Language teaching for the Asian century: Indonesian in Australian universities

This research investigates Australian university students’ perceptions of Indonesian culture, and their interaction with Indonesians. It proposes an approach to language teaching that includes an overseas study experience, and aims to transform language learners into intercultural speakers.

Publicising the Essentially Private: On Leo Strauss' Platonic Aristophanes

This paper is a reading of Strauss' work on Aristophanes, arguing that for him, the comic poet was an esoteric friend to philosophy, conceived (albeit in a manner that invites further reflection) as the attempt to understand nature, including human nature.

Conservation covenants on private land : issues with measuring and achieving biodiversity outcomes in Australia

Conservation covenants and easements have become essential tools to secure biodiversity outcomes on private land, and to assist in meeting international protection targets. In Australia, the number and spatial area of conservation covenants has grown significantly in the past decade. Yet there has been little research or detailed policy analysis of conservation covenanting in Australia. We sought to determine how conservation covenanting agencies were measuring the biodiversity conservation outcomes achieved on covenanted properties, and factors inhibiting or contributing to measuring these outcomes. In addition, we also investigated the drivers and constraints associated with actually delivering the biodiversity outcomes, drawing on detailed input from covenanting programs. Although all conservation covenanting programs had the broad aim of maintaining or improving biodiversity in their covenants in the long term, the specific stated objectives of conservation covenanting programs varied. Programs undertook monitoring and evaluation in different ways and at different spatial and temporal scales. Thus, it was difficult to determine the extent Australian conservation covenanting agencies were measuring the biodiversity conservation outcomes achieved on covenanted properties on a national scale. Lack of time available to covenantors to undertake management was one of the biggest impediments to achieving biodiversity conservation outcomes. A lack of financial resources and human capital to monitor, knowing what to monitor, inconsistent monitoring methodologies, a lack of benchmark data, and length of time to achieve outcomes were all considered potential barriers to monitoring the biodiversity conservation outcomes of conservation covenants.

Honouring the incomparable: Honours in Australian universities

The Honours undergraduate degree in Australia is unlike that in most other countries. It has taken on a particular significance as a qualification, as a pathway to and a pre-requisite for direct entry into doctoral programs. This paper explores the outcomes of a study that suggests that the aims, outcomes, curriculum, pedagogical practices, purposes and enrolment patterns of Honours vary substantially across disciplines and university types. It addresses the questions about the diverse nature of Honours programs and questions what this diversity means for Australian higher education in the context where global standardisation of awards is rapidly occurring. Honours is seen variously as a qualification, an experience, or a program. These variations are discussed and it is demonstrated that Honours globally has not one, but many meanings. These meanings are often poorly understood within, and outside the academy. These multiple meanings create confusion about what Honours stands for and inhibit communication about the role and purpose of Honours both within Australia and in a global context. © 2011 UK Crown: The Australian National University.

Staff experiences of providing support to students who are managing mental health challenges: a qualitative study from two Australian universities

The prevalence and consequences of mental health challenges amongst university students is now widely acknowledged and university staff provide an important but often hidden service to these students. While completing a university degree is important to the student’s long-term outcomes there remains a paucity of literature on the support role provided to these students by staff. To contribute to knowledge in this area, a qualitative exploratory study was completed with academic and professional staff at two Australian universities in 2013. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 26 participants to document their experiences and to identify the barriers and enablers to their support role to students. Data were analysed using thematic analysis and four themes emerged: (1) Factors that facilitate initiation of staff support; (2) barriers to providing support; (3) challenges facing staff; and (4) how universities support students with mental health challenges. Staff acknowledged the personal and organisational challenges they experienced but also highlighted the rewards they received associated with the role. The provision of training and the acknowledgement of the hidden role and workload by universities were important to ensuring positive outcomes for this group of students.

Deferentially private tagging recommendation based on topic model

Tagging recommender system allows Internet users to annotate resources with personalized tags and provides users the freedom to obtain recommendations. However, It is usually confronted with serious privacy concerns, because adversaries may re-identify a user and her/his sensitive tags with only a little background information. This paper proposes a privacy preserving tagging release algorithm, PriTop, which is designed to protect users under the notion of differential privacy. The proposed PriTop algorithm includes three privacy preserving operations: Private Topic Model Generation structures the uncontrolled tags, Private Weight Perturbation adds Laplace noise into the weights to hide the numbers of tags; while Private Tag Selection finally finds the most suitable replacement tags for the original tags. We present extensive experimental results on four real world datasets and results suggest the proposed PriTop algorithm can successfully retain the utility of the datasets while preserving privacy. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.

The Great War In Victorian Private Life - Mildura

Join Dr Bart Ziino as he examines the private experience of the Great War in Victoria, drawing on personal letters and diaries to tell a story of the war as an individual, familial, and communal trial. Through an examination of anxieties over loved ones at the front, and tensions over who was bearing the greater burden. This talk offers new ways of understanding the costs of the war, the capacities of Victorians to meet and endure its demands, and its increasingly corrosive social effects within their communities.