From product centricism to systems-wide education design: making corporate technology systems work for the learning organisation

Deakin University has established a major integrated corporate technology infrastructure in the last two years to enhance and bring together its distance education and on-campus education. This environment has been called Deakin Online. With Deakin Online rapidly developing, efforts are beginning to focus more fundamentally on how the potentials of the environment can be realised to create enduring teaching and learning value. This search must be understood in the context of the University’s commitment to the values of relevance, responsiveness and innovation. The question is: how can these values be realised in the digitally-based evolving educational enterprise using the new corporate technologies and new concepts of organisational structure and function? We argue for the transforming role of the academic teacher and new forms of open academic collegiality as being critical to realise strategic and enduring educational value. Moreover, change in role and process needs to be grounded in more systemic organisation and program-wide approaches to designing and working within the new contemporary learning environments. We believe the shift from the dangers of product centricism to system-wide education design modelling situating e-learning within broader curricular and pedagogical concerns represents the best strategy to create enduring educational benefits for all stakeholder groups (notably academic teachers and their learners) while preserving teachers’ sense of agency in the changing learning environments of higher education.

Auditing construction costs during building design : a case study of cost planning in action

Building cost planning was originally developed in the framework of traditional procurement methods with conventional documentation, tendering and administration processes. With the advent of alternative forms of procurement with more fluid approaches to design stages and documentation, the need for sound cost planning does not appear to diminish. As a process established on solid theoretical foundations, cost planning should be robust enough to adapt and flourish in a variety of procurement environments. However, little documentation and analysis of transformed and adapted forms of cost planning appear to have been made. This case study of a design-construct company in Melbourne, Australia, presents and explores a contemporary form of building cost planning integrated into a design cost management approach adopted by a construction company experienced in alternative forms of procurement. The article traces this process on a design-construct project from inception to the end of the design development stage and tender. Whilst the fundamental framework of cost planning remains intact, the focus and detail in each of the stages are guided by the company's priority for greater financial control over the cost and value implications of design and other decisions. This recently established working model of design cost management in this company has been designed to deliver added value to the client through a better balance of time, cost and quality in each project.

Towards a universal and integrated digital representation of physical phenomena: a model to investigate comfort and energy efficiency in future environments

This thesis describes the exploration and the development of computational means to investigate the behaviour of design objects before they are available for investigation in the physical world. The motivation is to inform the design process about the design object's performance in order to achieve better--more performance-oriented--design outcomes in the sense of energy efficiency and comfort performance than can be achieved by conventional design techniques.

The impact of information and communications technology on teaching and design of flexible, online and distance education courses at Deakin University

This paper describes the use of an online learning environment which has been established for postgraduate students studying at Master’s level in Professional Education and Training Deakin University. A detailed evaluation of the use of computer conferences in an Open and Distance Education specialism was undertaken during 2000 as part of a CUTSD funded project, Learner Centred Evaluation of Computer Facilitated Learning Projects in Higher Education. As the Open and Distance Education specialism is being revised and new units are written, the information gathered in this evaluation is being integrated into the pedagogical planning and the technological decisions being made about the design of the new master’s program.

Enhancing the health of medical students : outcomes of an integrated mindfulness and lifestyle program

Medical students experience various stresses and many poor health behaviours. Previous studies consistently show that student wellbeing is at its lowest pre-exam. Little core-curriculum is traditionally dedicated to providing self-care skills for medical students. This paper describes the development, implementation and outcomes of the Health Enhancement Program (HEP) at Monash University. It comprises mindfulness and ESSENCE lifestyle programs, is experientially-based, and integrates with biomedical sciences, clinical skills and assessment. This study measured the program’s impact on medical student psychological distress and quality of life. A cohort study performed on the 2006 first-year intake measured effects of the HEP on various markers of wellbeing. Instruments used were the depression, anxiety and hostility subscales of the Symptom Checklist-90-R incorporating the Global Severity Index (GSI) and the WHO Quality of Life (WHOQOL) questionnaire. Pre-course data (T1) was gathered mid-semester and post-course data (T2) corresponded with pre-exam week. To examine differences between T1 and T2 repeated measures ANOVA was used for the GSI and two separate repeated measures MANOVAs were used to examine changes in the subscales of the SCL-90-R and the WHOQOL-BREF. Follow-up t-tests were conducted to examine differences between individual subscales. A total of 148 of an eligible 270 students returned data at T1 and T2 giving a response rate of 55%. 90.5% of students reported personally applying the mindfulness practices. Improved student wellbeing was noted on all measures and reached statistical significance for the depression (mean T1 = 0.91, T2 = 0.78; p = 0.01) and hostility (0.62, 0.49; 0.03) subscales and the GSI (0.73, 0.64; 0.02) of the SCL-90, but not the anxiety subscale (0.62, 0.54; 0.11). Statistically significant results were also found for the psychological domain (62.42, 65.62; p < 0.001) but not the physical domain (69.11, 70.90; p = 0.07) of the WHOQOL. This study is the first to demonstrate an overall improvement in medical student wellbeing during the pre-exam period suggesting that the common decline in wellbeing is avoidable. Although the findings of this study indicate the potential for improving student wellbeing at the same time as meeting important learning objectives, the limitations in study design due to the current duration of follow-up and lack of a control group means that the data should be interpreted with caution. Future research should be directed at determining the contribution of individual program components, long-term outcomes, and impacts on future attitudes and clinical practice.

Integrated physical education model

This paper focuses on an Integrated Physical Education Model that links the cyclical model of experiential learning (Kolb, 1971, 1979), the Complete 4MAT System (McCarthy, 1980), and Teaching Games for Understanding (Bunker & Thorpe, 1982). Understanding the similarities between experiential learning and a games-based approach to teaching games may help physical educators to design and to facilitate more beneficial lessons for their students. Key outcomes of successful physical education are students that have the ability to make successful decisions on the field and have awareness of both technical and tactical aspects of games. This discussion of an integrated approach involves playing games, emphasises active involvement, and encourages student decision-making.

Decision making to support an integrated infrastructure supply chain industrial ecological approach within public private partnerships

Supply chains are complex adaptive systems for which final performance depends upon numerous interdependent decisions made by numerous firms which synthesise inputs from various resources systems.  The dynamic interdependent behaviour of social, economic, material and informational resource systems within eco-industrial settings that support the built environment life cycle supply chains can be studied at the supply chain level.  The impact of megaprojects is significant and holds promise to explore the impact of decisions on various systems as it combines project and system boundaries.  Megaoprojects considered as major events within systems can produce critical revolutionary impacts on the systems within which they are embedded.  The decisions that are made on megaprojects are central to risk management.  typically major infrastructure projects are procured through a form of public private partnership (PPP).  The core principle of PPP is value for money which refers to the best available outcome attempting to take account of all benefits, costs and risks over the whole life of the procurement.  In this paper the focus is on Australia where there has been considerable acitivity in the use of PPPs.  With recent national infrastucture packages proposed to stimulate the economy due to the global financial crisis, decision modelling on risks is a revelant and critical matter not only in practice but also in the research community.  PPPs encourage the whole-of-lifecycle approach in the procurement and management of public sector assets by transparently recognising the costs and risks associated with the whole life of the required service or facility, thus integrated whole of life supply chains can be considered.  By creating a single point of responsibility for an entire project from inception through operation, a strong incentive is created for thinking about the effects that a design or construction decision will have on the effectiveness and efficiency of managing and maintaining a facility during its operational life.  The decision to procure holistic supply chains becomes a much more viable commercial reality in the PPP environment than previously considered in the usual commercial construction spot transactional approach.  These types of decisions tend to be imprecise, approximate and complex requireing justification and reasoning logic rather than the classical 'truth' logic.  The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical decision framework which combines interdependency and multi-values logic for supply chain procurement modelling.

An integrated student support framework for a Malaysian university

This thesis reports on an investigation at the University Tun Abdul Razak (UNITAR), Malaysia focused on students’ needs for student support services. The research addressed a new problem in distance education concerning institutional practices and strategies for providing student support within blended learning contexts, such as at UNITAR. The thesis addresses important matters related to the use of forms of education to address Malaysia’s social, political and economic development.

The study had two main research purposes. The first purpose was to investigate what barriers UNITAR’s students had to completing their study successfully. The second was to investigate students’ support services needs. The latter was divided into six subsidiary purposes. The first subsidiary purpose was to identify and compare the students’ needs intensity for the four categories of support services: administrative, academic, welfare and post-study services. The second subsidiary purpose was to investigate whether there is any correlation between students’ attributes of age, gender, marital status, number of children, enrollment status, distance from learning centre, academic abilities, course satisfaction and academic achievement, with their support needs. The other subsidiary purposes were to compare needs intensity for the four categories of services between men and women, younger and mature-age students, and lower and higher academic achievers.

The research design employed mixed methods, involving both qualitative and quantitative techniques. A series of interviews was conducted with UNITAR staff members during an inventory study of the University. Then, the students were surveyed through a questionnaire that contained closed-ended and openended questions. After analysing and compiling the results of the survey, another cycle of surveys was conducted with selected staff members through email, to validate the findings and obtain their feedback to the students’ views and their suggestions for future improvement. The quantitative survey data were analysed using SPSS, whereas the qualitative data from interview, survey and email were analysed by using content analysis techniques.

The findings of the study demonstrated that UNITAR’s students have problems in their study, which are related to their demographic and institutional attributes, and these affect their needs for four categories of support services. Generally, students attached the highest priority to academic services, followed by post-study services, administrative services and, lastly, welfare services. Four patterns of associations between students’ attributes and support services needs were identified. In particular, support services needs differences were identified between men and women, younger and mature-age students, and lower achieving and higher achieving students.

Drawing the findings of this study, relevant past studies, contemporary practices and constructive views of scholars from the relevant literature, the thesis concludes by proposing an integrated student support framework for UNITAR and suggest how this may be considered and applied more broadly in similar blended learning contexts in Malaysia and beyond.

Development of a building integrated photovoltaic/thermal solar energy cogeneration system

Using renewable energy sources for onsite cogeneration from structural building elements is a relatively new concept and is gaining considerable interest. In this study the design, development, manufacturing and testing of a novel building integrated photovoltaic/thermal (BIPVT) solar energy cogeneration system is discussed.

Adhesives (ADH), resistance seam welding (RSW) and autoclaving (ATC) were identified as the most appropriate for fabricating BIPVT roofing panels. Of these manufacturing methods ADH was found to be most suitable for low volume production systems due to its low capital cost.

A prototype panel, fabricated using ADH methods, exhibited good thermal performance. It was also shown that BIPVT performance could be theoretically predicted using a one dimensional heat transfer model and showed excellent agreement with experimental data. The model was used to suggest further design improvements. Finally, a transient simulation of the BIPVT was performed in TRNSYS and is used to illustrate the benefits of the system.

Development of a building integrated photovoltaic/thermal solar collector based on steel roofing

The use of onsite renewable energy cogeneration from structural building elements is a relatively new concept, and one that is gaining considerable interest in the building industry. In this study the design, development, testing and production methods for a novel building integrated photovoltaic/thermal (BIPVT) solar energy cogeneration system are examined and discussed.

During the analysis of the design, adhesives (ADH), resistance seam welding (RSW) and autoclaving (ATC) were identified as the most appropriate for fabricating BIPVT panels for roofing and façade applications. Of these manufacturing methods ADH was found to be most suitable for low volume production systems due to its low capital cost.

Furthermore, a prototype panel was fabricated using ADH methods and exhibited good thermal performance. In addition it was shown, using experimental testing, that the performance of a BIPVT could be theoretically predicted using a one-dimensional heat transfer model. Furthermore, the model was used to suggest further improvements that could be made to the design. Finally, a transient simulation of the BIPVT was performed in TRNSYS and was used to illustrate the long term benefits of the system.

Application of the Hottel-Whillier equations to the analysis of a building integrated photovoltaic/thermal solar collector

The idea of combining photovoltaic and solar thermal collectors (PVT collectors) to provide electrical and heat energy is not new, however it is an area that has received only limited attention. With concern growing over energy sources and their usage, PVTs have become an area receiving more attention. Although PVTs are not as prevalent as solar thermal systems, the integration of photovoltaic and solar thermal collectors into the walls or roofing structure of a building could provide greater opportunity for the use of renewable solar energy technologies in domestic, commercial and industrial applications. As such, the design of a novel building integrated photovoltaic/thermal (BIPVT) solar collector is theoretically analysed through the use of a modified Hottel-Whillier model. The thermal and electrical efficiency under a range of conditions are subsequently determined and results showing how key design parameters influence the performance of the BIPVT system are presented.

Programmer friendly and efficient distributed shared memory integrated into a distributed operating system

Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) provides programmers with a shared memory environment in systems where memory is not physically shared. Clusters of Workstations (COWs), an often untapped source of computing power, are characterised by a very low cost/performance ratio. The combination of Clusters of Workstations (COWs) with DSM provides an environment in which the programmer can use the well known approaches and methods of programming for physically shared memory systems and parallel processing can be carried out to make full use of the computing power and cost advantages of the COW. The aim of this research is to synthesise and develop a distributed shared memory system as an integral part of an operating system in order to provide application programmers with a convenient environment in which the development and execution of parallel applications can be done easily and efficiently, and which does this in a transparent manner. Furthermore, in order to satisfy our challenging design requirements we want to demonstrate that the operating system into which the DSM system is integrated should be a distributed operating system. In this thesis a study into the synthesis of a DSM system within a microkernel and client-server based distributed operating system which uses both strict and weak consistency models, with a write-invalidate and write-update based approach for consistency maintenance is reported. Furthermore a unique automatic initialisation system which allows the programmer to start the parallel execution of a group of processes with a single library call is reported. The number and location of these processes are determined by the operating system based on system load information. The DSM system proposed has a novel approach in that it provides programmers with a complete programming environment in which they are easily able to develop and run their code or indeed run existing shared memory code. A set of demanding DSM system design requirements are presented and the incentives for the placement of the DSM system with a distributed operating system and in particular in the memory management server have been reported. The new DSM system concentrated on an event-driven set of cooperating and distributed entities, and a detailed description of the events and reactions to these events that make up the operation of the DSM system is then presented. This is followed by a pseudocode form of the detailed design of the main modules and activities of the primitives used in the proposed DSM system. Quantitative results of performance tests and qualitative results showing the ease of programming and use of the RHODOS DSM system are reported. A study of five different application is given and the results of tests carried out on these applications together with a discussion of the results are given. A discussion of how RHODOS’ DSM allows programmers to write shared memory code in an easy to use and familiar environment and a comparative evaluation of RHODOS DSM with other DSM systems is presented. In particular, the ease of use and transparency of the DSM system have been demonstrated through the description of the ease with which a moderately inexperienced undergraduate programmer was able to convert, write and run applications for the testing of the DSM system. Furthermore, the description of the tests performed using physically shared memory shows that the latter is indistinguishable from distributed shared memory; this is further evidence that the DSM system is fully transparent. This study clearly demonstrates that the aim of the research has been achieved; it is possible to develop a programmer friendly and efficient DSM system fully integrated within a distributed operating system. It is clear from this research that client-server and microkernel based distributed operating system integrated DSM makes shared memory operations transparent and almost completely removes the involvement of the programmer beyond classical activities needed to deal with shared memory. The conclusion can be drawn that DSM, when implemented within a client-server and microkernel based distributed operating system, is one of the most encouraging approaches to parallel processing since it guarantees performance improvements with minimal programmer involvement.

Transitional issues of induction into design education for international undergraduate students : a case study analysis of architecture

The overarching aim of this paper is to present and discuss a collaborative undertaking between the School of Architecture and Building and the Academic Skills Unit at Deakin University, Australia in a programme called The Integrated Support Programme for Architecture. It does this in the following ways. It provides a justification for the setting up of an integrated programme for international architecture students. It describes the programme that was set up and outlines the reasons for collaboration between an academic School and an Academic Skills support services unit to prepare students both nationally and internationally as graduates of architecture. It then reports on a study undertaken to evaluate the programme in terms of student response and perception. Following this, it highlights directions for effective and strategic transition of past and present learning for international students. Using a case study analysis, the thrust of this paper is to advance knowledge and understanding of the pertinent issues related to international students either commencing or articulating into the professional course of architecture. It is envisaged that in this discussion matters may be raised for a strategic and effective transition of generic and internationalised learning for international students.

Concept design of a novel tactile probe tip for down scaled 3D CMMs

Although coordinate metrology has reached a very high state of development concerning versatility and accuracy for common engineering parts, a high precision capability with nano scale resolution and accuracy is often hard to achieve when it is required to measure very small parts and features. The limiting component is the bulky probing system of traditional CMMs (coordinate measuring machines). In order to satisfy increasing demand for highly accurate geometrical measurements on small parts and small structures, a new measuring probe of high sensitivity and small geometrical dimension with low contact forces needs to be developed. In this paper, a novel probing system, which combines a FBG (Fibre Bragg Grating) embedded optical fibre tactile probe with an optical sensing technique, has been proposed. With the sensor elements integrated into the probe tip directly, the system sensitivity can be increased significantly. A preliminary theoretical analysis of the sensitivity of the FBG fibre sensor under axial and lateral end point loading has been presented and the results show that this micro scale probe has great potential to realize a resolution of 1nanometer on geometrical measurement of small parts.