Addressing the needs of struggling literacy learners

Think back to your teaching experiences over the past four years. Were there a number of children or adolescents in your classes who seemed to have learning difficulties? What area of their learning seemed to be of greatest concern for these students? Did most of these struggling learners have difficulty with reading? Was expressing their thoughts in writing also a challenge? Did some of these students also have difficulty in listening to and following directions? And did some of these students seem hesitant when asked to speak to the class?

Nurturing Needs: Literacy Achievement for Refugee students

Yeronga State School, located 7 km from the city in Brisbane, Queensland, opened in 1871. YSS caters for a middle class inner-suburban community, however, from the mid 1990s enrolments brought new forms of socio-economic, cultural and linguistic diversity. Initially, ESL students were enrolled due to their immigrant parents enrolling in the neighbouring TAFE. Then refugee families from Bosnia and the Middle East became part of the YSS community. In recent years, refugee numbers have accounted for up to 23% of the school population. Many of these new arrivals left behind families in war-torn circumstances, were orphaned or came to live with unknown relatives. Some family members were victims of torture which may have been witnessed by the children. Trauma for some or all family members was a very real concern. Others were born in refugee camps, where food was scarce, belongings needed to be guarded and safety was never guaranteed.

Markov modelling of the IEEE 802.11 DCF for real-time applications with periodic traffic

Popular wireless network standards, such as IEEE 802.11/15/16, are increasingly adopted in real-time control systems. However, they are not designed for real-time applications. Therefore, the performance of such wireless networks needs to be carefully evaluated before the systems are implemented and deployed. While efforts have been made to model general wireless networks with completely random traffic generation, there is a lack of theoretical investigations into the modelling of wireless networks with periodic real-time traffic. Considering the widely used IEEE 802.11 standard, with the focus on its distributed coordination function (DCF), for soft-real-time control applications, this paper develops an analytical Markov model to quantitatively evaluate the network quality-of-service (QoS) performance in periodic real-time traffic environments. Performance indices to be evaluated include throughput capacity, transmission delay and packet loss ratio, which are crucial for real-time QoS guarantee in real-time control applications. They are derived under the critical real-time traffic condition, which is formally defined in this paper to characterize the marginal satisfaction of real-time performance constraints.

Globalisation and corporate real estate strategies

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of globalisation on corporate real estate strategies. Specifically, it seeks to identify corporate real estate capabilities that are important in a hypercompetitive business climate. ---------- Design/methodology/approach: This paper utilises a qualitative approach to analyse secondary data in order to identify the corporate real estate capabilities for a hypercompetitive business environment. ---------- Findings: Globalisation today is an undeniable phenomenon that is fundamentally changing the way business is conducted. In the light of global hypercompetition, corporate real estate needs to develop new capabilities to support global business strategies. These include flexibility, network organization and managerial learning capabilities. ---------- Research limitations/implications: This is a conceptual paper and future empirical research needs to be conducted to verify the propositions made in this paper. ---------- Practical implications: Given the new level of uncertainty in the business climate, that is, hypercompetition, businesses need to develop dynamic capabilities that are harder for competitors to imitate in order to maintain what is considered a “momentary” competitive advantage. The findings of this paper are useful to guide corporate real estate managers in this regard. ---------- Originality/value:– This paper is original in two ways. First, it applies the strategic management concept of capabilities to corporate real estate. Second, it links the key challenge that businesses face today, i.e. globalisation, to the concept of capabilities as a means to maintain competitive advantage.

Providing a law degree for the real world : perspective of an Australian law school

As a result of a two year curriculum review, QUT’s undergraduate law degree has a focus on first year student transition, integration of law graduate capabilities throughout the degree and work integrated learning. A ‘whole-degree’ approach was adopted to ensure that capabilities were appropriately embedded and scaffolded throughout the degree, that teaching and learning approaches met the needs of students as they transitioned from first year through to final year, and that students in final year were provided with a capstone experience to assist them with transition into the work place. The revised degree commenced implementation in 2009. This paper focuses on the ‘real world’ approach to the degree achieved through the first year program, embedding and scaffolding law graduate capabilities through authentic and valid assessment and work integrated learning to assist graduates with transition into the workplace.

What if you're really different? Case studies of children with high functioning autism participating in the Get REAL programme who had atypical learning trajectories.

Evaluation of the Get REAL programme in an inclusive primary school setting has indicated its effectiveness in promoting pro-social behaviour for children with high functioning Autism. However, two children with co-morbid diagnoses and complex personal circumstances showed less consistent improvements. In order to explain their unique trajectories, not readily derived from quantitative studies, an exploratory case study approach was used to examine contextual influences on patterns of progress. Multiple data sources included coded video footage from the Get REAL programme, school reports on conduct, and parents and classroom teacher reports using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. While results provide support for the efficacy of the Get REAL programme for the two children, they also highlight the value of co-ordinated strategies and collaborative individualised approaches in more complex cases. This paper outlines the Get REAL intervention and a range of other school and support agency strategies impacting progress.

Whole life cycle costing for Malaysia high-rise residential building : a needs?

The continuous growth of high-rise residential properties indicates that there is a need for an effective property management system to provide a sustainable high-rise residential property development. As intensive as these studies are, they do not attempt to investigate the correlation between property management systems with the trends of Malaysia high-rise residential property development. By examining the trends and scenario of Malaysia high-rise residential property development, this paper aims to gain an understanding of impacts from the effectiveness of property management in this scope area. Findings from this scoping paper will assist in providing a greater understanding and possible solutions for the current Malaysian property management systems for the expanding high-rise residential unit market.

Assessment of precision timing and real-time data networks for digital substation automation

This project researched the performance of emerging digital technology for high voltage electricity substations that significantly improves safety for staff and reduces the potential impact on the environment of equipment failure. The experimental evaluation used a scale model of a substation control system that incorporated real substation control and networking equipment with real-time simulation of the power system. The outcomes confirm that it is possible to implement Ethernet networks in high voltage substations that meet the needs of utilities; however component-level testing of devices is necessary to achieve this. The assessment results have been used to further develop international standards for substation communication and precision timing.

Developing a dashboard for real-time data stream composition and visualization

Technological advances have led to an influx of affordable hardware that supports sensing, computation and communication. This hardware is increasingly deployed in public and private spaces, tracking and aggregating a wealth of real-time environmental data. Although these technologies are the focus of several research areas, there is a lack of research dealing with the problem of making these capabilities accessible to everyday users. This thesis represents a first step towards developing systems that will allow users to leverage the available infrastructure and create custom tailored solutions. It explores how this notion can be utilized in the context of energy monitoring to improve conventional approaches. The project adopted a user-centered design process to inform the development of a flexible system for real-time data stream composition and visualization. This system features an extensible architecture and defines a unified API for heterogeneous data streams. Rather than displaying the data in a predetermined fashion, it makes this information available as building blocks that can be combined and shared. It is based on the insight that individual users have diverse information needs and presentation preferences. Therefore, it allows users to compose rich information displays, incorporating personally relevant data from an extensive information ecosystem. The prototype was evaluated in an exploratory study to observe its natural use in a real-world setting, gathering empirical usage statistics and conducting semi-structured interviews. The results show that a high degree of customization does not warrant sustained usage. Other factors were identified, yielding recommendations for increasing the impact on energy consumption.

Discovering future disaster management capability needs using scenario planning

In recent years disaster risk reduction efforts have focused on disturbances ranging from climate variability, seismic hazards, geo-political instability and public and animal health crises. These factors combined with uncertainty derived from inter-dependencies within and across systems of critical infrastructure create significant problems of governance for the private and public sector alike. The potential for rapid spread of impacts, geographically and virtually, can render a comprehensive understanding of disaster response and recovery needs and risk mitigation issues beyond the grasp of competent authority. Because of such cascading effects communities and governments at local and state-levels are unlikely to face single incidents but rather series of systemic impacts: often appearing concurrently. A further point to note is that both natural and technological hazards can act directly on socio-technical systems as well as being propagated by them: as network events. Such events have been categorised as ‘outside of the box,’ ‘too fast,’ and ‘too strange’ (Lagadec, 2004). Emergent complexities in linked systems can make disaster effects difficult to anticipate and recovery efforts difficult to plan for. Beyond the uncertainties of real world disasters, that might be called familiar or even regular, can we safely assume that the generic capability we use now will suit future disaster contexts? This paper presents initial scoping of research funded by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre seeking to define future capability needs of disaster management organisations. It explores challenges to anticipating the needs of representative agencies and groups active in before, during and after phases of emergency and disaster situations using capability deficit assessments and scenario assessment.

Using academagogy to meet the needs of millennial learners: A comparative case study

Higher education institutions across the world are experiencing a new generation of students, known as millennial learners. They are more technologically literate and digitally connected than previous generations of learners. To meet the teaching and learning needs of these learners, we must offer more deliberate and meaningful learning experiences and opportunities, where students can see the connections between new material and their own experiences and real world applications – an academagogic approach. This study compares the implementation of academagogy for two different groups of millennial learners – one a traditional face-to-face undergraduate Engineering unit, and the other a mixed-mode (online and face-to-face) undergraduate Design unit. The units are discussed in terms of their student evaluation results, both qualitative and quantitative, and in terms of their academic outcomes for students. Conclusions are drawn about the applicability of academagogy as a heuristic for improving teaching and learning across disciplines, as well as its strengths and limitations in terms of student results.

Interview with Barbara Comber in "Chapter 3 : Critical Literacy" of "Making Literacy Real : Theories and Practices for Learning and Teaching [2nd. Ed.]"

One of the so-called ‘wicked problems’ confronting most nations is poverty, or the unequal distribution of resources. This problem is perennial, but how, where and with which physical, psychological, social and educational effects, and for which students (and their teachers), needs continual scrutiny. Poverty is relative. Entire populations may be poor or groups of people and individuals within nations may be poor. Poverty results from injustice. Not only the un- and under-employed are living in poverty, but also the ‘working poor’. Now we see affluent societies with growing pockets of persistent poverty. While there are those who dispute the statistics on the rise of poverty because different nations use different measures (for example see Biddle, 2013; http://theconversation.com/factcheck-is-poverty-on-the-rise-in-australia-17512), there seems to be little dispute that the gaps between the richest and the poorest are increasing (see http://www.stanford.edu/group/scspi/sotu/SOTU_2014_CPI.pdf)...