De-mystifying [a facet of] mobile learning : collaborative media in studio

“Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach” (Prensky, 2001, p. 1). The influx of available new technology has helped to democratise knowledge, transforming when, where and how learning takes place, and changing perceptions of traditional learning landscapes (JISC, 2006; Neary et al., 2010). Mobile computers combined with wireless technology, have completely transformed the educational world; students have turned nomad[ic], engaging in conversations and thinking across traditional campus spaces (Alexander, 2004; Fisher, 2005). In this workshop we will be attempting to de-mystify a facet of mobile learning, by working in small groups to set up and kick start a number of social media sites, which can be used for collaboration and information exchange, in the design studio.

Modelling, collaboration and integration : a case study for the delivery of public buildings

An evolution in the use of digital modelling has occurred in the Queensland Department of Public Works Division of Project Services over the last 20 years from: the initial implementation of computer aided design and documentation (CADD); to experimentation with building information modelling (BIM); to embedding integrated practice (IP); to current steps towards integrated project delivery (IPD) including the active involvement of consultants and contractors in the design/delivery process. This case study is one of three undertaken through the Australian Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre investigating past R&D investment. The intent of these cases is to inform the development of policy guidelines for future investment in the construction industry in Australia. This research is informing the activities of CIB Task Group 85 R&D Investment and Impact. The uptake of digital modelling by Project Services has been approached through an incremental learning approach. This has been driven by a strong and clear vision with a focus on developing more efficient delivery mechanisms through the use of new technology coupled with process change. Findings reveal an organisational focus on several areas including: (i) strategic decision making including the empowerment of innovation leaders and champions; (ii) the acquisition and exploitation of knowledge; (iii) product and process development (with a focus on efficiency and productivity); (iv) organisational learning; (v) maximising the use of technology; and (vi) supply chain integration. Key elements of this approach include pilot projects, researcher engagement, industry partnerships and leadership.

Mobile cost estimating

Martin Skitmore introduces a most "remarkable couple", Rod and Annie Stewart of Huntsville, Alabama (and elsewhere), and their post retirement business, Mobile Data Services. Contrary to popular expectations, Rod and Annie are not only computer-friendly, but are almost entirely dependent on the new technology for their survival.

Organisational innovativeness : the role of strategic orientation and environmental scanning

This study examined the effects of strategic orientation and environmental scanning on a firm’s propensity to innovate (organisational innovativeness). Previous research has mostly proposed descriptive and theoretical relationships between strategic orientation, environmental scanning and organisational innovation adoption (Beal, 2000; Jennings & Lumpkin, 1992; Raymond, Julien, & Ramangalahy, 2001). However, strategic orientation and environmental scanning, as distinct constructs, have not been empirically examined directly before in relation to organisational innovativeness. Furthermore the directionality of the relationship between strategic orientation and environmental scanning on organisational innovation adoption is still unclear (Hagen, Haile, & Maghrabi, 2003). For example, does scanning the environment result in certain types of organisational strategies, and these strategies in turn influence levels of organisational innovativeness? Or do certain types of strategic orientations pre-determine the levels of environmental scanning, and then this environmental scanning influences an organisation’s propensity to innovate? Therefore, this study using a more nuanced measure of strategic orientation; the Venkatraman’s (1989) STROBE framework of analysis, defensiveness, futurity, proactiveness, aggressiveness and riskiness, examined the directional effects of strategy and environmental scanning on organisational innovativeness Specifically, two competing models of directionality between strategic orientation and environmental scanning in relation to organisational innovativeness were proposed. Model 1 (Behavioural View) proposed that certain strategic orientation dimensions affect levels of environmental scanning, which in turn influences organisational innovativeness. In contrast, Model 2 (Open Systems view) proposed that environmental scanning affects the emphasis on certain strategic orientation dimensions, which in turn influences organisational innovativeness. Data was collected from 117 industrial firms and path analyses were used to test the two competing models. The results supported both models, suggesting a bi-directional relationship, as both models had adequate fit indices and significant paths with the data. However, overall Model 2 – the Open Systems Model had the stronger fit indices and stronger indirect effect compared to Model 1 – the Behavioural Model, suggesting that overall environmental scanning does not exert a strong direct effect on innovativeness but has more of a stronger indirect effect through the analysis and proactiveness strategic orientation dimensions. In sum, the thesis results suggest that firms’ that emphasise environmental scanning – that is continually seeking information from the environment about customers, markets, industry and new technology - are more likely to emphasise strategic orientations such as proactiveness – being innovative - and also analysis – being analytical and comprehensive in decision making - and both these strategic orientations in turn greatly influence these firms’ propensity to innovate. Discussion is given to these findings and implications are drawn for organisations and future research.

The value of books : the fantastic flying books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and the social hieroglyphic of reading

The late eighteenth century witnessed the emergence of new technologies of subjectivity and of the literary. Most obviously, “the novel as a literary form appeared to embody and turn into an object the experience of life itself” (Park), and the novel genre came to both reflect and shape notions of interiority and subjectivity. In this same period, “A shift was taking place in the way people felt and thought about children and the accoutrements of childhood, including books and toys, were implicated in this change” (Lewis). In seeking to understand the relationships between media (e.g. books and toys), genres (e.g. novels and picture books), and modes of subjectivity, Marx’s influential theory of commodity fetishism, whereby “a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things”, has served as a productive tool of analysis. The extent to which Marx’s account of commodity fetishism continues to be of use becomes clear when the corollaries between the late eighteenth-century emergence of novels and pictures books as technologies of subjectivity and the early twenty-first century emergence of e-readers and digital texts as technologies of subjectivity are considered. This paper considers the literary technology of Apple’s iPad (first launched in 2010) as a commodity fetish, and the circulation of “apps” as texts made available by and offered as justifications for, this fetish object. The iPad is both book and toy, but is never “only” either; it is arguably a new technology of subjectivity which incorporates but also destabilises categories of reading and playing such as those made familiar by earlier technologies of literature and the self. The particular focus of this paper is on the multimodal versions (app, film, and picture book) of The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, which are understood here as a narrativisation of commodity fetishism, subjectivity, and the act of reading itself.

The impact of co-locating regulatory and directional signs on driver performance

The use of intelligent transport systems is proliferating across the Australian road network, particularly on major freeways. New technology allows a greater range of signs and messages to be displayed to drivers. While there has been a long history of human factors analyses of signage, no evaluation has been conducted on this novel, sometimes dynamic, signage or potential interactions when co-located. The purpose of this driving simulator study was to investigate drivers’ behavioural changes and comprehension resulting from the co-location of Lane Use Management Systems with static signs and (Enhanced) Variable Message Signs on Queensland motorways. A section of motorway was simulated, and nine scenarios were developed which presented a combination of signage cases across levels of driving task complexity. Two higher-risk road user groups were targeted for this research on an advanced driving simulator: older (65+ years, N=21) and younger (18-22 years, N=20) drivers. Changes in sign co-location and task complexity had small effect on driver comprehension of the signs and vehicle dynamics variables, including difference with the posted speed limit, headway, standard deviation of lane keeping and brake jerks. However, increasing the amount of information provided to drivers at a given location (by co-locating several signs) increased participants’ gaze duration on the signs. With co-location of signs and without added task complexity, a single gaze was over 2s for more than half of the population tested for both groups, and up to 6 seconds for some individuals.

Unravelling (e-)government channel selection: A quantitative analysis of individual customer preferences in Germany and Australia

The purpose of this study is to identify the impact of individual differences on service channel selection for e-government services. In a comparative survey of citizens in Germany and Australia (n=1205), we investigate the impact of age, gender, and mobility issues on the selection of personal or mobile communication as channels for service consumption. The results suggest that Australians are more likely to want to use new technology-oriented channels as internet or mobile applications while Germans tend to use classical channels as telephone or in person. Moreover, differences with respect to age, gender, and mobility exist. Implications for practice and issues for future research are discussed.

BIM : enabling sustainability and asset management through knowledge management

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is the use of virtual building information models to develop building design solutions and design documentation and to analyse construction processes. Recent advances in IT have enabled advanced knowledge management, which in turn facilitates sustainability and improves asset management in the civil construction industry. There are several important qualifiers and some disadvantages of the current suite of technologies. This paper outlines the benefits, enablers, and barriers associated with BIM and makes suggestions about how these issues may be addressed. The paper highlights the advantages of BIM, particularly the increased utility and speed, enhanced fault finding in all construction phases, and enhanced collaborations and visualisation of data. The paper additionally identifies a range of issues concerning the implementation of BIM as follows: IP, liability, risks, and contracts and the authenticity of users. Implementing BIM requires investment in new technology, skills training, and development of new ways of collaboration and Trade Practices concerns. However, when these challenges are overcome, BIM as a new information technology promises a new level of collaborative engineering knowledge management, designed to facilitate sustainability and asset management issues in design, construction, asset management practices, and eventually decommissioning for the civil engineering industry.

Inside the pleasure dome : cultural tourism on Australia’s Gold Coast

In 2018 the City of the Gold Coast in south-east Queensland, Australia, will host the next Commonwealth Games. The City is made up a 57 km stretch of coastline and hinterland divided by a major highway. The famous surfing beaches are framed by high-rise development while the hinterland is marketed as a green, unspoilt environment. The winning bid for the Games, and discussion about future infrastructure and marketing of the region’s attributes, has focussed attention on the way City residents and policy makers think about their region in broad terms. Whereas in the past tourism marketing has been directed towards the pleasures of sun and surf by day and bright lights by night, various regional tourist stakeholders are beginning to reorient their programs. This paper considers some of the competing aims of the various stakeholders in this region and the interaction of existing ‘cultures’ with new technology and the demands of permanent residents, using data from a case study of e-literary trails developed in Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland. The importance of tourist imaginaries as a basis for using rich accounts of the past for future planning is emphasized.

Technological tools for science classrooms : choosing and using for productive and sustainable teaching and learning experiences

In this age of rapidly evolving technology, teachers are encouraged to adopt ICTs by government, syllabus, school management, and parents. Indeed, it is an expectation that teachers will incorporate technologies into their classroom teaching practices to enhance the learning experiences and outcomes of their students. In particular, regarding the science classroom, a subject that traditionally incorporates hands-on experiments and practicals, the integration of modern technologies should be a major feature. Although myriad studies report on technologies that enhance students’ learning outcomes in science, there is a dearth of literature on how teachers go about selecting technologies for use in the science classroom. Teachers can feel ill prepared to assess the range of available choices and might feel pressured and somewhat overwhelmed by the avalanche of new developments thrust before them in marketing literature and teaching journals. The consequences of making bad decisions are costly in terms of money, time and teacher confidence. Additionally, no research to date has identified what technologies science teachers use on a regular basis, and whether some purchased technologies have proven to be too problematic, preventing their sustained use and possible wider adoption. The primary aim of this study was to provide research-based guidance to teachers to aid their decision-making in choosing technologies for the science classroom. The study unfolded in several phases. The first phase of the project involved survey and interview data from teachers in relation to the technologies they currently use in their science classrooms and the frequency of their use. These data were coded and analysed using Grounded Theory of Corbin and Strauss, and resulted in the development of a PETTaL model that captured the salient factors of the data. This model incorporated usability theory from the Human Computer Interaction literature, and education theory and models such as Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) TPACK model, where the grounded data indicated these issues. The PETTaL model identifies Power (school management, syllabus etc.), Environment (classroom / learning setting), Teacher (personal characteristics, experience, epistemology), Technology (usability, versatility etc.,) and Learners (academic ability, diversity, behaviour etc.,) as fields that can impact the use of technology in science classrooms. The PETTaL model was used to create a Predictive Evaluation Tool (PET): a tool designed to assist teachers in choosing technologies, particularly for science teaching and learning. The evolution of the PET was cyclical (employing agile development methodology), involving repeated testing with in-service and pre-service teachers at each iteration, and incorporating their comments i ii in subsequent versions. Once no new suggestions were forthcoming, the PET was tested with eight in-service teachers, and the results showed that the PET outcomes obtained by (experienced) teachers concurred with their instinctive evaluations. They felt the PET would be a valuable tool when considering new technology, and it would be particularly useful as a means of communicating perceived value between colleagues and between budget holders and requestors during the acquisition process. It is hoped that the PET could make the tacit knowledge acquired by experienced teachers about technology use in classrooms explicit to novice teachers. Additionally, the PET could be used as a research tool to discover a teachers’ professional development needs. Therefore, the outcomes of this study can aid a teacher in the process of selecting educationally productive and sustainable new technology for their science classrooms. This study has produced an instrument for assisting teachers in the decision-making process associated with the use of new technologies for the science classroom. The instrument is generic in that it can be applied to all subject areas. Further, this study has produced a powerful model that extends the TPACK model, which is currently extensively employed to assess teachers’ use of technology in the classroom. The PETTaL model grounded in data from this study, responds to the calls in the literature for TPACK’s further development. As a theoretical model, PETTaL has the potential to serve as a framework for the development of a teacher’s reflective practice (either self evaluation or critical evaluation of observed teaching practices). Additionally, PETTaL has the potential for aiding the formulation of a teacher’s personal professional development plan. It will be the basis for further studies in this field.

Acoustic emission condition monitoring : an application for wind turbine fault detection

Low speed rotating machines which are the most critical components in drive train of wind turbines are often menaced by several technical and environmental defects. These factors contribute to mount the economic requirement for Health Monitoring and Condition Monitoring of the systems. When a defect is happened in such system result in reduced energy loss rates from related process and due to it Condition Monitoring techniques that detecting energy loss are very difficult if not possible to use. However, in the case of Acoustic Emission (AE) technique this issue is partly overcome and is well suited for detecting very small energy release rates. Acoustic Emission (AE) as a technique is more than 50 years old and in this new technology the sounds associated with the failure of materials were detected. Acoustic wave is a non-stationary signal which can discover elastic stress waves in a failure component, capable of online monitoring, and is very sensitive to the fault diagnosis. In this paper the history and background of discovering and developing AE is discussed, different ages of developing AE which include Age of Enlightenment (1950-1967), Golden Age of AE (1967-1980), Period of Transition (1980-Present). In the next section the application of AE condition monitoring in machinery process and various systems that applied AE technique in their health monitoring is discussed. In the end an experimental result is proposed by QUT test rig which an outer race bearing fault was simulated to depict the sensitivity of AE for detecting incipient faults in low speed high frequency machine.

Designing for Awareness: An Experience-focused HCI Perspective

Within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) research, the notion of technologically-mediated awareness is often used for allowing relevant people to maintain a mental model of activities, behaviors and status information about each other so that they can organize and coordinate work or other joint activities. The initial conceptions of awareness focused largely on improving productivity and efficiency within work environments. With new social, cultural and commercial needs and the emergence of novel computing technologies, the focus of technologically-mediated awareness has extended from work environments to people’s everyday interactions. Hence, the scope of awareness has extended from conveying work related activities to people’s emotions, love, social status and other broad range of aspects. This trend of conceptualizing HCI design is termed as experience-focused HCI. In my PhD dissertation, designing for awareness, I have reported on how we, as HCI researchers, can design awareness systems from experience-focused HCI perspective that follow the trend of conveying awareness beyond the task-based, instrumental and productive needs. Within the overall aim to design for awareness, my research advocates ethnomethodologically-informed approaches for conceptualizing and designing for awareness. In this sense, awareness is not a predefined phenomenon but something that is situated and particular to a given environment. I have used this approach in two design cases of developing interactive systems that support awareness beyond task-based aspects in work environments. In both the cases, I have followed a complete design cycle: collecting an in-situ understanding of an environment, developing implications for a new technology, implementing a prototype technology to studying the use of the technology in its natural settings.

Handmade clay balls and recycled crush glass as alternative media in water filtration

For many years materials such as quarried sand, anthracite, and granular activated carbon have been the principal media-products traditionally used in water and wastewater filtration plants. Pebble Matrix Filtration (PMF) is a novel non-chemical, sustainable pre-treatment method of protecting Slow Sand Filters (SSF) from high turbidity during heavy monsoon periods. PMF uses sand and pebbles as the filter media and the sustainability of this new technology might depend on availability and supply of pebbles and sand, both finite resources. In many countries there are two principal methods of obtaining pebbles and sand, namely dredging from rivers and beaches, and due to the scarcity of these resources in some countries the cost of pebbles is often 4-5 times higher than that of sand. In search for an alternative medium to pebbles after some preliminary laboratory tests conducted in Colombo-Sri Lanka, Poznan-Poland and Cambridge-UK, a 100-year-old brick factory near Sudbury, Suffolk, has produced hand-made clay pebbles satisfying the PMF quality requirements. As an alternative to sand, crushed recycled glass from a UK supplier was used and the PMF system was operated together with hand-made clay balls in the laboratory for high turbidity removal effectively. The results of laboratory experiments with alternative media are presented in this paper. There are potential opportunities for recycled crushed glass and clay ball manufacturing processes in some countries where they can be used as filter media.

Rich evaluations of entertainment experience: bridging the interpretational gap

This paper reports a qualitative study of evaluating the ?experience? supported by a state-of-the-art interactive television application. Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) system is a new technology in the ever-growing industry of interactive entertainment. Focusing on the users? interpretations, we applied a set of rich evaluation strategies to collect data about users? experiences with the IPTV. The results show implications about how the users constructed complex and reflective understandings about the system. The evaluation suite helped us gather information about users? aspirations, expectations, and intellectual and emotional states of their understandings. The results also imply a strong support for taking into account the non-technical values of human-technology interaction.

DUTCH : teaching method-based design

All design classes followed a systematic design approach, that, in an abstract way, can be characterized by figure 1. This approach is based on our design approach [1] that we labeled DUTCH (design for users and tasks, from concepts to handles).Consequently, each course starts with collecting, modeling, and analyzing an existing situation. The next step is the development of a vision on a future domain world where new technology and / or new representations have been implemented. This second step is the first tentative global design that will be represented in scenarios or prototypes and can be assessed. This second design model is based on both the client’s requirements and technological possibilities and challenges. In an iterative way multiple instantiations of detail design may follow, that each can be assessed and evaluated again...