Making the case for low cost railway level crossings

This paper discusses the challenges of making a case for the adoption of low cost railway level crossings in Australia. Several issues are discussed in this paper including legal issues associated with the treatment of low-exposure passive crossings with low cost level crossing warning devices (LCLCWDs); principles of operation and deployment for LCLCWDs; and technical and human factors aspects of safety and availability. The Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Rail Innovation’s affordable level crossings project aims to address a number of these technical and human factors issues through research and field trials.

The teacher as reflexive professional : making visible the excluded discourse in teacher standards

In the current climate of accountability, political manoeuvring, changing curriculum, increasingly diverse student cohorts and community expectations, teachers, more than ever, need to develop the skills and abilities to be reflective and reflexive practitioners. This study examines national teacher professional standards from Australia and the UK to identify the extent to which reflexivity is embedded in key policy documents that are intended to guide the work of teachers in those countries. Using Margaret Archer's theories of reflexivity and morphogenesis, and methods of critical discourse analysis, we argue that these blueprints for teachers’ work exclude reflexivity as an essential and overarching discourse of teacher professionalism.

Ethical decision making and health care managers : developing managerial profiles based on ethical frameworks and other influencing factors

Whether the community is looking for “scapegoats” to blame, or seeking more radical and deeper causes, health care managers are in the firing line whenever there are woes in the health care sector. The public has a right to question whether ethics have much influence on the everyday decision making of health care managers. This thesis explores, through a series of published papers, the influence of ethics and other factors on the decision making of health care managers in Australia. Critical review of over 40 years of research on ethical decision making has revealed a large number of influencing factors, but there is a demonstrable lack of a multidimensional approach that measures the combined influences of these factors on managers. This thesis has developed an instrument, the Managerial Ethical Profile (MEP) scale, based on a multidimensional model combining a large number of influencing factors. The MEP scale measures the range of influences on individual managers, and describes the major tendencies by developing a number of empirical profiles derived from a hierarchical cluster analysis. The instrument was developed and refined through a process of pilot studies on academics and students (n=41) and small-business managers (n=41), and then was administered to the larger sample of health care managers (n=441). Results from this study indicate that Australian health care managers draw on a range of ethical frameworks in their everyday decision making, forming the basis of five MEPs (Knights, Guardian Angels, Duty Followers, Defenders, and Chameleons). Results from the study also indicate that the range of individual, organisational, and external factors that influence decision making can be grouped into three major clusters or functions. Cross referencing these functions and other demographic data to the MEPs provides analytical insight into the characteristics of the MEPs. These five profiles summarise existing strengths and weaknesses in managerial ethical decision making. Therefore identifying these profiles not only can contribute to increasing organisational knowledge and self-awareness, but also has clear implications for the design and implementation of ethics education and training in large scale organisations in the health care industry.

Towards testing a new first-order decision making model for the procurement of public sector major infrastructure

Given global demand for new infrastructure, governments face substantial challenges in funding new infrastructure and simultaneously delivering Value for Money (VfM). As background to this challenge, a brief review is given of current practice in the selection of major public sector infrastructure in Australia, along with a review of the related literature concerning the Multi-Attribute Utility Approach (MAUA) and the effect of MAUA on the role of risk management in procurement selection. To contribute towards addressing the key weaknesses of MAUA, a new first-order procurement decision making model is mentioned. A brief summary is also given of the research method and hypothesis used to test and develop the new procurement model and which uses competition as the dependent variable and as a proxy for VfM. The hypothesis is given as follows: When the actual procurement mode matches the theoretical/predicted procurement mode (informed by the new procurement model), then actual competition is expected to match optimum competition (based on actual prevailing capacity vis-à-vis the theoretical/predicted procurement mode) and subject to efficient tendering. The aim of this paper is to report on progress towards testing this hypothesis in terms of an analysis of two of the four data components in the hypothesis. That is, actual procurement and actual competition across 87 road and health major public sector projects in Australia. In conclusion, it is noted that the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) has seen a significant increase in competition in public sector major road and health infrastructure and if any imperfections in procurement and/or tendering are discernible, then this would create the opportunity, through the deployment of economic principles embedded in the new procurement model and/or adjustments in tendering, to maintain some of this higher level post-GFC competition throughout the next business cycle/upturn in demand including private sector demand. Finally, the paper previews the next steps in the research with regard to collection and analysis of data concerning theoretical/predicted procurement and optimum competition.

The Fifth 48 Hour Game Making Challenge (2011)

The 48-hour game making challenge started out in 2007 as a creative community event. We have run this event each year since and seen over 120 games made. 2011 was the most remarkable in that each of the 20 teams made a playable game – the shape of the challenge has changed …. We have invested in the process of reflective practice & action research, with the event being part of a sweep of programs that inform this research, with each year giving us fresh insights into both the creative practice and essential concerns, process and trends of the independent games industry creative community, which we then respond to within our curatorial development of the subsequent programming. The 2011 48-hour challenge research project focused on the people and the site. We were specifically interested in the manner in which the community occupied the creative space.

Dashboards adoption in the business controller’s decision making process

There has been discussion whether corporate decision-making can be helped by decision support systems regarding qualitative aspects of decision making (e.g. trouble shooting)(Löf and Möller, 2003). Intelligent decision support systems have been developed to help business controllers to perform their business analysis. However, few papers investigated the user’s point of view regarding such systems. How do decision-makers perceive the use of decision support systems, in general, and dashboards in particular? Are dashboards useful tools for business controllers? Based on the technology acceptance model and on the positive mood theory, we suggest a series of antecedent factors that influence the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of dashboards. A survey is used to collect data regarding the measurement constructs. The managerial implications of this paper consist in showing the degree of penetration of dashboards in the decision making in organizations and some of the factors that explain this respective penetration rate.

Impact of a data warehouse model for improved decision-making process in healthcare

The health system is one sector dealing with a deluge of complex data. Many healthcare organisations struggle to utilise these volumes of health data effectively and efficiently. Also, there are many healthcare organisations, which still have stand-alone systems, not integrated for management of information and decision-making. This shows, there is a need for an effective system to capture, collate and distribute this health data. Therefore, implementing the data warehouse concept in healthcare is potentially one of the solutions to integrate health data. Data warehousing has been used to support business intelligence and decision-making in many other sectors such as the engineering, defence and retail sectors. The research problem that is going to be addressed is, "how can data warehousing assist the decision-making process in healthcare". To address this problem the researcher has narrowed an investigation focusing on a cardiac surgery unit. This research used the cardiac surgery unit at the Prince Charles Hospital (TPCH) as the case study. The cardiac surgery unit at TPCH uses a stand-alone database of patient clinical data, which supports clinical audit, service management and research functions. However, much of the time, the interaction between the cardiac surgery unit information system with other units is minimal. There is a limited and basic two-way interaction with other clinical and administrative databases at TPCH which support decision-making processes. The aims of this research are to investigate what decision-making issues are faced by the healthcare professionals with the current information systems and how decision-making might be improved within this healthcare setting by implementing an aligned data warehouse model or models. As a part of the research the researcher will propose and develop a suitable data warehouse prototype based on the cardiac surgery unit needs and integrating the Intensive Care Unit database, Clinical Costing unit database (Transition II) and Quality and Safety unit database [electronic discharge summary (e-DS)]. The goal is to improve the current decision-making processes. The main objectives of this research are to improve access to integrated clinical and financial data, providing potentially better information for decision-making for both improved from the questionnaire and by referring to the literature, the results indicate a centralised data warehouse model for the cardiac surgery unit at this stage. A centralised data warehouse model addresses current needs and can also be upgraded to an enterprise wide warehouse model or federated data warehouse model as discussed in the many consulted publications. The data warehouse prototype was able to be developed using SAS enterprise data integration studio 4.2 and the data was analysed using SAS enterprise edition 4.3. In the final stage, the data warehouse prototype was evaluated by collecting feedback from the end users. This was achieved by using output created from the data warehouse prototype as examples of the data desired and possible in a data warehouse environment. According to the feedback collected from the end users, implementation of a data warehouse was seen to be a useful tool to inform management options, provide a more complete representation of factors related to a decision scenario and potentially reduce information product development time. However, there are many constraints exist in this research. For example the technical issues such as data incompatibilities, integration of the cardiac surgery database and e-DS database servers and also, Queensland Health information restrictions (Queensland Health information related policies, patient data confidentiality and ethics requirements), limited availability of support from IT technical staff and time restrictions. These factors have influenced the process for the warehouse model development, necessitating an incremental approach. This highlights the presence of many practical barriers to data warehousing and integration at the clinical service level. Limitations included the use of a small convenience sample of survey respondents, and a single site case report study design. As mentioned previously, the proposed data warehouse is a prototype and was developed using only four database repositories. Despite this constraint, the research demonstrates that by implementing a data warehouse at the service level, decision-making is supported and data quality issues related to access and availability can be reduced, providing many benefits. Output reports produced from the data warehouse prototype demonstrated usefulness for the improvement of decision-making in the management of clinical services, and quality and safety monitoring for better clinical care. However, in the future, the centralised model selected can be upgraded to an enterprise wide architecture by integrating with additional hospital units’ databases.

Cognitive factors in entrepreneurial strategic decision making

Research on strategic decision making (SDM) has proliferated in the last decades. Most of the studies however, focus on the process and content of SDM, whereas relatively little interest was awarded to the factors associated with the decision maker influencing SDM. Moreover, most of the research on SDM focuses on large multinationals and little to no research is available that studies the ways in which entrepreneurs make strategic choices. The present study reviews the entrepreneurial traits that influence SDM. These traits are selected by analyzing the literature on the differences between entrepreneurs and managers, under the assumption that these factors are the most indicative for the particularities of entrepreneurial SDM. One of the most important theoretical propositions resulting from this analysis concerns the mediating role of cognitive complexity in the relation between these entrepreneurial traits and SDM outcomes. Directions for further research emerging from this conceptualization are identified and discussed.

Career decision making among gifted students : the mediation of teachers

There is international concern about falling enrollments in higher education, particularly the sciences, by gifted students. In this mixed method study, the top performing 200 students (approximately 1%) within a particular education jurisdiction at the beginning of their first year at university were surveyed and 20 interviewed about their school experiences using a biographical interpretive design. This study focussed on identifying those characteristics of teachers which supported students’ interests. Participants identified seven characteristics of teachers that students identified as supportive of their potential career pathways. These included connecting pedagogical practices with student interests, being passionate about their subject matter, having good content knowledge, making learning experiences relevant, setting high expectations of students, being a good explainer of complex ideas, and being a good classroom manager. This study extends our knowledge of how teachers influence gifted students and has implications for both pre-service and in-service teacher education and career counselling.

Making it creatively : building sustainable careers in the arts and creative industries

Many people aspire to careers in the arts and creative industries. However, it has long been known that it can be challenging to navigate a creative career: that competition for work can be intense, particularly for entry-level positions, and that success requires advanced skill sets in addition to a high degree of artistic talent and proficiency. In this article, Dr Ruth Bridgstock draws upon her doctoral and post-doctoral research to explore the challenges involved in building a creative career in Australia and suggest ways to support emerging creatives to build satisfying and sustainable careers.

Designing and evaluating mobile multimedia user experiences in public urban places : Making sense of the field

The majority of the world’s population now lives in cities (United Nations, 2008) resulting in an urban densification requiring people to live in closer proximity and share urban infrastructure such as streets, public transport, and parks within cities. However, “physical closeness does not mean social closeness” (Wellman, 2001, p. 234). Whereas it is a common practice to greet and chat with people you cross paths with in smaller villages, urban life is mainly anonymous and does not automatically come with a sense of community per se. Wellman (2001, p. 228) defines community “as networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging and social identity.” While on the move or during leisure time, urban dwellers use their interactive information communication technology (ICT) devices to connect to their spatially distributed community while in an anonymous space. Putnam (1995) argues that available technology privatises and individualises the leisure time of urban dwellers. Furthermore, ICT is sometimes used to build a “cocoon” while in public to avoid direct contact with collocated people (Mainwaring et al., 2005; Bassoli et al., 2007; Crawford, 2008). Instead of using ICT devices to seclude oneself from the surrounding urban environment and the collocated people within, such devices could also be utilised to engage urban dwellers more with the urban environment and the urban dwellers within. Urban sociologists found that “what attracts people most, it would appear, is other people” (Whyte, 1980, p. 19) and “people and human activity are the greatest object of attention and interest” (Gehl, 1987, p. 31). On the other hand, sociologist Erving Goffman describes the concept of civil inattention, acknowledging strangers’ presence while in public but not interacting with them (Goffman, 1966). With this in mind, it appears that there is a contradiction between how people are using ICT in urban public places and for what reasons and how people use public urban places and how they behave and react to other collocated people. On the other hand there is an opportunity to employ ICT to create and influence experiences of people collocated in public urban places. The widespread use of location aware mobile devices equipped with Internet access is creating networked localities, a digital layer of geo-coded information on top of the physical world (Gordon & de Souza e Silva, 2011). Foursquare.com is an example of a location based 118 Mobile Multimedia – User and Technology Perspectives social network (LBSN) that enables urban dwellers to virtually check-in into places at which they are physically present in an urban space. Users compete over ‘mayorships’ of places with Foursquare friends as well as strangers and can share recommendations about the space. The research field of Urban Informatics is interested in these kinds of digital urban multimedia augmentations and how such augmentations, mediated through technology, can create or influence the UX of public urban places. “Urban informatics is the study, design, and practice of urban experiences across different urban contexts that are created by new opportunities of real-time, ubiquitous technology and the augmentation that mediates the physical and digital layers of people networks and urban infrastructures” (Foth et al., 2011, p. 4). One possibility to augment the urban space is to enable citizens to digitally interact with spaces and urban dwellers collocated in the past, present, and future. “Adding digital layer to the existing physical and social layers could facilitate new forms of interaction that reshape urban life” (Kjeldskov & Paay, 2006, p. 60). This methodological chapter investigates how the design of UX through such digital placebased mobile multimedia augmentations can be guided and evaluated. First, we describe three different applications that aim to create and influence the urban UX through mobile mediated interactions. Based on a review of literature, we describe how our integrated framework for designing and evaluating urban informatics experiences has been constructed. We conclude the chapter with a reflective discussion on the proposed framework.

Making space for place-making pedagogies : stretching normative mandated literacy curriculum

In an era of normative standardised literacy curriculum continuing to make space for culturally responsive literacy pedagogy is on ongoing challenge for early childhood educators. Collaborative participatory research and ethnographic studies of teachers who accomplish innovative and inclusive early childhood education in culturally diverse high poverty communities is urgent for the profession. Such pedagogies involve complex understandings of the cultural and political histories, and the dynamic potential, of the places in which school communities are located. By incorporating the study of local histories and biographies and researching neighbourhood changes teachers adapt mandated curriculum to maintain community knowledges and allow for positive identity work at the same time as they meet the authorised systems objectives. When teachers work with children as co-researchers through the study of people's lives in particular places and times, the community and its complex histories become a rich resource for young people's literacy repertoires.

Developing a fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making model for selecting design-build operational variations

Many academic researchers have conducted studies on the selection of design-build (DB) delivery method; however, there are few studies on the selection of DB operational variations, which poses challenges to many clients. The selection of DB operational variation is a multi-criteria decision making process that requires clients to objectively evaluate the performance of each DB operational variation with reference to the selection criteria. This evaluation process is often characterized by subjectivity and uncertainty. In order to resolve this deficiency, the current investigation aimed to establish a fuzzy multicriteria decision-making (FMCDM) model for selecting the most suitable DB operational variation. A three-round Delphi questionnaire survey was conducted to identify the selection criteria and their relative importance. A fuzzy set theory approach, namely the modified horizontal approach with the bisector error method, was applied to establish the fuzzy membership functions, which enables clients to perform quantitative calculations on the performance of each DB operational variation. The FMCDM was developed using the weighted mean method to aggregate the overall performance of DB operational variations with regard to the selection criteria. The proposed FMCDM model enables clients to perform quantitative calculations in a fuzzy decision-making environment and provides a useful tool to cope with different project attributes.

The challenges of ethical decision making in an Australian school

The focus of this case study concerns Peter Davies, one of three Assistant Principals in a large Australian secondary school, who faces an ethical dilemma regarding a student discipline issue. It is an important case because it underscores the point that ethical decision-making for leaders is fraught with complexity and whatever decision is made, there will be implications for all parties concerned.