David F. Treagust : congenial soul, science educator, and international research leader

For almost a half century David F. Treafust has been an exemplary science educator who has contributed through his dedication and commitments to students, curriculum development and collaboration with teachers, and cutting edge research in science education that has impacted the field globally, nationally and locally. A hallmark of his outstanding career is his collaborative style that inspires others to produce their best work.

The student as customer model and its impact on the academic leadership role in higher education

This paper posits that the 'student as customer' model has a negative impact upon the academic leadership which in turn is responsible for the erosion of objectivity in the assessment process in the higher education sector. The paper draws on the existing literature to explore the relationship between the student as customer model, academic leadership, and student assessment. The existing research emanating from the literature provides the basis from which the short comings of the student as customer model are exposed. From a practical perspective the arguments made in this paper provide the groundwork for possible future research into the adverse affects of the student as customer model on academic leadership and job satisfaction in the academic work force. The concern for quality may benefit from empirical investigation of the relationship between the student as customer model and quality learning and assessment outcomes in the higher education sector. The paper raises awareness of the faults with the present reliance on the student as customer model and the negative impact on both students and academic staff. The issues explored have the potential to influence the future directions of the higher education sector with regard to the social implications of their quest for quality educational outcomes. The paper addresses a gap in the literature in regard to use of the student as customer model and the subsequent adverse affect on academic leadership and assessment in higher education.

Re-conceptualising and re-positioning Australian library and information science education for the 21st century [Final Report 2011]

How can Australian library and information science (LIS) education produce, in a sustainable manner, the diverse supply of graduates with the appropriate attributes to develop and maintain high quality professional practice in the rapidly changing 21st century? This report presents the key findings of a project that has examined this question through research into future directions for LIS education in Australia. Titled Re-conceptualising and re-positioning Australian library and information science education for the twenty-first century, the purpose of the project was to establish a consolidated and holistic picture of the Australian LIS profession, and identify how its future education and training can be mediated in a cohesive and sustainable manner. The project was undertaken with a team of 12 university and vocational LIS educators from 11 institutions around Australia between November 2009 and December 2010. Collectively, these eleven institutions represented the broad spectrum and diversity of LIS education in Australia, and enabled the project to examine education for the information profession in a holistic and synergistic manner. Participating institutions in the project included Queensland University of Technology (Project Leader), Charles Sturt University, Curtin University of Technology, Edith Cowan University, Monash University, RMIT University, University of Canberra, University of South Australia, University of Tasmania, University of Technology Sydney and Victoria University. The inception and need for the project was motivated by a range of factors. From a broad perspective several of these factors relate to concerns raised at national and international levels regarding problems with education for LIS. In addition, the motivation and need for the project also related to some unique challenges that LIS education faces in the Australian tertiary education landscape. Over recent years a range of responses to explore the various issues confronting LIS education in Australia have emerged at local and national levels however this project represented the first significant investment of funding for national research in this area. In this way, the inception of the project offered a unique opportunity and powerful mechanism through which to bring together key stakeholders and inspire discourse concerning future education for the profession. Therefore as the first national project of its kind, its intent has been to provide foundation research that will inform and guide future directions for LIS education and training in Australia. The primary objective of the project was to develop a Framework for the Education of the Information Professions in Australia. The purpose of this framework was to provide evidence based strategic recommendations that would guide Australia’s future education for the information professions. Recognising the three major and equal players in the education process the project was framed around three areas of consideration: LIS students, the LIS workforce and LIS educators. Each area of consideration aligned to a research substudy in the project. The three research substudies were titled Student Considerations, Workforce Planning Considerations and Tertiary Education Considerations. The Students substudy provided a profile of LIS students and an analysis of their choices, experiences and expectations in regard to LIS education and their graduate destinations. The Workforce substudy provided an overview and analysis of the nature of the current LIS workforce, including a focus on employer expectations and employment opportunities and comment on the core and elective skill, knowledge and attitudes of current and future LIS professionals. Finally the Tertiary Education substudy provided a profile of LIS educators and an analysis of their characteristics and experiences including the key issues and challenges. In addition it also explored current national and international trends and priorities impacting on LIS education. The project utilised a Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach. This approach involves all members of the community in all aspects of the project. It recognised the unique strengths and perspectives that community members bring to the process. For this project ‘community’ comprised of all individuals who have a role in, or a vested interest in, LIS education and included LIS educators, professionals, employers, students and professional associations. Individuals from these sub-groups were invited to participate in a range of aspects of the project from design through to implementation and evaluation. A range of research methodologies were used to consider the many different perspectives of LIS education, including employers and recruiters, professional associations, students, graduates and LIS teaching staff. Data collection involved a mixed method approach of questionnaires, focus groups, semi-structured interviews and environmental scans. An array of approaches was selected to ensure that broadest possible access to different facets of the information profession would be achieved. The main findings and observations from each substudy have highlighted a range of challenges for LIS education that need to be addressed. These findings and observations have grounded the development of the Framework for the Education of the Information Professions in Australia. The framework presents eleven recommendations to progress the national approach to LIS education and guide Australia’s future education for the information professions. The framework will be used by the LIS profession, most notably its educators, as strategic directions for the future of LIS education in Australia. Framework for the Education of the Information Professions in Australia: Recommendation 1: It is recommended that a broader and more inclusive vocabulary be adopted that both recognises and celebrates the expanding landscape of the field, for example ‘information profession’, ‘information sector’, ‘information discipline’ and ‘information education’. Recommendation 2: It is recommended that a self-directed body composed of information educators be established to promote, support and lead excellence in teaching and research within the information discipline. Recommendation 3: It is recommended that Australia’s information discipline continue to develop excellence in information research that will raise the discipline’s profile and contribute to its prominence within the national and international arena. Recommendation 4: It is recommended that further research examining the nature and context of Australia’s information education programs be undertaken to ensure a sustainable and relevant future for the discipline. Recommendation 5: It is recommended that further research examining the pathways and qualifications available for entry into the Australian information sector be undertaken to ensure relevance, attractiveness, accessibility and transparency. Recommendation 6: It is recommended that strategies are developed and implemented to ensure the sustainability of the workforce of information educators. Recommendation 7: It is recommended that a national approach to promoting and marketing the information profession and thereby attracting more students to the field is developed. Recommendation 8: It is recommended that Australia’s information discipline continues to support a culture of quality teaching and learning, especially given the need to accommodate a focus on the broader information landscape and more flexible delivery options. Recommendation 9: It is recommended that strategies are developed that will support and encourage collaboration between information education within the higher education and VET sectors. Recommendation 10: It is recommended that strategies and forums are developed that will support the information sector working together to conceptualise and articulate their professional identity and educational needs. Recommendation 11: It is recommended that a research agenda be established that will identify and prioritise areas in which further development or work is needed to continue advancing information education in Australia. The key findings from this project confirm that a number of pressing issues are confronting LIS education in Australia. Left unaddressed these issues will have significant implications for the future of LIS education as well as the broader LIS profession. Consequently creating a sustainable and cohesive future can only be realised through cooperation and collaboration among all stakeholders including those with the capacity to enact radical change in university and vocational institutions. Indeed the impending adoption and implementation of the project’s recommendations will fundamentally determine whether Australian LIS education is assured both for the present day and into the future.

The Metapopulation Dynamics of an Infectious Disease: Tuberculosis in Possums

An SEI metapopulation model is developed for the spread of an infectious agent by migration. The model portrays two age classes on a number of patches connected by migration routes which are used as host animals mature. A feature of this model is that the basic reproduction ratio may be computed directly, using a scheme that separates topography, demography, and epidemiology. We also provide formulas for individual patch basic reproduction numbers and discuss their connection with the basic reproduction ratio for the system. The model is applied to the problem of spatial spread of bovine tuberculosis in a possum population. The temporal dynamics of infection are investigated for some generic networks of migration links, and the basic reproduction ratio is computed—its value is not greatly different from that for a homogeneous model. Three scenarios are considered for the control of bovine tuberculosis in possums where the spatial aspect is shown to be crucial for the design of disease management operations

Tool-supported dataflow analysis of a security-critical embedded device

Defence organisations perform information security evaluations to confirm that electronic communications devices are safe to use in security-critical situations. Such evaluations include tracing all possible dataflow paths through the device, but this process is tedious and error-prone, so automated reachability analysis tools are needed to make security evaluations faster and more accurate. Previous research has produced a tool, SIFA, for dataflow analysis of basic digital circuitry, but it cannot analyse dataflow through microprocessors embedded within the circuit since this depends on the software they run. We have developed a static analysis tool that produces SIFA compatible dataflow graphs from embedded microcontroller programs written in C. In this paper we present a case study which shows how this new capability supports combined hardware and software dataflow analyses of a security critical communications device.

Data flow analysis of embedded program expressions

Data flow analysis techniques can be used to help assess threats to data confidentiality and integrity in security critical program code. However, a fundamental weakness of static analysis techniques is that they overestimate the ways in which data may propagate at run time. Discounting large numbers of these false-positive data flow paths wastes an information security evaluator's time and effort. Here we show how to automatically eliminate some false-positive data flow paths by precisely modelling how classified data is blocked by certain expressions in embedded C code. We present a library of detailed data flow models of individual expression elements and an algorithm for introducing these components into conventional data flow graphs. The resulting models can be used to accurately trace byte-level or even bit-level data flow through expressions that are normally treated as atomic. This allows us to identify expressions that safely downgrade their classified inputs and thereby eliminate false-positive data flow paths from the security evaluation process. To validate the approach we have implemented and tested it in an existing data flow analysis toolkit.

A taint marking approach to confidentiality violation detection

This article presents a novel approach to confidentiality violation detection based on taint marking. Information flows are dynamically tracked between applications and objects of the operating system such as files, processes and sockets. A confidentiality policy is defined by labelling sensitive information and defining which information may leave the local system through network exchanges. Furthermore, per application profiles can be defined to restrict the sets of information each application may access and/or send through the network. In previous works, we focused on the use of mandatory access control mechanisms for information flow tracking. In this current work, we have extended the previous information flow model to track network exchanges, and we are able to define a policy attached to network sockets. We show an example application of this extension in the context of a compromised web browser: our implementation detects a confidentiality violation when the browser attempts to leak private information to a remote host over the network.

Toward a shared understanding of competency in programming : an invitation to the BABELnot Project

The ICT degrees in most Australian universities have a sequence of up to three programming subjects, or units. BABELnot is an ALTC-funded project that will document the academic standards associated with those three subjects in the six participating universities and, if possible, at other universities. This will necessitate the development of a rich framework for describing the learning goals associated with programming. It will also be necessary to benchmark exam questions that are mapped onto this framework. As part of the project, workshops are planned for ACE 2012, ICER 2012 and ACE 2013, to elicit feedback from the broader Australasian computing education community, and to disseminate the project’s findings. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the project to that broader Australasian computing education community and to invite their active participation.

Where do we find services in enterprise architectures? A comparative approach

In recent years, enterprise architecture (EA) has captured growing attention as a means to systematically consolidate and interrelate diverse IT artefacts in order to provide holistic decision support. Since the emergence of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), many attempts have been made to incorporate SOA artefacts in existing EA frameworks. Yet the approaches taken to achieve this goal differ substantially for the most commonly used EA frameworks to date. This paper investigates and compares five widely used EA frameworks in the way they embrace the SOA paradigm. It identifies what SOA artefacts are considered to be in the respective EA frameworks and their relative position in the overall structure. The results show that services and related artefacts are far from being well-integrated constructs in current EA frameworks. The comparison presented in this paper will support practitioners in identifying an EA framework that provides SOA support in a way that matches their requirements and will hopefully inspire the academic EA and SOA communities to work on a closer integration of these architectures.

Knowledge to deal with challenges to science education from without and within

This chapter focuses on two challenges to science teachers’ knowledge that Fensham identifies as having recently emerged—one a challenge from beyond Science and the other a challenge from within Science. Both challenges stem from common features of contemporary society, namely, its complexity and uncertainty. Both also confront science teachers with teaching situations that contrast markedly with the simplicity and certainty that have been characteristic of most school science education, and hence both present new demands for science teachers’ knowledge and skill. The first, the challenge from without Science, comes from the new world of work and the “knowledge society”. Regardless of their success in traditional school learning, many young persons in many modern economies are now seen as lacking other knowledge and skills that are essential for their personal, social and economic life. The second, the challenge from within Science, derives from changing notions of the nature of science itself. If the complexity and uncertainty of the knowledge society demand new understandings and contributions from science teachers, these are certainly matched by the demands that are posed by the role of complexity and uncertainty in science itself.

A highway for research in science education that no longer leads to the frontier

A review of "Progressing science education: constructing the scientific research programme into the contingent nature of learning science", by Keith S. Taber, Dordrecht, Springer, 2009.

Good Practice Report : Blended Learning

In early 2011, the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd (ALTC) commissioned a series of Good Practice Reports on completed ALTC projects and fellowships. This report will: • Provide a summative evaluation of the good practices and key outcomes for teaching and learning from completed ALTC projects and fellowships relating to blended learning • Include a literature review of the good practices and key outcomes for teaching and learning from national and international research • Identify areas in which further work or development are appropriate. The literature abounds with definitions; it can be argued that the various definitions incorporate different perspectives, but there is no single, collectively accepted definition. Blended learning courses in higher education can be placed somewhere on a continuum, between fully online and fully face-to-face courses. Consideration must therefore be given to the different definitions for blended learning presented in the literature and by users and stakeholders. The application of this term in these various projects and fellowships is dependent on the particular focus of the team and the conditions and situations under investigation. One of the key challenges for projects wishing to develop good practice in blended learning is the lack of a universally accepted definition. The findings from these projects and fellowships reveal the potential of blended learning programs to improve both student outcomes and levels of satisfaction. It is clear that this environment can help teaching and learning engage students more effectively and allow greater participation than traditional models. Just as there are many definitions, there are many models and frameworks that can be successfully applied to the design and implementation of such courses. Each academic discipline has different learning objectives and in consequence there can’t be only one correct approach. This is illustrated by the diversity of definitions and applications in the ALTC funded projects and fellowships. A review of the literature found no universally accepted guidelines for good practice in higher education. To inform this evaluation and literature review, the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education, as outlined by Chickering and Gamson (1987), were adopted: 1. encourages contacts between students and faculty 2. develops reciprocity and cooperation among students 3. uses active learning techniques 4. gives prompt feedback 5. emphasises time on task 6. communicates high expectations 7. respects diverse talents and ways of learning. These blended learning projects have produced a wide range of resources that can be used in many and varied settings. These resources include: books, DVDs, online repositories, pedagogical frameworks, teaching modules. In addition there is valuable information contained in the published research data and literature reviews that inform good practice and can assist in the development of courses that can enrich and improve teaching and learning.

Why publish?

Anybody who has attempted to publish some aspect of their work in an academic journal will know that it isn’t as easy as it may seem. The amount of preparation required of a manuscript can be quite daunting. Besides actually writing the manuscript, the authors are faced with a number of technical requirements. Each journal has their own formatting requirements, relating not only to section headings and text layout, but also to very small details such as placement of commas in reference lists. Then, if presenting data in the form of figures, this must be formatted so that it can be understood by the readership, and most journals still require that the data be in a format which can be read when printed in black-and-white. Most daunting (and important) of all, for the article to be scientifically valid it must be absolutely true in the representation of the work reported (i.e. all data must be shown unless a strong justification exists for removing data points), and this might cause angst in the mind of the authors when the results aren’t clear or possibly contradict the expected or desired result.

Quantitative approaches to content analysis : identifying conceptual drift across publication outlets

Unstructured text data, such as emails, blogs, contracts, academic publications, organizational documents, transcribed interviews, and even tweets, are important sources of data in Information Systems research. Various forms of qualitative analysis of the content of these data exist and have revealed important insights. Yet, to date, these analyses have been hampered by limitations of human coding of large data sets, and by bias due to human interpretation. In this paper, we compare and combine two quantitative analysis techniques to demonstrate the capabilities of computational analysis for content analysis of unstructured text. Specifically, we seek to demonstrate how two quantitative analytic methods, viz., Latent Semantic Analysis and data mining, can aid researchers in revealing core content topic areas in large (or small) data sets, and in visualizing how these concepts evolve, migrate, converge or diverge over time. We exemplify the complementary application of these techniques through an examination of a 25-year sample of abstracts from selected journals in Information Systems, Management, and Accounting disciplines. Through this work, we explore the capabilities of two computational techniques, and show how these techniques can be used to gather insights from a large corpus of unstructured text.

Towards participatory action design research : adapting action research and design science research methods for urban informatics

This paper proposes a new research method, Participatory Action Design Research (PADR), for studies in the Urban Informatics domain. PADR supports Urban Informatics research in developing new technological means (e.g. using mobile and ubiquitous computing) to resolve contemporary issues or support everyday life in urban environments. The paper discusses the nature, aims and inherent methodological needs of Urban Informatics research, and proposes PADR as a method to address these needs. Situated in a socio-technical context, Urban Informatics requires a close dialogue between social and design-oriented fields of research as well as their methods. PADR combines Action Research and Design Science Research, both of which are used in Information Systems, another field with a strong socio-technical emphasis, and further adapts them to the cross-disciplinary needs and research context of Urban Informatics.