Practical field use of eye-tracking devices for consumer research in the retail environment

Eye-tracking equipment is now affordable and portable, making it a practical instrument for consumer research. Engineered to best analyze gaze on a plane (e.g., a retail shelf), both portable eye-tracking glasses and computer monitor–mounted hardware can play key roles in analyzing merchandise displays to better understand what consumers view. Researchers and practitioners can use that information to improve the sales efficacy of displays. Eye-tracking hardware was nearly exclusively used to investigate the reading process but can now be used for a broader range of study, namely in retail settings. This article presents an approach to using glasses eye tracker (GET) and light eye tracker (LET) eye-tracking hardware for applied consumer research in the field. We outline equipment use, study construction, data extraction as well as benefits and limitations of the technology collected from several pilot studies.

Does CMC fit? Practical legal training students' satisfaction with online discussion

Masters research paper submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Professional Education and Training. The objectives of this study were to investigate students’ perceptions and satisfaction regarding CMC activities, including community of inquiry framework elements and self-system factors, and to frame recommendations that might improve the use of online discussions as a teaching medium in practical legal training.

Betwixt And between – Practical legal training practitioners – Scholarship of (which) practice?

I am interested in how Australian lawyers who teach lawyers’ skills at the post-graduate pre-admission stage (“PLT practitioners) engage in scholarly activities regarding their teaching practice. This presentation will relate Bourdieu’s ‘reflexive sociology of law’ to my doctoral research in which I focus on how PLT practitioners engage in scholarly activities around their teaching work. Drawing on Kemmis’s ‘practice table’, Bourdieu and Passeron’s theory of ‘reproduction’ in education and culture, and de Certeau’s theory of ‘practice in everyday life’, I will describe how PLT practitioners’ professional identity, as lawyers, constrains scholarship around teaching and mentoring practice.

Recalling yesterday, predicting tomorrow : revisit South Australia conservation practice for heritage mining places, a practical guide for Malaysia

Mining started in South Australia in the early 1840s with the discovery of silver-lead ore at Glen Osmond in 1841 and later copper in Kapunda in 1842 and Burra in 1845; all these discoveries greatly contributed to South Australia's economic development. South Australia entered the mining era at the time when the Cornish engine was at the peak of its development, and the horizontal engine was beginning its rise in popularity. These South Australian historic mining sites contain extensive extant evidence of technology, innovation and human endeavours that previously went into the mining activity. This paper seeks to critically review items for inclusion on the South Australian State Heritage Register, the character of mining heritage places, enforcement by legislation, interpretation of the heritage assessment and how these practices could guide Malaysia in recognizing industrial heritage as a significant part of its cultural heritage that needs to be conserved, restored and managed as a legacy for present and future generations.

Law, Theology, and Morality: Conceptions of the Rights to Relief of the Poor in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

This article presents an analysis of certain ways of thinking about law and its relationship to the poor, in particular the rights and entitlements of the poor to the basic necessities of life and the obligations of society to provide those necessities. It focuses on the works of Peter the Chanter and his “circle” at Paris in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Significant in their writings on the quandary between respect for private property and the need to allow those in need to take a share of this private property in order to survive is their negotiation of the intellectual boundaries and understandings between law, theology, and morality. In addition, an understanding of their discussions in light of canonistic and theological works of the time reveal a hitherto under-appreciated contribution to the “subjective rights” language in Peter the Chanter.

Use of web-conferencing software to enhance practical learning for distance students in a first-year Engineering course

BACKGROUND : For many years, Deakin University has delivered an accredited undergraduate engineering course by means of distance education. One of the chief challenges is to provide the necessary practical instruction and experience in engineering to these students. In first-year physics and first-year materials science, off-campus students normally attend on-campus lab classes either on a Saturday or as part of a residential school. However, because some students live either interstate or overseas, it is sometimes impossible for small groups of students to attend an on-campus lab class. PURPOSE : This paper investigates whether web-conferencing software can be an effective means for delivering practical classes to small groups of distance students in first-year physics and also first-year materials. METHOD : Over three semesters in 2012, we employed the Elluminate-Live! software platform to broadcast six lab practicals in first-year physics, and one practical in first-year materials engineering. The students submitted practical reports as did all the other students in each unit. The students in each unit fell into three groups: on-campus students, off-campus students who performed their practicals on-campus, and off-campus students who performed their practicals “virtually” via an Elluminate-Live! session. RESULTS : The trials showed that it is possible to broadcast both physics and materials practical classes by means of web-conferencing software. Report marks of the students performing practicals by this method were comparable to those in the other groups. CONCLUSIONS : Our experience with four initial trials in delivering practical classes over the Internet was encouraging, and showed that the concept will work if done in an effective way.

The Black Side of the Sun: Camus, Theology, and the Problem of Evil

Albert Camus is typically categorized as an atheistic thinker, in the same breath as Sartre. Yet there is a sizable, often sympathetic, theological response to his works, which deal at great length with Christian themes, wrestle with the problem of evil, and are animated by his own avowed desire — in strong contrast with Sartre and other existentialists — to preserve a sense of the sacred without belief in human immortality. This essay reconstructs three components of Camus’s rapport and disagreement with Christian theology, which he approached pre-eminently through the figure of Augustine, central to his early Diplome thesis. First, we recount the young Camus’s neopagan ‘‘religiosity’’ — a sense of the inhuman majesty and beauty of the natural world at the heart of what he termed (and later regretted terming) the ‘‘absurd,’’ and rooted in Camus’s own unitive experiences growing up amidst the sea, sand, and blazing sun of North Africa. Second, we look at Camus’s engagement with the problem of evil, which for Camus — as for many early modern thinkers such as Bayle or Voltaire — represented the decisive immanent tension in later medieval theology, vindicating — in ethical terms — the modern rebellions against altar, pulpit, and throne. The essay closes by rebutting the charge, strongly argued recently by Ronald Srigley, that Camus was (both) anti-modern because anti-Christian. Camus’s aim, we propose, was instead to bring together a neopagan sense of the wonder of the natural world and our participation in it, with the egalitarian components of Christian ethics, severed from secularized eschatological content.

O where are you going? O do you imagine? Reproduction and response : a reflexive sociology of scholarship of teaching and learning in practical legal training

My doctoral research studies Australian PLT practitioners’ engagement with scholarship of teaching and learning. I argue that many PLT practitioners are motivated to engage with scholarship of teaching and learning in their work. There are, however, individual and extra-individual impediments.
PLT practitioners are lawyers that teach in institutional practical legal training (“PLT”). Satisfactory completion of mandatory PLT is an eligibility requirement for admission to the Australian legal profession. The PLT requirement is additional to academic legal qualifications. PLT is undertaken at a post-graduate level with, or after, the academic law degree.
My study investigates PLT practitioners’ motivations and capabilities to engage with scholarship of teaching and learning (“SoTL”). I study organisational symbolic support for SoTL in PLT, and organisational allocation of resources to SoTL in PLT.
The study involves individual and extra-individual domains of PLT practitioners’ work. It considers how social structures (e.g. “the juridical”) are inscribed into individuals’ practices (“teaching”) and, conversely, whether practices influence social structures.
My research adopts qualitative methodologies. These involve inter-disciplinary exchanges between law, legal education, practice research, sociology of law, cultural theory, and theory and practice of teaching and learning. My theoretical framework draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s “reflexive sociology”, and Michel de Certeau’s “heterological science”.
I sourced data from documents, and semi-structured interviews with 36 Australian PLT practitioners. Documentary sources include statutory instruments, speeches, reports, practice directions, histories, and scholarly publications.
To analyse the data I adopted Kelle’s characterisation of “theoretical sensitivity”, drawing on “explicit” and “emergent” analysis strategies derived from “grounded theory”. The explicit strategies were based on my theoretical framework. The emergent strategy involved sensitivity to non-explicit concepts and theories that emerged from the data. Computer-aided qualitative data analysis software expedited these methods.
My findings to date question dominant legal structures’ readiness for change, the implications of this for teaching and learning in PLT, and in particular for PLT practitioners’ engagement with SoTL in PLT.
The espoused rationale for mandatory PLT (in statutes) is improvement for the protection of clients, the administration of justice, and to assure quality legal services. The tacit rationale is improved quality of legal education, and experiences, for lawyers-to-be. My thesis argues dominant structures in legal education impede the espoused and tacit objectives, and impede PLT practitioners’ engagement with scholarship of teaching and learning.

Security testing in Android networks : a practical case study

Android is a new generation of an open operating system directed at mobile devices that are carried every day. The openness of this architecture is leading to new applications and opportunities including a host of multimedia services, new interfaces and browsers, multitasking including support for wireless local, personal and wide area networking services. Security with mobility and wireless connectivity thus becomes even more important with all these exciting developments. Vital security issues such as leakage of private information, file stealing and spambots abound in networks in practice and Android networks continue to be subject to these same families of vulnerabilities. This paper provides a demonstration of such vulnerabilities in spite of the best efforts of designers and implementers. In particular it describes examples of data leakage and file stealing (address books, contact lists, SMS messages, pictures) as well as demonstrating how Android devices can create spambots. © 2013 IEEE.