Student satisfaction : impact of age and gender on satisfaction among international postgraduate students from Asia

Customer satisfaction is a core-marketing concept. It is considered as a major outcome of marketing activity and serves to link processes, culminating in purchase and consumption with post-purchase phenomena such as attitudinal change, customer retention, repeat purchase, brand loyalty, positive word-of-mouth communication. Student satisfaction is a strategic factor in developing a competitive advantage in the highly attractive and globally competitive international education market. Market forecasts indicate a seven-fold increase in the number of students seeking higher education overseas by 2025 and given the competitiveness of the industry, universities will need to focus on variables influencing student satisfaction in order to address areas where improvements in service quality are required.

A sample of 371 postgraduate students from China, India, Indonesia and Thailand, is investigated. The study highlights the development of a scale to measure international postgraduate student satisfaction. The scale demonstrates the importance of four predominant factors influencing university choices - Education Resources; Communication and Guidance; Customer Value and Study Outcomes; and Image, Prestige and Recognition. Using logistic regression and chi square testing, this paper investigates the impact of age and gender on satisfaction among international postgraduate students from four Asian countries studying in universities in Victoria, Australia, on theses factors. The results indicate that age has a positive relationship with satisfaction among postgraduate students while the influence of gender has no effect on influencing satisfaction among postgraduate students from Asia.

An investigation of corporate image, customer satisfaction and loyalty-more than just monkey business

Prior research into corporate branding, of which corporate image is a key construct, has focused primarily on products. There has, however, been limited academic research focusing on corporate branding in the leisure services sector. However, in an increasingly competitive environment, leisure services need to treat branding and image management as more than just "monkey business". This study addresses this by developing a model and empirically testing the relationships between corporate image, the dimensions of corporate image, customer satisfaction and loyalty in the context of a Zoological garden. As predicted, a strong relationship was found between corporate image, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Our results also suggest that three dimensions of corporate image (adventure, mission/vision and agreeableness) explain a significant propOliion of the variance in satisfaction and loyalty.

OVIE : object-oriented and vector-based image editing

A powerful image editing system called OVIE is described, which provides fast and accurate creation, composition, rendering and other manipulation of image contents. Flexibility and convenience of the system are achieved by including two modules: image decomposition and image vectorization to understand and represent an image respectively. To understand an image comprehensively, we propose to integrate image segmentation, shape completion and image completion techniques to ensure a seamless image editing. An array of pixels is replaced by vector data with geometric edit ability for image representation since the geometrically-based editing has physical meanings and thus it is more natural or intuitive for users to edit. Compared to the existing works, our system is more convenient and can generate effects with higher quality. © 2012 IEEE.

An IT Bachelor degree using modern technologies to illustrate core concepts and principles and building generic skills

Information Technology (IT) changes very quickly and influences business, industry and the public in an enormous manner. Outsourcing of IT jobs to cheaper overseas labor and globalization of IT companies become a common practice. Graduates of IT university courses must be well prepared to address the needs and expectations of business, industry and every day life. Many factors in an Information Technology curriculum influence graduates’ professional preparation and image. The most important of them is to reflect technology change, the current state of knowledge of computing, business and industry demands and students’ expectations. The aim of our project was to develop a new Bachelor of IT curriculum that satisfies these requirements. In this report we concentrate our attention on two critical aspects of IT curriculum content, the modern technologies to be used to illustrate basic concepts and principles of computing, and the generic skills that each graduate is expected to acquire to get a job in Australia.

Postgraduate international students from Asia: factors influencing satisfaction

The growth in the international education market within the next two decades will be dominated by Asia, accounting for almost 70% of the global demand for international higher education (Bohm et al., 2002). The market attractiveness with significant pecuniary and non-pecuniary gains from full-fee paying students will result in a more competitive environment for higher educational institutions around the world seeking to improve their market position. Student satisfaction is a key strategic variable in maintaining such a competitive position with long-term benefits arising from student loyalty, positive word of mouth (WOM) communication and image of the higher educational institutions to meet the challenges of increasing global competition, rising student expectations of quality, service, and value for money. This process requires educational institutions to carefully analyse these key factors contributing to student satisfaction and therefore develop strategies accordingly.

Using logistic regression analysis with factor scores and aggregated satisfaction scores, this study examines the relative importance of factors and their impact on the satisfaction levels of international postgraduate students from four Asian countries studying in Australian universities. The study concludes that the dominant factors that impact on student satisfaction are quality of education, student facilities, reputation of the institutions, the marketability of their degrees for better career prospects, and the overall customer value provided by the universities.

International education services: challenges for Australia

Australian universities face a challenging task of servicing an increasingly diverse international student community in the globally competitive education market. The pressure on universities to successfully negotiate the cultural diversity and improvement in service quality will continue to increase with the global expansion of the international student market. Market forecasts indicate an increase in the number of students seeking higher education overseas by 2025 to 7.2 million. The attractiveness of the international education market in the form of both pecuniary and non pecuniary benefits will continue to create a highly competitive environment for Australia requiring Australian higher education institutions to pursue well planned strategies to maintain a globally competitive position.

Student satisfaction is a key strategic variable in maintaining such a competitive position with long term benefits arising from student loyalty, positive word of mouth (WOM) communication and image of the study destinations and to meet the challenges of increasing global competition, rising student expectations of quality, service and value for money.

This paper, based on the expectancy-disconfirmation paradigm, and using logistic regression, ANOVA and chi square testing, investigates factors that influence international postgraduate students from four Asian countries studying in Australia and concludes with strategic implications for universities

Image featuring for retrieval of multimedia documents

The utilization of massive multimedia documents collections, such as multimedia documents in the global Internet, needs search engines which can rank using both text and image evidence. Massive size and (dynamic) nature of collection can make manual indexing prohibitively expensive in such situations. Traditional search engines utilize only text components of multimedia documents. But there are information needs, which require the utilization of image evidence. In this paper, we investigate image-feature for large and heterogeneous collections. Both the nature and complexities of information needs are key elements for an effective retrieval. Retrieval needs that depend on perceptual similarities (as found in art galleries, building architecture) require the utilization of visual cues. In such situations, the retrieval of multimedia document based on image ranking can provide higher effectiveness. Experimental results show that effectiveness of ranking based on image feature can be higher where perceptual similarities are key elements for retrieval than the retrieval effectiveness of algorithms based on text ranking algorithms

Pathway planning and 'becoming somebody' : Exploring the tensions between wellbeing and credentialism with students at (educational) risk

This paper maps the policy shifts around the education and training of youth that frame how schools respond to issues of youth' at risk'. These shifts have occurred with the move from the self managing schools marked by market discourses of competition, autonomy and image management that supplanted earlier discourses of welfare and community, through to recent policies in Victoria arising from the Kirby Review of Post compulsory Education and Public Education, the Next Generation undertaken by the Labor government. These reports, and the policies emerging out of them, are producing new discourses about youth and schooling focusing on wellbeing, learning networks and more systemic support for schools at the same time as there is increased accountability and expectations of schools. Drawing on the school exclusion literature from the U.K, and using Bourdieu's notion of habitus, we examine the findings from a recent study undertaken on the Geelong Pathways Planning project, funded through a Victorian government strategy, to discuss how schools respond to such initiatives. The project explored the ways in which students in the Geelong region understood and worked with the job planning pathways program, and how service providers (schools, community education facilities, job networks etc) coordinated to meet the needs of individual youth. There was a disjuncture in the participating schools between the discourses of care and welfare for students at risk, and the actual practices and policies that ignored or excluded such students. This paper concludes with a discussion of what might be required systemically, in schools and in their relations to other education providers, to build the capacity to respond more effectively to all students.

Interactive dance performance : movement data and the 'materiality' of the system

This paper describes a recent performance work I made using dance and live feed video
processing, 1 + x: mid-range projections, commissioned by the Seoul Contemporary Dance
Company and first performed in Melbourne in July 2005. This work forms a basis for discussing
my interest in creating performance images that reveal 'interiority'. I am interested in how you
embed the 'feel' of the human systematically in an interactive structure, and how that process
can produce a poetic that arises from the detailed and nuanced play between real and virtual
images on the same screen. How do you abstract and play with a performer's movement, play
with it in real and virtual time, so that it gives the work an emotional charge? Its like playing with
the process of 'becoming virtual' - and I'm being deliberately Deleuzian about that - how do you
'become virtual' in the sense of melding performer and image so that the meaning exists
between - in the connection between the two?

This quest to get the energy, the 'lived', 'felt' quality of the movement into the imagery gives rise
to research questions about how 'presence' is perceived in movement. What elements of the
raw movement data do you need to keep and what can you throwaway, and still keep the
personality, the emotion, the 'life' of that movement? How do you make a virtual, interactive
performance system that has its own 'materiality'?

Examination of the "all hazards" approach to disaster management as applied to field disaster management and pre-hospital care in Australia

Disasters, emergencies, incidents, and major incidents - they all come back to the same thing regardless of what they are called. The common denominator is that there is loss of life, injury to people and animals and damage and destruction of property. The management of such events relies on four phases: 1. Prevention 2. Preparation 3. Response 4. Recovery Each of these phases is managed in a different way and often by different teams. Here, concentration has been given to phases 2 and 3, with particular emphasis on phase 3, Response. The words used to describe such events are often related to legislation. The terminology is detailed later. However, whatever the description, whenever prevention is not possible, or fails, then the need is to respond. Response is always better when the responders are prepared. Training is a major part of response preparation and this book is designed to assist those in the health industry who need to be ready when something happens. One of the training packages for responders is the Major Incident Medical Management and Support (MIMMS) Course and this work was designed to supplement the manual prepared by Hodgetts and Macway-Jones(87) in the UK. Included is what the health services responder, who may be sent to an event in which the main concern is trauma, should know. Concentration is on the initial response and does not deal in any detail with hospital reaction, the public health aspects, or the mental health support that provides psychological help to victims and responders, and which are also essential parts of disaster management. People, in times of disaster, have always been quick to offer assistance. It is now well recognised however, that the 'enthusiastic amateur', whilst being a well meaning volunteer, isn't always what is needed. All too often such people have made things worse and have sometimes ended up as victims themselves. There is a place now for volunteers and there probably always will be. The big difference is that these people must be well informed, well trained and well practiced if they are to be effective. Fortunately such people and organisations do exist. Without the work of the St John Ambulance, the State Emergency Service, the Rural Fire Service the Red Cross and the Volunteer Rescue Association, to mention only a few, our response to disasters would be far less effective. There is a strong history of individuals being available to help the community in times of crisis. Mostly these people were volunteers but there has also always been the need for a core of professional support. In the recent past, professional support mechanisms have been developed from lessons learned, particularly to situations that need a rapid and well organised response. As lessons are learned from an analysis of events, philosophy and methods have changed. Our present system is not perfect and perhaps never will be. The need for an 'all-hazards approach' makes detailed planning very difficult and so there will probably always be criticisms about the way an event was handled. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, provided we learn from it. That means that this text is certainly not the 'last word' and revisions as we learn from experience will be inevitable. Because the author works primarily in New South Wales, many of the explanations and examples are specific to that state. In Australia disaster response is a State, rather than a Commonwealth, responsibility and consequently, and inevitably, there are differences in management between the states and territories within Australia. With the influence of Emergency Management Australia, these differences are being reduced. This means that across state and territory boundaries, assistance is common and interstate teams can be deployed and assimilated into the response rapidly, safely, effectively and with minimum explanation. This text sets out to increase the understanding of what is required, what is in place and how the processes of response are managed. By way of introduction and background, examples are given of those situations that have occurred, or could happen. Man Made Disasters has been divided into two distinct sections. Those which are related to structures or transport and those related directly to people. The first section, Chapter 3, includes: • Transport accidents involving land, rail, sea or air vehicles. • Collapse of buildings for reasons other than earthquakes or storms. • Industrial accidents, including the release of hazardous substances and nuclear events. A second section dealing with the consequences of the direct actions of people is separated as Chapter 4, entitled 'People Disasters'. Included are: • Crowd incidents involving sports and entertainment venues. • Terrorism From Chapter 4 on, the emphasis is on the Response phase and deals with organisation and response techniques in detail. Finally there is a section on terminology and abbreviations. An appendix details a typical disaster pack content. War, the greatest of all man made disasters is not considered in this text.

Separating the contributions of hearing, lexical knowledge and speech production to speech perception scores in children with hearing impairments.

Open-set word and sentence speech-perception test scores are commonly used as a measure of hearing abilities in children and adults using cochlear implants and/or hearing aids. These tests are usually presented auditorily with a verbal response. In the case of children, scores are typically lower and more variable than for adults with hearing impairments using similar devices. It is difficult to interpret children's speech-perception scores without considering the effects of lexical knowledge and speech-production abilities on their responses. This study postulated a simple mathematical model to describe the effects of hearing, lexical knowledge, and speech production on the perception test scores for monosyllabic words by children with impaired hearing. Thirty-three primary-school children with impaired hearing, fitted with hearing aids and/or cochlear implants, were evaluated using speech-perception, reading-aloud, speech-production, and language measures. These various measures were incorporated in the mathematical model, which revealed that performance in an open-set word-perception test in the auditory-alone mode is strongly dependent on residual hearing levels, lexical knowledge, and speech-production abilities. Further applications of the model provided an estimate of the effect of each component on the overall speech-perception score for each child.

Early breast cancer identification : Which way to go? Microarray or image based computer aided diagnosis!

The goal of this research is to develop a computer aided diagnostic (CAD) system that can detect breast cancer in the early stage by using microarray and image data. We verified the performance of six well known classification algorithms with various performance matrices. Although we do not suggest a unique classifier algorithm for a CAD system, we do identify a number of algorithms whose performance is very promising. The algorithms performance was validated by 3 images dataset; two have been used for the first time in this experiment. Multidimensional image filtering is adopted for the final data extraction. The image data classification performance is compared with microarray data. Results suggest the most effective means of breast cancer identification in the early stage is a hybrid approach.

Uomo universale : the imaginary relation between body and mathematic(s) in architecture

What is the role of the human figure in the drawing of the uomo universale? Interlocked with the “master architect” as a constituent component of the canonical bodies of architecture, is the idea of the uomo universale, the universal man, an idea that was especially compelling to Renaissance masters. In contemporary social theory the uomo universale is read for its generic sense as the “universal subject”. Critical to this is a dialectical sense in which “man” confronts its non-neutral association with a gender specificity, either man or woman. This paper looks at the drawing and image of the uomo universale and explores the distinction between presence and representation, between the visibility of the image, its content and detail and the symbolic role of the image as constitutive of a canon of architecture. Though we are not meant to “see” the human figure as corporeal presence and rather focus our attention on the image as a geometric schema, my argument is that only through the figure is the uomo universale engendered as an image of the highest form of nature.

Tales from the Riverbank: place-marketing and maritime heritages

Although place-marketing and image-enhancement are increasingly common elements of Western urban policy, when applied to specific locales, these abstract theories have to negotiate local conditions and contexts. This paper discusses the ways attempts to place-market the city of Hull, England, prompted debates surrounding questions of place, memory and heritage. Despite being Britain's leading fishing port in the 20th century, Hull's place-marketing strategy elided this past in favour of a sanitised vision of a modern, post-industrial city. These debates crystallised around a 1999 planning inquiry over the proposed redevelopment of the erstwhile fishing dock. While the proposals contained some reference to the dock's role as a site of place-memory, this was deemed insufficient by local protest groups and politicians who argued for a more appropriate memorial to Hull's fishing community. Eventually, the redevelopment proposals were accepted, but not before attendant debates exposed both the depth of local sentiments over place-memories and fishing heritage, and also the difficulties of negotiating inclusive and plural heritage landscapes.