Engaging marketing students : student operated businesses in a simulated world

Engaged students are committed and more likely to continue their university studies. Subsequently, they are less resource intensive from a university’s perspective. This article details an experiential second-year marketing course that requires students to develop real products and services to sell on two organized market days. In the course, students participate as both consumers and marketers in a simulated world. The current article explores the effectiveness of this experiential assessment in terms of its ability to engage students. Comparing student engagement to a traditional lecture course and National Survey of Student Engagement benchmarks, the results suggest that the use of a simulated marketplace is capable of engaging students. Specifically, the assessment reported encourages more active learning and collaboration, is more academically challenging, and permits more student–faculty interaction than a traditional lecture-based course. The course structure outlined in this article permits the dynamics of a live marketing environment to be introduced into the classroom. The authors provide practical advice for educators seeking to design and implement engaging pedagogy.

A comparative study of marketing student engagement in online social networks and virtual worlds : Facebook versus second life

The study evaluated two student online contemporary learning environments; Second Life and Facebook, student learning experiences and student knowledge outcomes. A case study methodology was used to gain rich exploratory knowledge of student learning when integrating online social networks (OSN) and virtual worlds (VW) platforms. Findings indicated students must perceive relevance in the activities when using such platforms, even though online environments create an interesting learning space for students and educators, the novelty can diminish quickly and these online environments dilute traditional authority boundaries.

Reduction of environmental effects of civil aircraft through multi-objective flight plan optimisation

With rising environmental alarm, the reduction of critical aircraft emissions including carbon dioxides (CO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) is one of most important aeronautical problems. There can be many possible attempts to solve such problem by designing new wing/aircraft shape, new efficient engine, etc. The paper rather provides a set of acceptable flight plans as a first step besides replacing current aircrafts. The paper investigates a green aircraft design optimisation in terms of aircraft range, mission fuel weight (CO2) and NOx using advanced Evolutionary Algorithms coupled to flight optimisation system software. Two multi-objective design optimisations are conducted to find the best set of flight plans for current aircrafts considering discretised altitude and Mach numbers without designing aircraft shape and engine types. The objectives of first optimisation are to maximise range of aircraft while minimising NOx with constant mission fuel weight. The second optimisation considers minimisation of mission fuel weight and NOx with fixed aircraft range. Numerical results show that the method is able to capture a set of useful trade-offs that reduce NOx and CO2 (minimum mission fuel weight).

Advertising & Promotion : An Integrated Marketing Communications Approach, 2nd Edition [Book Review]

Advertising & Promotion’s second edition maintains a sharp and updated focus on the advertising industry, providing interesting ideas for both students and advertising professionals. Not only does the author demonstrate how agencies, businesses and organisations research, create and monitor particular campaigns, but also the extent to which advertising texts are themselves embedded in everyday contemporary culture. For me one of the strengths of the book is how the research brings together the managerial side of the industry, its sociology and political dynamics, with the cultural and ethical implications of advertising consumption.

Even Penelope had a plan : imagining a metaphysics of wandering in the contemporary travel blogs of Australian Women Abroad

Despite the continued popularity of travel blogs and virtual travel communities, there is currently a lack of contemporary criticism surrounding the coded structures and connotations of online travel writings, especially those arising out of the Australian context. While there have been few significant studies of Australian women’s travel to date, there have been even less about female wandering. Reimagining the archetype of Penelope, this paper considers liminal accounts of wandering in contemporary travel blogs of Australian women abroad. When women travel as wanderers, they undermine normative accounts of travel and trace out alternative movements fused with gendered meaning.

Detailed landscape plan for the North section of the Bailang River north of Jiqing Highway, Weifang

International practice-led design research in landscape architecture has identified wetland sites as highly significant and potentially fragile environments in many countries. China has considerable wetland acreage that has been drained and transformed into farmland to address local poverty of farmers. An important gap in knowledge exists as to how to design Chinese public open spaces to reduce water contamination, flood severity and loss of farmland for local villagers as urban development expands. This project responded to the opportunity of introducing a new type of wetland design to Stage 3 of the Bailang River Redevelopment, Weifang City, Shandong Province. The work proposed a range of wetland design innovations for Chinese wetland environments to encourage on-site solutions to contamination and flooding problems.

The Blair Witch Project : a marketing case study

The Blair Witch Project was a low budget movie made by student filmmakers that become an international box office hit in 1999. Blair Witch was a landmark in movie marketing and distribution because it was the first time that any movie had successfully leveraged the Internet as a marketing platform to reach a wide audience. The marketing team employed a range of innovative strategies and tactics to stimulate audience demand. This case study describes and analyses the success of the marketing launch of The Blair Witch Project.It also provides an Instructors booklet comprising seven questions and answers related to the marketing success of the movie.

Commissioning of a Geant4 based treatment plan simulation tool : linac model and dicom-rt interface

A Geant4 based simulation tool has been developed to perform Monte Carlo modelling of a 6 MV VarianTM iX clinac. The computer aided design interface of Geant4 was used to accurately model the LINAC components, including the Millenium multi-leaf collimators (MLCs). The simulation tool was verified via simulation of standard commissioning dosimetry data acquired with an ionisation chamber in a water phantom. Verification of the MLC model was achieved by simulation of leaf leakage measurements performed using GafchromicTM film in a solid water phantom. An absolute dose calibration capability was added by including a virtual monitor chamber into the simulation. Furthermore, a DICOM-RT interface was integrated with the application to allow the simulation of treatment plans in radiotherapy. The ability of the simulation tool to accurately model leaf movements and doses at each control point was verified by simulation of a widely used intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) quality assurance (QA) technique, the chair test.

Visitor relationship orientation of destination marketing organisations

The proposition underpinning this study is engaging in meaningful dialogue with previous visitors represents an efficient and effective use of resources for a destination marketing organization (DMO), compared to above the line advertising in broadcast media. However there has been a lack of attention in the tourism literature relating to destination switching, loyalty and customer relationship management (CRM) to test such a proposition. This paper reports an investigation of visitor relationship marketing (VRM) orientation among DMOs. A model of CRM orientation, which was developed from the wider marketing literature and a prior qualitative study, was used to develop a scale to operationalise DMO visitor relationship orientation. Due to a small sample, the Partial Least Squares (PLS) method of structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data. Although the sample limits the ability to generalise, the results indicated the DMOs’ visitor orientation is generally responsive and reactive rather than proactive.

Sponsorship-linked marketing: The role of articulation in memory

Corporate sponsorship of events contributes significantly to marketing aims, including brand awareness as measured by recall and recognition of sponsor‐event pairings. Unfortunately, resultant advantages accrue disproportionately to brands having a natural or congruent fit with the available sponsorship properties. In three cued‐recall experiments, the effect of articulation of sponsorship fit on memory for sponsor‐event pairings is examined. While congruent sponsors have a natural memory advantage, results demonstrate that memory improvements via articulation are possible for incongruent sponsor‐event pairings. These improvements are, however, affected by the presence of competitor brands and the way in which memory is accessed.

A social marketing approach to value creation in a Well-Women’s health service

Understanding consumer value is imperative in health care as the receipt of value drives the demand for health care services. While there is increasing research into health-care that adopts an economic approach to value, this paper investigates a non-financial exchange context and uses an experiential approach to value, guided by a social marketing approach to behaviour change. An experiential approach is deemed more appropriate for government health-care services that are free and for preventative rather than treatment purposes. Thus instead of using an illness-paradigm to view health services outcomes, we adopt a wellness paradigm. Using qualitative data gathered during 25 depth interviews the authors demonstrate how social marketing thinking has guided the identification of six themes that represent four dimensions of value (functional, emotional, social and altruistic) evident during the health care consumption process of a free government service.

Health Librarianship Workforce and Education : Research to plan the future. Final Report.

In late 2009, Health Libraries Australia (HLA) received a small grant to undertake a national research project to determine the future requirements for health librarians in the workforce in Australia and develop a structured, modular education framework (post-graduate qualification and continuing professional development structure) to meet these requirements. The main objective was to consider the education and professional development framework that would ensure that health librarians have a clearly defined scope of practice and the specific competency based knowledge and skills that enable them to contribute to the design and delivery of high quality health services in this country. The final report presents a detailed discussion of the changing Australian healthcare environment and the resulting impact on the health library sector, as well as an overview of international trends in health libraries and the implications for Australian health librarianship education. The research methodology is outlined, followed by an analysis of the findings from the two surveys with health librarians and health library managers and the semi-structured interviews conducted with employers. The Medical Library Association (MLA) in the United States had developed a policy document detailing the competencies required by health librarians. It was found that the MLA competencies represented an accepted professional framework of skills which could be used objectively in the survey instrument to measure the areas of professional knowledge and responsibilities that were relevant in the current workplace, and to identify how these requirements might change in the next three to five years. The research results underscore the imperative for health librarians to engage in regular, relevant professional development activities that will enable them to stay abreast with the rapid contextual changes impacting on their practice. In order to be accepted as key members of the multi-disciplinary health professional team, it is strongly believed that health librarians should commit to establishing the mechanisms for specialist certification maintained through compulsory CPD in an ongoing three-year cycle of revalidation. This development would align ALIA and health librarians with other health sector professional associations which are responsible for the self regulation of entry to and continuation in their profession.

Re-thinking how we plan to address technically complex problems : drawing on planning theory to guide practice in revision of land use plans in coastal high hazard zones

Queensland's new State Planning Policy for Coastal Protection, released in March and approved in April 2011 as part of the Queensland Coastal Plan, stipulates that local governments prepare and implement adaptation strategies for built up areas projected to be subject to coastal hazards between present day and 2100. Urban localities within the delineated coastal high hazard zone (as determined by models incorporating a 0.8 meter rise in sea level and a 10% increase in the maximum cyclone activity) will be required to re-evaluate their plans to accommodate growth, revising land use plans to minimise impacts of anticipated erosion and flooding on developed areas and infrastructure. While implementation of such strategies would aid in avoidance or minimisation of risk exposure, communities are likely to face significant challenges in such implementation, especially as development in Queensland is so intensely focussed upon its coasts with these new policies directing development away from highly desirable waterfront land. This paper examines models of planning theory to understand how we plan when faced with technically complex problems towards formulation of a framework for evaluating and improving practice.