The organisational benefits of teams

This study presents an analysis of the benefits of two team structures - quality circles and self-managing work groups - for Australian work organizations utilizing the Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey for 1995. The analysis indicates that firms with team structures have higher labor productivity, a flatter management structure and reduced employee turnover. The presence of team structures in Australian firms indicates a decrease in industrial harmony. The findings were inconclusive regarding absenteeism and profitability.

Managing the requirements engineering process

Process management is a crucial issue in developing information or computer systems. Theories of software development process management suggest that the process should be supported and managed based on what the process really is. However, our learning from an action research study reveals that the requirements engineering (RE) process differs significantly from that which the current literature tends to describe. The process is not a systematic, smooth and incremental evolution of the requirements model, but involves occasional simplification and restructuring of the requirements model. This revised understanding of the RE process suggests a new challenge to both the academic and industrial communities, demanding new process management approaches. In this paper, we present our understanding of the RE process and its implications for process management.

Managing student expectations online

In contrast to other studies of students in online environments, which examine the skills and attitudes that students bring to an online university learning environment, we are interested in the expectations with which students come to online university study. Four expectational barriers, which arise from students’ background and cultural history, are identified as being: who is responsible for learning, who is responsible for student interaction with content, who is responsible for the use of appropriate learning strategies and who is responsible for required ancillary skills. There is a discussion of how these barriers arise and how one might attempt to manage the students’ expectations and ameliorate their effects.

The impact of teaching models, group structures and assessment modes on cooperative learning in the student design studio

As a result of ever diminishing teaching resources, an increasing number of architectural educators are setting group design projects, rather then spreading their time thinly over a large number of individual projects. This allows them to co-ordinate longer and more in-depth review sessions on a smaller number of assignment submissions. However, while the group
model may offer an authentic learning model by reflecting design in practice, the approach is not without its obvious shortcomings as a teaching archetype for the assessment of the knowledge and skill competencies of individual students. Hence, what is clear is the need for a readily adoptable andragogy for the teaching and assessment of group design projects.
The following paper describes the background, methodology and findings of a Strategic Teaching and Learning Grant funded research project carried out in the year 2005 at the School of Architecture and Building at Deakin University. The project aimed to inform a change of classroom/studio practice governing the assemblage, teaching and assessment of student design teams. The development through these changes of cooperative and student centred learning principles focused on effective design collaboration and fair assessment should, it will be argued, lead to an enhanced group-learning experience in studio, which will subsequently and ultimately enhance professional practice.

Ensuring quality during monitoring of the learning environment of government primary schools achieved through EUI-PDP for teachers and head teachers

A positive change in the learning environment in schools is visible through ongoing professional development of teachers and administrators. Monitoring the professional development program and providing support to teachers and administrators to transfer their learnings into the school environment ensures some measures of quality. Quality issues led to the launching of the Professional Development Program (PDP) for Primary School Teachers (PSTs) of Sindh by the United Educational Initiative (UEI), a consortium of five Governmental and Non-Governmental Organizations, working under the supervision of Education Sector Reform Assistance (ESRA). Implementation of the UEI-PDP in four districts of Sindh, is ensured by a team of professionals in each district. Recognising that capacity building of district education employees would improve the educational system in the country, 130 Master Trainers were selected, on merit, from the District Education Office for the training of 17,000 teachers and 3000 Head teachers/administrators over a period of two years. This paper developed the design of a Monitoring Process for a Professional Development Program for Primary School Teachers and Administrators. Data was collected through Pre/Post observations, Interviews, Questionnaires and Reports. Such tools make it possible for the monitoring teams to observe, to inquire further, and, along with the Managers, Master Trainers and School Support Team, seek to explain the progress of the program and take corrective action where indicated. Both formative evaluations as well as summative  evaluation techniques are utilized for evaluating the program. The monitoring process that assisted in formative evaluations is described. In order to assist in summative evaluation, data collected through the monitoring process was further developed to categorize the schools where teachers and head teachers are trained. It is hoped that the categorization of the schools may lead to further improvements in those schools which fall in the group for need improvement. It may also initiate further research as to reasons behind why some schools are in the good category and why others fall in the average category.

Managing the requirements engineering process

Process management is a crucial issue in developing information or computer systems. Theories of software development process management suggest that the process should be supported and managed based on what the process really is. However, our learning from an action research study reveals that the requirements engineering (RE) process differs significantly from what the current literature tends to describe. The process is not a systematic, smooth and incremental evolution of the requirements model, but involves occasional simplification and restructuring of the requirements model. This revised understanding of the RE process suggests a new challenge to both the academic and industrial communities, demanding new process management approaches. In this paper, we present our understanding of the RE process and its implications for process management.

Teaching practices for effective cooperative learning in an online learning environment (OLE)

As a teaching practice the application of cooperative learning in tertiary education can present unique challenges for both the practitioner and her students. Mastering this teaching approach requires careful planning, design and implementation for effective deployment in a face-to-face setting. In this setting the success of the cooperative learning approach has been demonstrated. The complexity is significantly increased by additional variables such as the selection and application of technological teaching tools and the change in nature of existing variables including awareness of students' social and communication skills when applying this practice in an Online Learning Environment (OLE). In addition student acceptance of this e-learning approach to learning also needs to be carefully considered. The practitioner must be aware of these factors and have suitable methods in place to support collaboration and interaction between student groups to ensure the ultimate goal with regard to students' learning is achieved. This paper considers how cooperative learning can be combined effectively with these variables and factors of an OLE, and begins with the presentation of a conceptual framework to represent this relationship as a constructive teaching practice. It is anticipated that the conceptual framework would be applied by other practitioners to facilitate cooperative teaching within their OLE. To demonstrate the validity of the framework a case scenario is provided using an Information Technology (IT) undergraduate unit named 'IT Practice'. This is a wholly online unit where extensive participation by the students within small groups is a core requirement. The paper demonstrates the themes of designing curriculum and assessment, as well as flexible teaching strategies for learner diversity but primarily concentrates on managing an effective OLE; that is managing small groups in an online teaching environment.

Decision making effectiveness in wildfire incident management teams

During large scale wildfires, suppression activities are carried out under the direction of an Incident Management Team (IMT). The aim of the research was to increase understanding of decision processes potentially related to IMT effectiveness. An IMT comprises four major functions: Command, Operations, Planning, and Logistics. Four methodologies were used to study IMT processes: computer simulation experiments; analyses of wildfire reports; interviews with IMT members; and cognitive ethnographic studies of IMTs. Three processes were important determinants of IMT effectiveness: information management and cognitive overload; matching component function goals to overall goals; and team metacognition to detect and counter task-disruptive developments. These processes appear to be complex multi-person analogues of individual Incident Command processes identified previously. The findings have implications for issues such as: creating IMTs; training IMTs; managing IMTs; and providing decision support to IMTs.

Working and learning in vocational education and training in the knowledge era : final report of the professional development for the future project

This Report summarises the outcomes of the phases of the Professional
Development for the Future Project and presents the implications of this research for professional development of staff in Vocational Education and Training (VET), as they become knowledge workers.

These shifts are occurring within the knowledge era. Distinguishing features of this era are summarised into four broad areas:
- the importance and value placed on knowledge in organisations
- the time span of discretion
- the complexity of relationships, and
- the ubiquitous nature of information and communication technology.

It is within this context that work is currently performed, and understanding this context provides the foundation for considering new capabilities required in the knowledge era.
Key capabilities required of knowledge workers to work effectively in the
knowledge era were drawn together from an analysis of the theoretical literature and the results of interviews with knowledge workers. The core capabilities identified include:
- adaptive problem solving – becoming designers as well as problem -
solvers
- rapid knowledge gathering and sharing with others
- discriminating between relevant and irrelevant information, and
- understanding and working effectively with the organisation’s culture.

Knowledge era characteristics and knowledge worker capabilities have been mapped to each other illustrating conceptual linkages between these two areas.

Professional development themes drawn from interviews with knowledge
workers are presented. While global trends in knowledge work have been well documented, the impact of these trends on the capabilities of workers, and the ways in which knowledge workers develop these capabilities is less well understood. Their learning methods challenge our current thinking in relation to the ways in which workers acquire skills and knowledge. Some of the professional development methods include seeking exposure to new ideas from a wide variety of sources, embracing intense learning opportunities, and using relationships to increase knowledge.

‘Thought pieces’ (see p17 ff) commissioned for this Project, as well as
subsequent interviews with the authors, provided further insights into the
professional development of knowledge workers. The implications of these insights are an extension of earlier themes and emphasise:
- the emergent nature of knowledge work
- the importance of relationships that facilitate knowledge sharing
- coherent conversations and dialogue
- collaborative work and generosity.

A key insight is the shift from thinking about knowledge work in terms of
borrowed knowledge to an emphasis on generated knowledge within a context.

Data from focus groups of the Project provide further insights for knowledge worker professional development. These augment the perspectives of the earlier data analysis but also add greater emphasis to:
- the clear and direct relationship between professional development and
work and career aspirations of knowledge workers,
- the relationship of professional development to the organisational
mission, and
- the issues of managing and leading knowledge workers and their
development.

As part of this analysis the defining features of organisational life in VET were reviewed in relation to effective professional development of knowledge workers.

The final section of the Report revisits the core dimensions of the Project.
Concise commentaries on working and learning in the knowledge era,
professional development in the knowledge era, and leadership and
management in the knowledge era are presented.

The Report concludes with a discussion of the enablers of professional
development for knowledge workers in VET. This discussion is introduced by a re-statement of the VET sector’s positioning in the knowledge era and the consequences of this for VET managers an d staff in terms of complexity, uncertainty and diminished prospects for accurate predictiveness. The enablers comprised:
- integration of information technology into socio -technical systems
- greater understanding of the organisation from within
- connecting staff to the organisation’s fundamental identity
- connecting to the work and career trajectories of workers
- establishing work structures which integrate the use of professional
development resources with knowledge work
- providing workers with the autonomy to design their own professional
development activities
- building professional development into the iterative nature of knowledge
work, and
- creating organisational contexts that value intuitive thinking and working.

Professional development needs to be thou ght of in a much broader context in the knowledge era. What each VET staff member knows and shares will become increasingly central to their work, and in that sense all VET workers require capabilities for knowledge work. This report accurately describes t he VET context, the capabilities required, and the organisational enablers that will promote ‘knowing’ and thus embed a new style of professional development within VET.

New learning networks and their invisible students : policy as simulation or the avoidance game?

Within a climate of policy hysteria, it is often claimed that a 'preoccupation with performance' develops, focussing on individual success stories, resulting in 'fad-like waves of adoption and abandonment'. Within this increasing pace and intensity of reform, new networks are formed and new relationships developed, with key players taking on new forms of identity to morph into the constantly changing policy climate. Despite continued evidence of young people's pathways from school being more like mosaic than linear, new policy still seeks to define and limit the possible lines of flight and trajectories, closely managing the education and training of young people at risk. In Victoria, the major policy initiative has involved the establishment of LLENs, the local all purpose solution to young people who might not be sticking to the linear policy pathway. So are we involved in 'an avoidance game', filling up the post compulsory policy space with more and more policies, which in fact seek to continue to regulate and constrain young people, rather than supporting them? This paper interrogates the policies and practices which have created the learning networks, of the SGR LLEN through policy analysis and case studies.

Managing sport in drought-new stakeholders and new governance issues : a case study

Globally, almost every nation is facing some form of water crisis (World Commission on Water 2000). In Australia, the sport and recreation industry is one of the highest consumers of water. Other high water consuming industries (such as agriculture and farming) have been forced to adhere to strict managerial and governance reform due to the water crisis, yet in the sport and recreation industry, such changes are yet to be implemented and fully realised across the sector.

This research examines the impacts of drought and sustainable water management for sport and recreation. Specifically, it provides a case study of sport and recreation provision in a municipality that has already undergone considerable reform due to long-term drought. Sport and recreation use water for purposes such as irrigation of playing fields/pitches, filling swimming pools, stadium amenities and facilities, kitchens, maintenance and cleaning, and clubhouse amenities.

For sports that are heavy users of water for the maintenance of playing fields (such as soccer, Australian Rules football, rugby league, rugby union, grass and clay tennis courts to name a few) the impacts of drought and water restrictions have been severe. Some sports have reported an increase in the risk of injury to participants because of the condition of un-watered playing fields (Sport and Recreation Victoria 2007). Others have been forced to delay or shorten their seasons (Sleeman 2007), or worse still, cancel training and organised competition completely (Connolly and Bell 2007). While the impact of water restrictions has been profound on most sports, there are some sports that are not heavy water users and the impact of drought and water restrictions has been minimal. This problem creates issues and apparent inequities raising the need to further examine water consumption in sport and recreation. The potential outcome that arises is that the future of those sports that cannot conduct their competitions may be disadvantaged, while other sports that do not have such problems may be able to flourish.

Water, and those who control the supply of it, then defines which sports are able to flourish and sustain sport development pathways, compared to those whose survival may be in jeopardy. This research explores the stakeholder management and governance issues that have resulted for sport and recreation in the City of Greater Geelong (CoGG) located in Victoria, Australia--a region in long-term water crisis. The supply of sport and recreation facilities in the CoGG (like most municipalities in Australia) is largely the responsibility of the municipal council. The corporation responsible for the supply of water to the municipality is Barwon Water.

Although other sport and recreation facilities exist in the CoGG, the municipal council of CoGG owns and maintains over 120 sporting ovals (including the stadium used by its professional Australian Football League (AFL) team, the Cats), six swimming pools, and three golf courses. The CoGG host their professional AFL team, a range of local, national and international sport events, and provide a wide range of sport and recreation facilities for the community residents.

Eight interviews were conducted in total. Interviews were conducted with representatives from CoGG municipal council (who are responsible for the delivery of sport and recreation services and facilities in Geelong), and representatives from Barwon Water (who are responsible for the ongoing provision and maintenance of sport and recreation services and facilities) through the provision of water. Results show that the ten highest users of water in the municipality are sport and recreation facilitieswhich between them use almost one-third of the city's total water consumption (City of Greater Geelong 2006).

The municipal council is under considerable pressure to find ways to continue to provide sport and recreation opportunities for community members, as well as professional athletes and teams who use these facilities despite water restrictions. After all, these facilities provide benefit to spectators and participants, as well as businesses that rely on visitors to Geelong for sport and recreation events.

Due to such pressures, from 2007, the CoGG and Barwon Water agreed to provide the sport and recreation sector with water allocations rather than to be denied of all water under the water restriction regimes in place in the municipality. During 2007 summer sport season, this allowed the CoGG to keep 16 of its 120 sporting ovals open for participation through allocating all available water to these fields in order to keep them safe and playable. However, CoGG and Barwon Water were required to devise a rating scale to determine which sports (and sport facilities) were to share the allocated water, and which were not. These decisions also had knock on effects through sports. In order to ensure the safety of the playing surfaces, the CoGG and Barwon Water also restricted use of fields to competition only, therefore sport participants were forced to train on local beaches and other parkland areas-transferring issues of safety and public liability to other locations and facilities in the community. Further, it was reported that scheduling of competition seasons and individual matches; as well as the allocation of "home ground" gate receipts and concessions profits were required to be governed by the CoGG and Barwon Water as the competing sports were unable to agree. Perhaps more importantly, the rating scale developed for water allocation also resulted in some sports being rated as ineligible for water and as a result were unable to stage their entire competitions.

Clearly, the water allocation rating scale, and approach taken in this municipality to the continued delivery of sport and recreation has provided a workable solution. However, this study also signals that new stakeholders have entered the arena for the governance of sport. Governance structures in sport and recreation are being impacted as a result of the water crisis.

Those making decisions about which sport and recreation activities and/or facilities will be assisted with water resources are being made by local councils and water corporations. Sport managers are being required to understand existing areas of knowledge (such as turf management) in different ways, to gain knowledge in new areas (such as sustainable water management), and to lobby new stakeholder groups (such as water corporations) in order to secure their futures. The continued existence of some sports is no longer in the hands of governing bodies, but in the hands of local councils, and water corporations.

Clearly, any of the solutions implemented as discussed above, require multiple stakeholders to interact, and to reach agreement in order to assist in sustainable management of water in sport and recreation. In this sense, the management of water in sport (and all other industries) is more than a rational decision about policy, legislation, restrictions and resource allocations. It is a social and political process requiring scholarly attention for practical solutions.

Learning style drift : correlation between built environment students' learning styles and the learning styles of their teachers

This paper focuses on the results of a cross-curriculum learning style survey conducted in an Australian School of Architecture and Building as part of an ongoing project aimed at resolving the learning difficulties of students collaborating in multi-disciplinary and multicultural team assignments. The research was conducted to determine how learning style differences in heterogeneous design teams might be addressed through pedagogy. We will argue that the likelihood of and reasons for learning style fluidity in student design cohorts needs determining if learning style theory is to provide a workable model for informing the teaching of design.
In light of evidence in student cohorts of learning style changes as students progress through their studies (Tucker, 2007), this research discusses one explanation of what appears to belearning style fluidity in architecture student cohorts. If, as prior research has indicated, the learning styles of academics are quite different from practitioners, evidence of a learning style drift in built environment students towards the predominant learning styles of their design teachers might suggest that students are learning how to be academics rather than practitioners. This, of course, might have serious implications for built environment teaching and for practice.

Designing blended learning in higher education : the neomillenial learner and mediated immersion

Blended learning as a term and a learning approach is still being refined, at times debated as a legitimate area of research, at times seen as the answer to the conundrum and challenges of the digital learner. Is it the Emperor’s new clothes? As Morrison (2003) suggests, blended learning could be seen as an uncertain or unsure strategy, or alternatively a way to find a solution to promises given for e-learning. Three case studies within this paper explore the possibilities of e-learning within a work-based framework. Elements of ‘neomillenial learning styles’ (Dede in Educause Quarterly vol 28 No 1 2005) reflected by students in postgraduate coursework programs provided the challenge and stimulation of designing and facilitating e-learning components, incorporating experiential or action learning with ‘associational’ approaches rather than linear ones. The journey to virtual simulations such as the postgraduate Newlandia incorporates the learner perspective, or how to activate neomillenial learning styles; blended learning with online and face-to-face community activist groups working for solutions to a water problem; and a virtual scenario which can appeal to and engage an internationalised user group. Do Dede’s neomillenial learners synthesise and process experiences rather than (or as well as) information? Is this mediated immersion a part of Newlandia’s applicability to the modern learner? The student teams of community activists and project managers described in the case studies incorporate a potent mix of learning styles, nationalities and backgrounds, expectations, interpersonal and technical skills and indicate a trend in millennial learners towards a community of knowledge which is collaborative, mobile and group-focused.

The student experience of working in teams online

The research reported here is part of a project undertaken at a large Australian university in late 2005. The overall aim of the project was to identify the characteristics of student learning in an online environment. A university-wide student survey was conducted to ascertain student views of online learning and also of online teaching as part of the project. In the survey students were asked questions about their experiences of team work in online environments. The student perceptions of teams and team work are the focus of this paper.

The findings from the survey indicated that students appreciated the opportunity of working in diverse teams. They supported the view that their opinions were valued in such teams. Student views of how teaching should be conducted in units with online teams were also expressed. Concerns about team interactions, technological barriers and communication and cultural issues were also raised. The implications for teaching with online student teams are presented and discussed.