A framework for elearning with social media using DRM

This paper provides a proposal for personal e-learning system (PELS) architecture in the context of social network environment. The main objective of PELS is to develop individual skills on a specific subject and share resources with peers. Our system architecture defines organization and management of personal learning environment that aids in creating, verifying and sharing learning artifacts and making money at the same time. We also focus on in our research one of the most interesting arenas in digital content or document management called Digital Right Management (DRAM) and its application to eLearning.

vPELS : an eLearning social environment for VLSI design with content security using DRM

This paper provides a proposal for personal e-learning system (vPELS) architecture in the context of social network environment for VLSI Design. The main objective of vPELS is to develop individual skills on a specific subject, say, VLSI and share resources with peers. Our system architecture defines organization and management of personal learning environment that aids in creating, verifying and sharing learning artifacts and making money at the same time. We also focus on in our research one of the most interesting arenas in digital content or document management called Digital Right Management (DRAM) and its application to eLearning.

vPELS : An e-learning social environment for VLSI design with content security using DRM

This article provides a proposal for personal e-learning system (vPELS [where 'v' stands for VLSI: very large scale integrated circuit])) architecture in the context of social network environment for VLSI Design. The main objective of vPELS is to develop individual skills on a specific subject - say, VLSI - and share resources with peers. The authors' system architecture defines the organisation and management of the personal learning environment in such a way as to aid in creating, verifying and sharing learning artefacts and making money at the same time. The authors also focus in their research on one of the most interesting arenas in digital content or document management - Digital Rights Management (DRM) - and its application to e-learning.

PELS: a noble architecture and framework for a personal E-learning system (PELS)

This article presents a personal e-learning system architecture in the context of a social network environment. The main objective of a personal e-learning system is to develop individual skills on a specific subject and share resources with peers. The authors' system architecture defines the organisation and management of a personal learning environment that aids in creating, verifying and sharing learning artefacts, and making money at the same time. In their research, they also focus on one of the most interesting arenas in digital content or document management - digital rights management - and its application to e-learning.

Preparing construction project managers to document professional growth

Deakin University’s School of Architecture and Building is renowned for producing graduates who possess relevant attributes that make them job ready for the building and construction industry. Graduate destination surveys indicate that in the last eight (8) years, 100% of all Infrastructure Logistics (Construction and Facility Management) course graduates found relevant employment. This success is a direct result of a curriculum that is responsive to industry needs alongside educational methodology that focuses on excellent teaching and research while seeking new ways of developing and delivering courses.

The Infrastructure Logistics course prepares graduates to successfully compete in today’s global job market, and allows them to showcase relevant knowledge and skills that are critical in seeking and sustaining employment. Traditionally, tailored resumes served this purpose; however, in many professional fields, professional portfolios are now becoming a more desirable way of providing a summary of relevant attributes alongside evidence of professional abilities.

Sustaining employment, appraisals, and applying for a promotion are often subject to adequate evidence of professional standards and growth. Professional bodies require records of contribution to Continuing Professional Development (CPD) schemes; and accrediting organisations require professionals applying for professional registration to provide documented evidence of their relevant experience and abilities. The Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM 2007) requires candidates wanting to become Registered Project Managers (RegPM) to demonstrate their current work-based experience and competencies.

This paper reports on a teaching strategy adopted in the Project Management (PM) stream, offered as part of Infrastructure Logistic courses. The teaching strategy is based on a combination of constructivism theory of learning, problem and project based learning, and active learning. The strategy requires systematic reflection and conscious creation of documented evidence of PM attributes and competences in the form of a portfolio.

Preliminary results of action research monitoring the effectiveness of systematic reflection indicate that students respond very positively to the idea of professional journals and professional portfolios. Preliminary results also indicate that students accept reflection and conscious documentation of their achievements as an integral part of their study and future practice.

An authorization policy management framework for dynamic medical data sharing

In this paper, we propose a novel feature reduction approach to group words hierarchically into clusters which can then be used as new features for document classification. Initially, each word constitutes a cluster. We calculate the mutual confidence between any two different words. The pair of clusters containing the two words with the highest mutual confidence are combined into a new cluster. This process of merging is iterated until all the mutual confidences between the un-processed pair of words are smaller than a predefined threshold or only one cluster exists. In this way, a hierarchy of word clusters is obtained. The user can decide the clusters, from a certain level, to be used as new features for document classification. Experimental results have shown that our method can perform better than other methods.

Identifying supply chain management and e-commerce opportunities at PaperCo Australia

Established supply chain management techniques such as Quick Response (QR) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) have proven the potential benefits of reorganizing an organization’s processes to take advantage of the characteristics of electronic information exchange. As the Internet and other proprietary networks expand, however, organizations have the opportunity to use this enabling infrastructure to exchange other, more varied types of information than traditional electronic data interchange (EDI) messages. This is especially true of companies with global operations and interests, which lead to a more diverse set of trading activities. This case presents the experiences of a large Australian paper products manufacturer in implementing an electronic document exchange strategy for supply chain management, including the drivers for change which spurred their actions, and describes the issues associated with trying to support existing and future requirements for document exchange across a wide variety of trading partners. The experiences of PaperCo will be relevant to organizations with diverse trading partners, especially small to medium enterprises (SMEs).

Environmental management system and electronic communication : Is it the need of the hour?

Implementation and certification of Environmental Management Systems (EMS) is a reality for many businesses. Communication with an organisation’s stakeholders is a required element of any EMS. In the last five years companies have steadily moved towards integrating their different management systems, such as quality, environmental, and occupational health and safety, in an attempt to reduce their costs and increase efficiency. Legislation requires extensive reporting in each of these areas, so compliance is another important driver. During this period, communication by digital technology, or electronic communication, has gained prominence and acceptance amongst all groups of people including businesses primarily as a means to disseminate crucial EMS information to geographically diverse employees in a cost effective and instantaneous manner. Some perspectives have emerged to suggest that change processes in organisations may be hindered or helped in various ways through the application of digital technology in EMS. There are, however, gaps in the literature that document the impact and effectiveness of electronic communication amongst EMS stakeholders. In this paper we will discuss employees as one of the major stakeholders and whether the move to electronic communication has been assisting or hindering transformations in awareness and understanding of issues amongst employees. We highlight opportunities and challenges presented by an increased use of electronic communication in light of the environmental and climate change debates, which underpin EMS.

Guideline for the non-surgical management of hip and knee osteoarthritis

Introduction: Chronic disease is a major public health burden on Australian society. An increasing proportion of the population has risk factors for, or at least one, chronic disease, leading to increasing public health costs. Health service policy and delivery must not only address acute conditions, it must also effectively respond to the wide range of health and public service requirements of people with chronic illness.^1,2 Strong primary health care policy is an important foundation for a successful national health delivery system and long term management of public health, and is linked to practical outcomes including lower mortality, decreased hospitalisation and improved health outcomes.¹ National strategic health policy has recently given increased recognition to the importance of chronic disease management, with the Australian Federal Government endorsement of a number of initiatives for the prevention (or delay in onset), early detection and evidence based management of chronic disease, including osteoarthritis.^1,3
Chronic musculoskeletal conditions, including arthritis, account for over 4% of the national disease burden in terms of disability adjusted life years. Over 6 million Australians (almost one-third of the population) are estimated to have a chronic musculoskeletal disease; chronic musculoskeletal disease represents the main cause of long term pain and physical disability. In Australia, osteoarthritis is self reported by more than 1.4 million people (7.3% of the population4) and is the tenth most commonly managed problem in general practice.5 This number is set to rise as the elderly population grows. Osteoarthritis exerts a significant burden on the individual and the community through reduction in quality of life, diminished employment capacity and an increase in health care costs. For further details, refer to the Evidence to support the National Action Plan for Osteoarthritis, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Osteoporosis: Opportunities to improve health-related quality of life and reduce the burden of disease and disability (2004).⁶
As such, federal government health policy has identified arthritis as a National Health Priority Area and adopted a number of initiatives aimed at decreasing the burden of chronic disease and disability; raising awareness of preventive disease factors; providing access to evidence based knowledge; and improving the overall management of arthritis within the community.4 In 2002, all Australian health ministers designated arthritis and musculoskeletal conditions as Australia’s seventh National Health Priority Area. In response, a National Action Plan was developed in 2004 by the National Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Conditions Advisory Group (NAMSCAG).6 The aim of this document was to provide a blueprint for national initiatives to improve the health related quality of life of people living with osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis; reduce the cost and prevalence of these conditions; and reduce the impact on individuals, their carers and their communities within Australia. The National Action Plan was developed to complement both the National Chronic Disease Strategy – which is broader – and the National Service Improvement Framework for Osteoarthritis, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Osteoporosis, in addition to other national and state/ territory structures.

The TrueBlue study : is practice nurse-led collaborative care effective in the management of depression for patients with heart disease or diabetes?

Background: In the presence of type 2 diabetes (T2DM) or coronary heart disease (CHD), depression is under diagnosed and under treated despite being associated with worse clinical outcomes. Our earlier pilot study demonstrated that it was feasible, acceptable and affordable for practice nurses to extend their role to include screening for and monitoring of depression alongside biological and lifestyle risk factors. The current study will compare the clinical outcomes of our model of practice nurse-led collaborative care with usual care for patients with depression and T2DM or CHD.

Methods: This is a cluster-randomised intervention trial. Eighteen general practices from regional and metropolitan areas agreed to join this study, and were allocated randomly to an intervention or control group. We aim to recruit 50 patients with co-morbid depression and diabetes or heart disease from each of these practices. In the intervention group, practice nurses (PNs) will be trained for their enhanced roles in this nurse-led collaborative care study. Patients will be invited to attend a practice nurse consultation every 3 months prior to seeing their usual general practitioner. The PN will assess psychological, physiological and lifestyle parameters then work with the patient to set management goals. The outcome of this assessment will form the basis of a GP Management Plan document. In the control group, the patients will continue to receive their usual care for the first six months of the study before the PNs undergo the training and switch to the intervention protocol. The primary clinical outcome will be a reduction in the depression score. The study will also measure the impact on physiological measures, quality of life and on patient attitude to health care delivered by practice nurses.

Conclusion: The strength of this programme is that it provides a sustainable model of chronic disease management with monitoring and self-management assistance for physiological, lifestyle and psychological risk factors for high-risk patients with co-morbid depression, diabetes or heart disease. The study will demonstrate whether nurse-led collaborative care achieves better outcomes than usual care.

An enhanced watermarking protocol for electronic copyright management

In Piva et al's watermarking scheme for electronic copyright management system (ECMS), authors were considered trusted potentially, so a dishonest author could authorize more than one distributor to sell her one document, named "One Document to Multi-distributor" problem, which would damage the benefit of the distributors. To resolve the problem, in this paper, we propose an enhanced watermarking protocol based on Piva et al's scheme by introducing document nature code (DNC) and register records table. In addition, our protocol offers the distributor an efficient means to verify his right to an authorized digital document.

The value of oral history in natural resource management : the Balcombe Estuary Reserve, Mount Martha, Victoria

This study investigates the benefits of using oral history as a tool for the sustainable management of estuaries. Twenty-two semi-structured interviews were conducted to generate oral history records for the Balcombe Estuary Reserve, a small estuary in a periurban zone on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. These interviews establish a more complete picture of changes in land use and ecological change to the estuary since European settlement of the area, and document community values. The interviews were followed with a survey to further explore management issues in the area. Use of oral history was found to be an effective approach to assist holistic estuarine management, especially when complemented by other sources of information.

Innovative approaches to land acquisition and conservation management : the case of Fish River Station, Northern Territory

There has been a dramatic increase in the area that is within the National Reserve System since 2000 – from around 60 million hectares to around 100 million in 2008. This dramatic increase can be attributed to Indigenous Protected Areas and the acquisition of private or leasehold land for either addition to the public protected area estate or management as private protected areas. This growth has also been strategic, increasingly the reservation status of the most underreserved bioregions. However, the reality is the land acquisition has slowed since the global financial crisis of the late 2000s and this has led to new models with different partners coming to the fore. This chapter highlights one of those new models – the acquisition of Fish River Station in the Northern Territory for conservation.

Oxygen therapy management for patients at risk of respiratory dysfunction

Oxygen therapy is a major intervention used to manage respiratory dysfunction. Research findings revealed a need for health care professionals to review oxygen device selection in specific clinical settings, the importance of involving patients in their care decisions and to document appropriately care that is provided associated with oxygen therapy.