In what ways does policy on academic integrity, copyright and privacy need to respond in order to accommodate assessment with Web 2.0 tools?

Increasingly social web technologies, such as blogging and micro-blogging, audio and video podcasting, photo/video, social bookmarking, social networking, wiki writing or virtual worlds are being used as forms of authoring or content creation to support students’ learning in higher education. As Web 2.0 teaching practice is characterised by open access to information and collaborative networks there are both familiar and novel challenges for policy-makers in higher education institutions. The Government 2.0 Taskforce heralded legislative and practice changes necessary because of Web 2.0. We reflect on the qualitative feedback received from innovative higher education practitioners using Web 2.0 to assess student work. This indicates a need for information policy review to accommodate the cultural shift towards information exchange and communication across traditional institutional boundaries. Issues involved when implementing Web 2.0 assessments are identified to highlight requisite areas for policy improvement in higher education, in particular for academic integrity, copyright and privacy policies

Impact of the Learn to Play program on play, social competence and language for children aged 5 - 8 years who attend a specialist school

Introduction
The aim of this study was to investigate the change in the relationship between play, language and social skills of children aged 5–8 years pre and post participation in the ‘Learn to Play’ program. The Learn to Play program is a child led play based intervention aimed at developing self-initiated pretend play skills in children.

Methods
All 19 participants attended a specialist school, with 10 of the 19 children having a diagnosis of autism. The play, language and social skills of the children were assessed at baseline and at follow up. Children were assessed using the Child-Initiated Pretend Play Assessment, the Preschool Language Scale and the Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale. Follow up data collection occurred after the children had been participating in the Learn to Play program for 1 hour twice a week for 6 months.

Results
After 6 months in the program, typical indicators of play accounted for an increase of 47.3% in shared variance with social interaction and an increase of 36% in shared variance for social connection. For language, object substitution ability accounted for 50% of the shared variance, which was an increase of 27% from baseline.

Conclusion
The ‘Learn to Play’ program was associated with increases in children's language and social skills over a 6-month period within a special school setting, indicating the Learn to Play program is an effective intervention for children with developmental disabilities. This paper presents an example of how the Learn to Play program can be adapted into a classroom setting.

The simple yet complex development of social and participatory media for classroom learning : building a hybrid learning environment through action research

This paper reports on part of a teacher/researcher’s PhD action research study. It explains the complexity of features that social media brings to the teaching and learning process while discussing the simplicity and power of its use. Through the action research cycle, learning programs were designed to take advantage of the unique communicative methods offered by social media and web 2.0 whilst maintaining the value of face-to-face learning. Students used social media spaces such as blogs, groups and discussion forums as well as developing their own profiles and avatars to communicate online by making friends, leaving comments and uploading content which included publishing, peer reviewing and self assessment. The author argues that, by designing learning that valued and combined the attributes of social media, Web 2.0 and face-to-face teaching she was able to produce a more student-centred approach; hence, developing a ‘Hybrid’ learning environment which supported many 21st Century skills.

Sustaining modified behaviours learnt in a diabetes prevention program in regional Australia : the role of social context

Background
The Greater Green Triangle diabetes prevention program was conducted in primary health care setting of Victoria and South Australia in 2004--2006. This program demonstrated significant reductions in diabetes risk factors which were largely sustained at 18 month follow-up. The theoretical model utilised in this program achieved its outcomes through improvements in coping self-efficacy and planning. Previous evaluations have concentrated on the behavioural components of the intervention. Other variables external to the main research design may have contributed to the success factors but have yet to be identified. The objective of this evaluation was to identify the extent to which participants in a diabetes prevention program sustained lifestyle changes several years after completing the program and to identify contextual factors that contributed to sustaining changes.

Methods
A qualitative evaluation was conducted. Five focus groups were held with people who had completed a diabetes prevention program, several years later to assess the degree to which they had sustained program strategies and to identify contributing factors.

Results
Participants value the recruitment strategy. Involvement in their own risk assessment was a strong motivator. Learning new skills gave participants a sense of empowerment. Receiving regular pathology reports was a means of self-assessment and a motivator to continue. Strong family and community support contributed to personal motivation and sustained practice.

Conclusions
Family and local community supports constitute the contextual variables reported to contribute to sustained motivation after the program was completed. Behaviour modification programs can incorporate strategies to ensure these factors are recognised and if necessary, strengthened at the local level.

Social media in the classroom : a simple yet complex hybrid environment for students

This article reports on part of the author’s PhD action research study. It examines the complexity of features that social media and Web 2.0 offer when combined with face-to-face teaching and learning. Action research was used to help redesign the learning programs of thirteen Middle Years classes over an eighteen month period. These learning programs took advantage of the unique communicative methods offered by social media and provided spaces such as blogs, groups and discussion forums. Students developed their own identity when working online, made online friends, left comments for peers and uploaded content which included publishing, peer reviewing and self assessment. The research highlighted the simplicity in the creation and exchange of user-generated content and interaction while identifying a complex depth behind such interaction. Designing learning programs using social media enabled the students to be active and valued participants in the learning process and a ‘hybrid’ learning environment

Designing social media into university learning : technology of collaboration or collaboration for technology?

Using the example of an undergraduate unit of study that is taught both on-campus and externally, but uses Internet-based learning in both cases, we explore how social media might be used effectively in higher education. We place into question the assumption that such technologies necessarily engage students in constructivist learning; we argue that the affordances of social media must be complemented by social affordances, designed into the learning experience, which thereby generate the necessary connection between students’ motivations to study and their motivations to exploit social media. We demonstrate, via the example given, how assessment structures and strategies are the most effective focus when attempting to create the pedagogical affordances that might lead to collaborative learning.

The pragmatic portfolio : an assessment approach for distributed learning

Portfolios, especially where they involve some use of or link to online technologies, are currently a popular focus for learning innovation in universities, drawing on a tradition of using portfolios in some areas of higher education and attempting to extend and broaden this practice. In some cases this focus has led to ambitious plans for whole-of-institution approaches, often involving significant technological development. However, the term portfolio can also cover a wider variety of possible learning and assessment activities and there are ways of using portfolios which, while quite traditional in their own form and approach, enable teachers to approach other aspects of their curriculum and pedagogy in far more innovative ways. This paper explores the conceptual basis on which the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University of Technology is utilising a pragmatic approach to portfolio assessment within individual units of study, so as to enable a more thorough implementation of distributed learning. In this form of learning, where students regularly contribute to their own and others' learning through short tasks and conversations, the evidence of achievement is widely distributed and not easily accessible for either formative or summative assessment. As explained in the paper, students are required to collate, select, and then contextualise a sample of these numerous productive moments of their ongoing study. The paper concludes that while other goals for portfolio assessment (such as encouraging reflection) can also be used with this approach, its primary value is in unleashing the potential of social media creativity in a manner that motivates students via the requirement of assessment, enables feedback to be provided to guide learning, and which promotes shared responsibility between teachers and students in determining the kind and extent of their learning activities.

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.

Sustainability evaluation, life cycle assessment and facilities management for Geelong Retail Development

Value management is a technique used during the design stage to justify cost and worth of a proposal. Designer must never center only to save capital expenditure but consider holistically the whole building life which will be sustainable. Therefore, sustainability evaluation must adopt a long term view and will properly include three crucial elements: economic, social and environmental. Lack of awareness of value management during the design stage of a building project will adversely impact on the life cycle assessment (LCA) and facilities management (FM). This paper provides a review of the sustainable elements that must be considered when designing and costing a new retail development in the Geelong region of Australia and how these factors influence the whole building life. The result of this research helps to create a greater understanding of the different attributes that will affect the LCA and FM decisions made on sustainable development in this and other regional Australian cities that are undergoing major population growth.

Embedded restricted Boltzmann machines for fusion of mixed data types and applications in social measurements analysis

Analysis and fusion of social measurements is important to understand what shapes the public’s opinion and the sustainability of the global development. However, modeling data collected from social responses is challenging as the data is typically complex and heterogeneous, which might take the form of stated facts, subjective assessment, choices, preferences or any combination thereof. Model-wise, these responses are a mixture of data types including binary, categorical, multicategorical, continuous, ordinal, count and rank data. The challenge is therefore to effectively handle mixed data in the a unified fusion framework in order to perform inference and analysis. To that end, this paper introduces eRBM (Embedded Restricted Boltzmann Machine) – a probabilistic latent variable model that can represent mixed data using a layer of hidden variables transparent across different types of data. The proposed model can comfortably support largescale data analysis tasks, including distribution modelling, data completion, prediction and visualisation. We demonstrate these versatile features on several moderate and large-scale publicly available social survey datasets.

Analysing stakeholder-associated risks in green buildings : a social network analysis method

In the research of risk associated with developing energy and water efficient green buildings, previous studies had mainly focused on "what the risks are and how the risks may impact on project objectives", which were from an inward looking self-perspective and treated the risks in isolation from one another. While intensive research efforts have been dedicated to risk identification, assessment, classification, prioritisation and mitigation, a research gap exists, that is previous studies had ignored the fact that most risks are interrelated and associated with internal or external project stakeholders. To remedy the gap, this current research developed and presented a SNA (Social Network Analysis) based stakeholder-associated risk analysis method to assess risks in green buildings and the interactions between the risks. A case study has been conducted to demonstrate and validate this method. This research contributes to the development of a new theory to model the interdependent and interactive relationships of risks by using SNA as a methodology. This research should broaden project managers' awareness of the influential risks in green building and enhance their ability to perceive, understand, assess, and mitigate the risks in an effective and efficient way, thereby achieving higher performance in strategic risk management and stakeholder communication in green building development.

Brief report: children with ADHA without co-morbid autism do not have impaired motor proficiency on the Movement Assessment Battery for Children

Motor proficiency was investigated in a sample of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder-Combined type (ADHD-CT) without autism. Accounting for the influence of co-morbid autistic symptoms in ADHD motor studies is vital given that motor impairment has been linked to social–communication symptoms in children who have co-morbid ADHD and autistic-like symptoms. Two groups of children aged between 7–14 years were recruited; children with ADHD-CT (n = 16; mean age 10 years, 7 months [SD = 1 year, 10 months]) and a typically developing (n = 16; mean age 10 years, 6 months [SD = 2 years, 6 months]) group. Motor proficiency was measured using the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2nd Edition, ADHD symptoms were measured using the Conner’s Parent Rating Scale. Children with ADHD-CT who had been screened for co-morbid autism did not display motor difficulties on the MABC-2. Higher levels of inattention, but not hyperactivity or impulsivity were associated with poorer motor performance. These findings provide indirect evidence that the motor problems that children with ADHD experience may be related to co-occurring social responsiveness impairments.

An assessment of empowerment through highly participatory asset-based community development in Myanmar

Asset-based community development (ABCD) is a highly participatory approach to development that seeks to empower communities to draw on tangible and social community assets to manage their own development. The strength of ABCD is its ability to facilitate people imagining their world differently, resulting in action to change their circumstances. Previous research has shown international non-government organisations have found highly participatory, community-led approaches to development to have been particularly effective forms of poverty mitigation and community empowerment within Myanmar, even before the current reforms, which is surprising given the restrictive socio-political context created by authoritarian rule by a regime with an international reputation for human rights violations. 

This paper documents ABCD programs within Myanmar, one of the poorest countries in Asia suffering major underdevelopment and ranking poorly across a wide range of socioeconomic indicators. It explores the operation, effectiveness and reasons behind the success of ABCD programs in this environment, and reflects on the role of outsiders in ABCD in the light of underlying theory and this contemporary experience. This research draws largely on recent field interviews and personal experience working in this sector within Myanmar, as well as surveying a number of evaluation reports which have been made publically available.

Assessment of public attitudes towards sex offenders in an Australian population

Public attitudes towards sex offenders are believed to play a key role in the development of legislation and public policy designed to manage the risks posed by known sex offenders who live in the community. There have, however, been few previous attempts to validate methods by which public attitudes can be measured. The current study aims to address this issue by establishing the factor structure of the Community Attitudes Towards Sex Offenders (CATSO) scale with an Australian community sample and examine the extent to which demographic variables and support for sex offender management policies influence these attitudes. A sample of 552 participants recruited through online social media sites completed the CATSO as well as a number of items developed by the researchers designed to assess individuals’ support for specific sex offender policies. Results of an exploratory factor analysis suggested the presence of four distinct factors which were labelled ‘social tendencies’, ‘treatment and punishment’, ‘crime characteristics’ and ‘sexual behaviour’. Individuals with higher levels of educational attainment rated sex offenders less negatively than those with lower educational attainment, while those who reported being supportive of community notification reported more negative attitudes towards sex offenders.

State body dissatisfaction and social interactions : an experience sampling study

To date, there has been limited empirical scrutiny of the correlates and consequences of day-to-day state body dissatisfaction fluctuations within naturalistic contexts. We used ecological momentary assessment (a form of naturalistic observation) to evaluate whether state body dissatisfaction was concurrently and/or prospectively associated with occurrence and quality of social interactions. Women (N = 121), aged 18 to 40, completed a brief trait-based survey and then nominated a 7-day period within which to receive seven text messages daily, at random intervals, prompting them to complete measures of body dissatisfaction at that moment. If they were currently or had recently engaged in social interactions, they were also asked to fill out questions rating the quality of these interactions (operationalized in terms of enjoyment of, and control in, the interaction). Findings suggest that the relationship between state body dissatisfaction and aspects of social interactions is complex and may vary over time. Cross-sectionally, state body dissatisfaction and social interaction quality were negatively associated. Prospectively, however, body dissatisfaction predicted subsequent avoidance of social interactions. Interestingly, when women chose to avoid social interactions, their body dissatisfaction worsened, yet when they did engage in social interactions, they reported improved body satisfaction. Importantly, the links between state body dissatisfaction and social interactions may be moderated by body mass index and trait body satisfaction levels. Potential mechanisms underlying the association between state body dissatisfaction and quality and quantity of social interactions are discussed, and future research avenues are proposed to further understand their inter-relation.