Capturing complex, non-linear team behaviours during competitive football performance

This study investigated changes in the complexity (magnitude and structure of variability) of the collective behaviours of association football teams during competitive performance. Raw positional data from an entire competitive match between two professional teams were obtained with the ProZone® tracking system. Five compound positional variables were used to investigate the collective patterns of performance of each team including: surface area, stretch index, team length, team width, and geometrical centre. Analyses involve the coefficient of variation (%CV) and approximate entropy (ApEn), as well as the linear association between both parameters. Collective measures successfully captured the idiosyncratic behaviours of each team and their variations across the six time periods of the match. Key events such as goals scored and game breaks (such as half time and full time) seemed to influence the collective patterns of performance. While ApEn values significantly decreased during each half, the %CV increased. Teams seem to become more regular and predictable, but with increased magnitudes of variation in their organisational shape over the natural course of a match.

Conceptualizing the interplay of knowledge accumulation and integration capabilities in service innovation-based competitive strategy : a project-oriented firm context

While past knowledge-based approaches to service innovation have emphasized the role of integration of knowledge in the provisioning of solutions, these approaches fail to address complexities involved with knowledge integration in project-oriented context, specifically, how the firm’s capability to acquire new knowledge from clients and past project episodes influence the development of new service solutions. Adopting a dynamic capability framework and building on knowledge-based approaches to innovation, this paper presents a conceptual model that captures the interplay of learning capabilities and the knowledge integration capability in the service innovation-based competitive strategy. Implications to theory and directions for future research are discussed.

Co-morbidity of depression and anxiety in common age-related eye diseases : a population-based study of 662 adults

This study examined the prevalence of co-morbid age-related eye disease and symptoms of depression and anxiety in late life, and the relative roles of visual function and disease in explaining symptoms of depression and anxiety. A community-based sample of 662 individuals aged over 70 years was recruited through the electoral roll. Vision was measured using a battery of tests including high and low contrast visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, motion sensitivity, stereoacuity, Useful Field of View, and visual fields. Depression and anxiety symptoms were measured using the Goldberg scales. The prevalence of self-reported eye disease [cataract, glaucoma, or age-related macular degeneration (AMD)] in the sample was 43.4%, with 7.7% reporting more than one form of ocular pathology. Of those with no eye disease, 3.7% had clinically significant depressive symptoms. This rate was 6.7% among cataract patients, 4.3% among those with glaucoma, and 10.5% for AMD. Generalized linear models adjusting for demographics, general health, treatment, and disability examined self-reported eye disease and visual function as correlates of depression and anxiety. Depressive symptoms were associated with cataract only, AMD, comorbid eye diseases and reduced low contrast visual acuity. Anxiety was significantly associated with self-reported cataract, and reduced low contrast visual acuity, motion sensitivity and contrast sensitivity. We found no evidence for elevated rates of depressive or anxiety symptoms associated with self-reported glaucoma. The results support previous findings of high rates of depression and anxiety in cataract and AMD, and in addition show that mood and anxiety are associated with objective measures of visual function independently of self-reported eye disease. The findings have implications for the assessment and treatment of mental health in the context of late-life visual impairment...

E-motion diaries : blogging emotional responses to online learning in higher education

Emotions are inherently social, and are central to learning, online interaction and literacy practices (Shen, Wang, & Shen, 2009). Demonstrating the dynamic sociality of literacy practice, we used e-motion diaries or web logs to explore the emotional states of pre-service high school teachers’ experiences of online learning activities. This is because the methods of communication used by university educators in online learning and writing environments play an important role in fulfilling students’ need for social interaction and inclusion (McInnerney & Roberts, 2004). Feelings of isolation and frustration are common emotions experienced by students in many online learning environments, and are associated with the success or failure of online interactions and learning (Su, et al., 2005). The purpose of the study was to answer the research question: What are the trajectories of pre-service teachers’ emotional states during online learning experiences? This is important because emotions are central to learning, and the current trend toward Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) needs research about students’ emotional connections in online learning environments (Kop, 2011). The project was conducted with a graduate class of 64 high school science pre-service teachers in Science Education Curriculum Studies in a large Australian university, including males and females from a variety of cultural backgrounds, aged 22-55 years. Online activities involved the students watching a series of streamed live lectures for the first 5 weeks providing a varied set of learning experiences, such as viewing science demonstrations (e.g., modeling the use of discrepant events). Each week, students provided feedback on learning by writing and posting an e-motion diary or web log about their emotional response. Students answered the question: What emotions did you experience during this learning experience? The descriptive data set included 284 online posts, with students contributing multiple entries. Linguistic appraisal theory, following Martin and White (2005), was used to regroup the 22 different discrete emotions reported by students into the six main affect groups – three positive and three negative: unhappiness/happiness, insecurity/security, and dissatisfaction/satisfaction. The findings demonstrated that the pre-service teachers’ emotional responses to the streamed lectures tended towards happiness, security, and satisfaction within the typology of affect groups – un/happiness, in/security, and dis/satisfaction. Fewer students reported that the streamed lectures triggered negative feelings of frustration, powerlessness, and inadequacy, and when this occurred, it often pertained to expectations of themselves in the forthcoming field experience in classrooms. Exceptions to this pattern of responses occurred in relation to the fifth streamed lecture presented in a non-interactive slideshow format that compressed a large amount of content. Many students responded to the content of the lecture rather than providing their emotional responses to this lecture, and one student felt “completely disengaged”. The social practice of online writing as blogs enabled the students to articulate their emotions. The findings primarily contribute new understanding about students' wide range of differing emotional states, both positive and negative, experienced in response to streamed live lectures and other learning activities in higher education external coursework. The is important because the majority of previous studies have focused on particular negative emotions, such as anxiety in test taking. The research also highlights the potentials of appraisal theory for studying human emotions in online learning and writing.

MUVE-ing pre-service teachers into the future

This paper discusses our experiences of integrating a Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE) called Quest Atlantis into a pre-service secondary science education unit. The use of educational MUVEs as teaching tools is accelerating, so it is crucial that pre-service teachers develop some expertise with these and related technologies. We outline the processes we followed in embedding Quest Atlantis into the content and assessment of the unit, the results of this initiative and its implications for integrating MUVEs and other ICTs into teacher education programs. Challenges such as limited time and expertise, demands of a busy teaching program, and the need for continuous specialist support need to be overcome for sustainable integration of MUVEs and related technologies into preservice teacher education. This is particularly important given the potential of preservice teachers as change agents in schools, and the imperatives of the ICT-related National Professional Standards for Teachers and the Australian Curriculum.

The pre-socialization of future journalists

While the role of university journalism education in the professionalization of journalists has been extensively debated, systematic and comparative studies of journalism students are still scarce. This paper reports the findings from a comparative study of journalism students in seven countries: Australia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States. The data show a number of similarities, but also important differences between pre-professional cultures in journalism around the world. The findings are in line with recent conceptualizations of media systems, although some variations and particularities are observed at the country level. While students in all countries reject a loyal approach and favor a citizen-oriented role, they also do so to different extents. Brazilian and Chilean students believe in the citizen-oriented and watchdog roles, whereas their counterparts in Australia, Switzerland, and the United States favor the consumer-oriented approach to a greater extent. Mexican and Spanish students, on the other hand, while supporting the citizen-oriented role, reject the loyal role comparatively less than the rest of the countries.

OSCE online : making assessment of clinical competencies transparent, accountable & authentic

Creating an authentic assessment which at once assesses competencies, scene management, communication and overall patient care is challenging in the competitive tertiary education market. Increasing student numbers and the cost of evaluating scenario based competencies serve to ensure the need for consistent objectivity and need for timely feedback to students on their performance. Objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) is currently the most flexible approach to competency based formative and summative assessment and widely used within paramedic degree programs. Students are understandably compelled to perform well and can be frustrated by not receiving timely and appropriate feedback. Increasingly a number of products aimed at providing a more efficient and paperless approach have begun to enter the market. These products, it is suggested are aimed at medicine programs and not at allied health professions and limited to one operating system and therefore ignore issues surrounding equity and accessibility. OSCE Online aims to address this gap in the market and is tailored to these disciplines. The application will provide a service that can be both tailored and standardised from a pre-written bank, depending upon requirement to fit around the needs of clinical competency assessment. Delivering authentic assessments to address student milestones in their training to become paramedics is the cornerstone of OSCE Online. By not being restricted to a specific device it will address issues of functionality, adaptability, accessibility, authenticity and importantly: transparency and accountability by producing contemporaneous data allowing issues to be easily identified and rectified.

Understanding the pre-internationalization phase decision heuristic of Australian SMEs

Since the 1970s, the Uppsala stages model has been one of the dominant explanations of firm internationalization. The model's focus on internationalization as a firm's gradual and incremental process of increasing international involvement has attracted much debate, with one criticism being that it is unclear in explaining how the internationalization process first originates within a firm. In this paper, the Uppsala model is extended through the incorporation of a pre-internationalization phase to explore the antecedents of firm internationalization. Adopting the Uppsala model's theoretical underpinnings, this paper develops and operationalizes a pre-internationalization phase decision heuristic in the form of an ‘export readiness index'. Four constructs are proposed that drive and inhibit export commencement decision-making during a firm's preinternationalization phase: export stimuli, attitudinal/psychological commitment, resources and lateral rigidity. Through a survey of Australian exporting and non-exporting small-medium sized enterprises (SMEs), the Export Readiness Index (ERI) is developed through factor analysis and tested using logistic regression. Results of the study and their potential implications are discussed.

National curriculum reform and equipping pre-service teachers to teach about Australia in the Asian Century

Currently a range of national policy settings are reshaping schooling and teacher education in Australia. This paper presents some of the findings from a small qualitative pilot study conducted with a group of final year pre-service teachers studying a secondary social science curriculum method unit in an Australian university. One of the study’s research objectives aimed at identifying how students reflected on their capacity to navigate curriculum change and, more specifically, on teaching about Australia and Asia in the forthcoming implementation of the first national history curriculum. The unit was designed and taught by the researcher on the assumption that beginning social science teachers need to be empowered to deal with the curriculum change they’ll encounter throughout their careers. The pilot study’s methodology was informed by a constructivist approach to grounded theory and its scope was limited to one semester with volunteer students. Of the pre-service teacher reflections on their preparedness to teach, this paper reports on the content, pedagogy and learning they experienced in one segment of the unit with specific reference to the new history curriculum’s ‘Australia in a world history’ approach and the development of Asia literacy. The findings indicate that whilst pre-service teachers valued the opportunity to engage with learning experiences which enhanced their intercultural understanding and extended their pedagogical and content knowledge on campus, the nature of the final practicum in schools was also influential in shaping their preparedness to enter the profession.

Pre-service teachers’ epistemic perspectives about philosophy in the classroom : it is not a bunch of ‘hippie stuff’

Using epistemic perspectives as a theoretical framework, this study investigated Australian pre-service teachers’ perspectives about knowing, knowledge and children’s learning, as they engaged in a semester-long unit on philosophy in the classroom. During the field experience component of the unit, pre-service teachers were required to teach at least one philosophy lesson. Pre-service teachers completed the Personal Epistemological Beliefs Survey at the beginning and end of the unit. They were also interviewed in focus groups at the end of the semester to investigate their views about children’s learning. Paired sample t-tests were used to explore changes in epistemic beliefs over time. Significant differences were found for only some individual items on the survey. However, when interviewed, pre-service teachers indicated that field experiences helped them consider children as competent ‘thinkers’ who were capable of engaging in philosophy in the classroom. They reported predominantly student-centred perspectives of children’s learning, although a process of adjudication (exploring disagreements and evidence for responses) was lacking in these responses.

Tell me what you see : pre-service teachers' recognition of exemplary digital pedagogy

How do you identify "good" teaching practice in the complexity of a real classroom? How do you know that beginning teachers can recognise effective digital pedagogy when they see it? How can teacher educators see through their students’ eyes? The study in this paper has arisen from our interest in what pre-service teachers “see” when observing effective classroom practice and how this might reveal their own technological, pedagogical and content knowledge. We asked 104 pre-service teachers from Early Years, Primary and Secondary cohorts to watch and comment upon selected exemplary videos of teachers using ICT (information and communication technologies) in Science. The pre-service teachers recorded their observations using a simple PMI (plus, minus, interesting) matrix which were then coded using the SOLO Taxonomy to look for evidence of their familiarity with and judgements of digital pedagogies. From this, we determined that the majority of preservice teachers we surveyed were using a descriptive rather than a reflective strategy, that is, not extending beyond what was demonstrated in the teaching exemplar or differentiating between action and purpose. We also determined that this method warrants wider trialling as a means of evaluating students’ understandings of the complexity of the digital classroom.

Reframing Conceptions of Contemporary Literacy Capabilities in Pre-Service Primary Teacher Education

This chapter describes the challenges of integrating new technologies with literacy education in pre-service primary teacher education in Australia. The authors describe the policy context and regulatory mechanisms controlling pre-service education, including a national set of professional standards for graduate teachers, a new national curriculum for school students, the introduction of high stakes national assessment for school students, and the looming threat of decontextualized back-to-the-basics professional entry tests for aspiring teachers. The chapter includes three case studies of the authors’ pedagogical practices that attempt to reframe conceptions of the literacy capabilities of pre-service teachers to reflect the complex and sophisticated requirements of teachers in contemporary schooling. The authors conclude the chapter with a discussion of the implications of these case studies as they illustrate the ways that pre-service teachers can be scaffolded and supported to develop creative capacity and critical awareness of the kinds of literacies required in the digital age despite restrictive regimes.

Electrocoagulation as a pre-treatment stage to reverse osmosis units

Reverse osmosis (RO) is used by coal seam gas (CSG) operators to treat produced water as it is a well-established and proven technology worldwide. Despite the suitability of RO, there are problems associated with RO technology such as membrane fouling which although not preventing use of RO does decrease effectiveness and increase operating costs. Hence, effective pre-treatment of water samples is essential. Electrocoagulation (EC) potentially can provide improved water purification compared to conventional coagulation prior to an RO unit. This paper provides the first reported study of EC for CSG water pre-treatment and compares the performance to a range of aluminium and iron based coagulants. It was found that EC was superior in terms of removal of silica, calcium, magnesium, barium and strontium in the produced water.

Teaching pharmacy students how to manage effectively in a highly competitive environment

Aims To evaluate if a revamped business management course for 4th year undergraduate pharmacy students had achieved the course aims of not only improving pharmacy students’ perceived understanding of pharmacy business management topics but also increasing their confidence in their business management knowledge and skills. Background Student feedback from previous years had indicated that the cohort had struggled to translate theoretical business management concepts learned in the classroom into practice in the workplace. To address this problem the course has been changed to a ‘flipped classroom’ format with face-to-face time focusing on case-based scenarios and interactive classroom discussion with some role plays. Method Both course assessment throughout the semester and a student survey informed the evaluation process. Results After completing the course, students felt they had increased their knowledge of business management concepts but many indicated that they lacked the confidence to undertake basic management functions. Conclusions Further course restructuring is required with a greater focus on skills development.

Treatment plan complexity metrics for predicting IMRT pre-treatment quality assurance results

The planning of IMRT treatments requires a compromise between dose conformity (complexity) and deliverability. This study investigates established and novel treatment complexity metrics for 122 IMRT beams from prostate treatment plans. The Treatment and Dose Assessor software was used to extract the necessary data from exported treatment plan files and calculate the metrics. For most of the metrics, there was strong overlap between the calculated values for plans that passed and failed their quality assurance (QA) tests. However, statistically significant variation between plans that passed and failed QA measurements was found for the established modulation index and for a novel metric describing the proportion of small apertures in each beam. The ‘small aperture score’ provided threshold values which successfully distinguished deliverable treatment plans from plans that did not pass QA, with a low false negative rate.