How social is the virtual design studio? A case study of a third year design studio

With the advent of social networks, it became apparent that the social aspect of designing and learning plays a crucial role in students’ education. Technologies and skills are the base on which learners interact. The ease of communication, leadership opportunity, democratic interaction, teamwork, and the sense of community are some of the aspects that are now in the centre of design interaction. The paper examines Virtual Design Studios (VDS) that used media-rich platforms and analyses the influence the social aspect plays in solving all problems on the sample of a design studio at Deakin University. It studies the effectiveness of the generated social intelligence and explores the facilitation of students’ self-directed learning. Hereby the paper studies the construction of knowledge via social interaction and how blended learning environments foster motivation and information exchange. It presents its finding based on VDS that were held over the past three years.

Feeding back and enhancing authentic learning in quality course assessment design : locating information systems education in rigorous educational research

Locating information systems education foursquare within rigorous and substantial educational research is crucial if the discipline is to receive the scholarly attention that it warrants. One way to do that is to highlight how current information systems course design in Australian undergraduate and postgraduate programs exhibits the strongest possible elements of contemporary learning theories. This paper analyses selected features of the design of an information systems postgraduate course in an Australian university, including the use of peer review of journal entries and writing professional reports to enhance authentic learning and maximise quality assessment design. The analysis is framed by the principles of instructional design theory (Snyder 2009). The authors argue that, by demonstrating theoretically grounded and effective educational practice, the course highlights the value of being located in wider educational research, and of bringing the two fields more closely together.

Understanding the role of social media monitoring in generating external intelligence

Social media data are becoming increasingly critical for businesses to capture, analyse, and utilise in a timely manner. However, the unstructured and distributed nature and volume of this information makes the task of extracting useful and practical information challenging. Given the dynamic evolution of social media and social media monitoring, our current understanding of how social media monitoring can help organisations to create business value is inadequate. As a result, there is a need to study how organisations can (a) extract and analyse social media data related to their business (Sensing), and (b) utilise external intelligence gained from social media monitoring for specific business initiatives (Seizing). This study uses a qualitative approach with a multiple embedded case study design to understand the phenomenon of social media monitoring and its outcome for organisations. Anticipated contributions are presented.

The social side of social media : technology or collaboration?

This paper discusses how course design may draw upon social media in order to teach students appropriate skills for a network society in the context of team-work based learning. The emphasis is not upon web 2.0 and social media as inherently suited to providing educational solutions, but upon the ways in which they can be adapted by course designers within the framework of explicit learning objectives. More specifically, we provide a case study of how the use of social media in a blended or wholly-online learning environment provides affordances for team-based collaborative learning, especially when incorporated within a course design that encourages independent, self-directed and authentic learning. This paper argues we need to assess the social aspects of social media, rather than upon the technological, that is, avoid the fetishisation of 'apps,' through the creation of assessment that alternately foregrounds a critical appraisal of web 2.0 technologies and places onus upon the students to develop, with guidance, teamwork skills and processes. We provide an example of how it is possible to integrate web 2.0 technologies into their learning processes and assessment, in order to teach about the realities of collaborating with others in small teams in a work environment increasingly mediated by the Internet. In order to achieve these learning outcomes, course design needs to balance scaffolding with the need to place the imperative for learning specific content and skills upon the students, the latter through the provision of assessment outcomes and resources that the students need to work towards together.

Estimator-based sliding mode control strategy design

This study addresses the design and properties of serial sliding mode control (SMC) systems for an induction servo motor drive to track periodic commands. It contains a SMC, an adaptive SMC (ASMC) and an estimator-based SMC (ESMC). The effectiveness of the proposed control systems is verifi ed by numerical simulations, and the superiority of the ESMC system is indicated in comparison with the SMC and ASMC systems.

The dynamic interplay of news media and bilingual education policy in Australia's Northern Territory 1988-2008

his study investigates the dynamic interplay between news media and the Northern Territory’s policy of bilingual education for indigenous children living in some remote communities. It provides evidence to support the argument that the media-related practices of a range of policy actors resulted in policy processes being shaped to a significant degree by ‘media logic’. The research is based on depth interviews and uses the spoken words of participants to gain access to the local experiences and perspectives of those invested in developing, influencing and communicating the bilingual education policy. Through the analysis of more than 20 interviews with journalists, public servants, academics, and politicians as well as indigenous and non-indigenous bilingual education advocates, I have identified a range of media-related practices that have enabled policy actors to penetrate the policy debate, define problems for policymaking and public discussion through the news media, and thereby exert particular forms of influence in the policy process. The study also provides a ‘southern theory’ analysis of the Yolngu public sphere and a Bourdesian understanding of the journalism sub-field of indigenous reporting in the Northern Territory. It shows that issues of physical and cultural remoteness and the need for journalists to develop cultural competence are the hallmarks of this reporting specialization. It also identifies marked differences in journalists’ relationships with government, academic and indigenous sources and how these differences play out in the way participants understand the production and reception of media texts. This research makes an innovative contribution to Australian Journalism Studies by demonstrating how indigenous epistemologies and knowledges offer fresh perspectives and insights about news media and indigeneity that can be brought into balance with northern theories to build what Connell (2007) has called ‘southern theory’. This dovetails with another key outcome, which is the development of an academic form of journalism that serves indigenous peoples’ self-determinist aims for scholarly research, based in indigenous perspectives and research methodologies.

Trained to think- trained to design

With new changes to the role and view of design, design professionals are now a part of greater thinking and action on issues that are traditionally outside of the designer's realm. How does design education adapt to this reality? Russell Kennedy explores this and the role that the Icograda Education Network plays in the future of design education. Highlights of this article were originally published in Cumulus' DESIGNER: Careers and Professionalization.

Social media as a learning environment : how, why, where and when people learn

This paper reports on an 18-month high school action research study and how this could be used to inform course designers and educators in other sectors of education. The high school study focused on the integration of social media into the face-to-face classroom. It used action research in a Victorian public high school in a total of 13 of the author’s classes. Data collection was in three phases over an eighteen month period. This involved the teacher creating one online social network and sharing this dynamic environment with up to seven classes in a semester. Blogs, groups, chats, discussion forums, Web 2.0 tools and a wide range of student-generated content were shared online, within a class and between classes. Students were encouraged to interact and to share their thoughts and ideas about planning as well as using their out-of-school skills and knowledge. Each topic, within each class, was one action research cycle. A number of the findings from this high school study were integrated into post-secondary education subjects at Deakin University. In an era of social media, this high school study has provided insight into how, why, where and when students learn, and by blending many of the findings into Deakin University courses, this study offers a new way of approaching teaching and learning in the broader notion of tertiary education and training.

Redesigning learning through social media, Web 2.0 and F2F teaching : an action research study

The focus of this research was to explore how social and participatory media could be used to enhance the face-to-face teaching and learning process. Action research was used to design learning that valued the students’ own experiences and to encourage students to create, connect and form a partnership in the learning process: hence supporting students' strengths and abilities. To monitor and participate in the use of social media required an increase in the teacher's work time. As a partial counter-balance, it was found that the teacher/researcher successfully reduced her time spent on correction by implementing peer and self-assessment and by making more effective use of classroom observations. This led to a valuable triangulation of assessment data. Reviewing many of the screen clips collected in this study, one can see the diversity of roles and activities in which the students were engaged, and their development over time through the action research cycle. Combining Web 2.0, face-to-face teaching and social media, where students made online friends and used pseudonyms, provided students with more choices and flexibility when working, communicating and learning. This research may help curriculum developers interweave new technologies, new literacies and multimodal learning methods into day-to-day learning programs. The developed methods of learning and designs should also be transferable to other educational learning environments.

Global classrooms : from telling the world to showing the world

Web 2.0 and online participatory media are becoming valuable resources for educators as we become more aware of the flexible and creative nature of such tools. This is opening up further opportunities for collaboration across classes, schools and countries where a global perspective on learning can support students in becoming active participants in the learning process. The purpose of this research study was to explore how social and participatory media could be used safely in the classroom to support a more global approach to learning. The objective was to design a framework for learning that provided students with opportunities to interact and to learn through formal projects, but also informally through online social interaction. This framework valued students’ funds of knowledge (Comber & Kamler, 2005; González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005) and encouraged them to be active participants in their own learning and that of their peers. This article will focus on the global nature of the learning that took place while looking at instructional design and assessment processes. It will also highlight:
• Developing students into responsible global citizens;
• Increasing global awareness and perspectives;
• Building knowledge and understandings of those different to themselves;
• Valuing others and developing key critical skills and processes including empathy, fairness and cooperation.
This research provides a framework that integrates all of these aspects into the day-to-day classroom program within a wide range of curriculum content.

Towards global benchmarking of food environments and policies to reduce obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases : design and methods for nation-wide surveys

Introduction: 

The challenges of blended learning using a media annotation tool

Blended learning has been evolving as an important approach to learning and teaching in tertiary education. This approach incorporates learning in both online and face-to-face modes and promotes deep learning by incorporating the best of both approaches. An innovation in blended learning is the use of an online media annotation tool (MAT) in combination with face-to-face classes. This tool allows students to annotate their own or teacher-uploaded video adding to their understanding of professional skills in various disciplines in tertiary education. Examination of MAT occurred in 2011 and included nine cohorts of students using the tool. This article canvasses selected data relating to MAT including insights into the use of blended learning focussing on the challenges of combining face-to-face and online learning using a relatively new online tool.

Sport and social media research: a review

The emergence of social media has profoundly impacted the delivery and consumption of sport. In the current review we analysed the existing body of knowledge of social media in the field of sport management from a service-dominant logic perspective, with an emphasis on relationship marketing. We reviewed 70 journal articles published in English-language sport management journals, which investigated new media technologies facilitating interactivity and co-creation that allow for the development and sharing of user-generated content among and between brands and individuals (i.e., social media). Three categories of social media research were identified: strategic, operational, and user-focussed. The findings of the review demonstrate that social media research in sport management aligns with service-dominant logic and illustrates the role of social media in cultivating relationships among and between brands and individuals. Interaction and engagement play a crucial role in cultivating these relationships. Discussion of each category, opportunities for future research as well as suggestions for theoretical approaches, research design and context are advanced.

Social media conflict: platforms for racial vilification, or acts of provocation and citizenship?

Although racism remains an issue for social media sites such as YouTube, this focus often overshadows the site’s productive capacity to generate ‘agonistic publics’ from which expressions of cultural citizenship and solidarity might emerge. This paper examines these issues through two case studies: the recent proliferation of mobile phone video recordings of racist rants on public transport, and racist interactions surrounding the performance of a Maori ‘flash mob’ haka in New Zealand that was recorded and uploaded to YouTube. We contrast these incidents as they are played out primarily through social media, with the case of Australian Football League player Adam Goodes and the broadcast media reaction to a racial slur aimed against him by a crowd member during the AFL’s Indigenous Round. We discuss the prevalence of vitriolic exchange and racial bigotry, but also, and more importantly, the productive and equally aggressive defence of more inclusive and tolerant forms of cultural identification that play out across these different media forms. Drawing on theories of cultural citizenship along with the political theory of Chantal Mouffe, we point to the capacities of YouTube as ‘platform’, and to social media practices, in facilitating ground-up antiracism and generating dynamic, contested and confronting micropublics.

Sport and social media research: a review

The emergence of social media has profoundly impacted the delivery and consumption of sport. In the current review we analysed the existing body of knowledge of social media in the field of sport management from a service-dominant logic perspective, with an emphasis on relationship marketing. We reviewed 70 journal articles published in English-language sport management journals, which investigated new media technologies facilitating interactivity and co-creation that allow for the development and sharing of user-generated content among and between brands and individuals (i.e., social media). Three categories of social media research were identified: strategic, operational, and user-focussed. The findings of the review demonstrate that social media research in sport management aligns with service-dominant logic and illustrates the role of social media in cultivating relationships among and between brands and individuals. Interaction and engagement play a crucial role in cultivating these relationships. Discussion of each category, opportunities for future research as well as suggestions for theoretical approaches, research design and context are advanced.