia's national innovation system. Key features include internationally competitive research and research training environments; research training programs that equip students with economically-relevant knowledge and the capabilities required by employers operating in knowledge-based economies; attractive research careers in different sectors; a national commitment to R&D as indicated by high levels of gross and business R&D expenditure; high private and social rates of return from research training; and the horizontal coordination of key organisations that create policy for, and/or invest in research training.

Evolutionary algorithms for sustainable building design

This approach to sustainable design explores the possibility of creating an architectural design process which can iteratively produce optimised and sustainable design solutions. Driven by an evolution process based on genetic algorithms, the system allows the designer to “design the building design generator” rather than to “designs the building”. The design concept is abstracted into a digital design schema, which allows transfer of the human creative vision into the rational language of a computer. The schema is then elaborated into the use of genetic algorithms to evolve innovative, performative and sustainable design solutions. The prioritisation of the project’s constraints and the subsequent design solutions synthesised during design generation are expected to resolve most of the major conflicts in the evaluation and optimisation phases. Mosques are used as the example building typology to ground the research activity. The spatial organisations of various mosque typologies are graphically represented by adjacency constraints between spaces. Each configuration is represented by a planar graph which is then translated into a non-orthogonal dual graph and fed into the genetic algorithm system with fixed constraints and expected performance criteria set to govern evolution. The resultant Hierarchical Evolutionary Algorithmic Design System is developed by linking the evaluation process with environmental assessment tools to rank the candidate designs. The proposed system generates the concept, the seed, and the schema, and has environmental performance as one of the main criteria in driving optimisation.

Training and development for transitional employment in mature-aged manual workers

The purpose of the current article was to explore perceptions of transitional employment and training and development amongst blue collar workers employed in technical, trade, operations or physical and labour-intensive occupations within the local government system.

Do research thesis examiners need training? : practitioner stories

We are thesis examiners within the Australian academic system who formed a “community of practice” to try to resolve some of the issues we were facing. Stories of examiners reflecting on and examining their own practice are a notable silence in the higher degree research literature. In this study we have adopted a storytelling inquiry method that involved telling our practitioner stories, firstly to each other and then to a wider audience through this paper. We then identified issues that we believe are relevant to other thesis examiners. We have also found that engaging in a “community of practice” is itself a valuable form of examiner professional development. Key Words: Thesis Examiner Training, Storytelling, and Practitioner Research