Iterative development of MobileMums : a physical activity intervention for women with young children.

Background To describe the iterative development process and final version of ‘MobileMums’: a physical activity intervention for women with young children (<5 years) delivered primarily via mobile telephone (mHealth) short messaging service (SMS). Methods MobileMums development followed the five steps outlined in the mHealth development and evaluation framework: 1) conceptualization (critique of literature and theory); 2) formative research (focus groups, n= 48); 3) pre-testing (qualitative pilot of intervention components, n= 12); 4) pilot testing (pilot RCT, n= 88); and, 5) qualitative evaluation of the refined intervention (n= 6). Results Key findings identified throughout the development process that shaped the MobileMums program were the need for: behaviour change techniques to be grounded in Social Cognitive Theory; tailored SMS content; two-way SMS interaction; rapport between SMS sender and recipient; an automated software platform to generate and send SMS; and, flexibility in location of a face-to-face delivered component. Conclusions The final version of MobileMums is flexible and adaptive to individual participant’s physical activity goals, expectations and environment. MobileMums is being evaluated in a community-based randomised controlled efficacy trial (ACTRN12611000481976).

Attitudes of preservice teachers towards teaching deaf and ESL students

This study explored preservice teacher attitudes towards teaching a deaf student who uses Australian Sign Language (Auslan) compared to a student who is new to Australia and speaks Polish. The participants were 200 preservice teachers in their third or fourth year of university education. A questionnaire was created to measure attitudes, and participants were also asked to list teaching strategies they would use with the two students. A factor analysis yielded two subscales: Teacher Expectations and Teacher Confidence. Results showed that teachers had higher expectations of the Auslan student than the Polish student, and were more confident about teaching the Auslan student. Differences between the two conditions were also found for suggested teaching strategies. The findings have implications for teacher education programs.

Teaching new product development to design led innovation

Recently many international tertiary educational programs have capitalised on the value design and business can have upon their interception (Martin, 2009; Brown, 2008; Bruce and Bessant, 2002; Manzini, 2009). This paper discusses the role that two teaching units – New Product Development and Design Led Innovation – play in forming an understanding of commercialisation needed in today’s Industrial Design education. These units are taught consecutively in the later years of the Bachelor of Industrial Design program at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. In this paper, each teaching unit is discussed in detail and then as a conglomerate, in order to form a basis of knowledge students need in order to fully capitalise on the value design has in business, and to produce a more capable Industrial Design graduate of the future.

An intervention study to improve pain management by nurses : normative beliefs and perceived control

Based on a predictive model of nurses' intentions regarding pain management, an intervention was developed to improve nurses' pain management. The intervention involved a series of workshops with cohorts of nurses working in acute care wards to address the important antecedents to their intentions: normative beliefs and perceived control. Pre- and post-intervention measures demonstrate the effectiveness of the intervention. The effectiveness of this intervention in improving the management of patients' pain is compared with a patient education program group and a control group. The findings provide support for further developing interventions based on the theory of planned behavior.

Impact of a novel nurse-led prechemotherapy education intervention (ChemoEd) on patient distress, symptom burden, and treatment-related information and support needs : results from a randomised, controlled trial

Background: High levels of distress and need for self-care information by patients commencing chemotherapy suggest that current prechemotherapy education is suboptimal. We conducted a randomised, controlled trial of a prechemotherapy education intervention (ChemoEd) to assess impact on patient distress, treatment-related concerns, and the prevalence and severity of and bother caused by six chemotherapy side-effects. Patients and methods: One hundred and ninety-two breast, gastrointestinal, and haematologic cancer patients were recruited before the trial closing prematurely (original target 352). ChemoEd patients received a DVD, question-prompt list, self-care information, an education consultation ≥24 h before first treatment (intervention 1), telephone follow-up 48 h after first treatment (intervention 2), and a face-to-face review immediately before second treatment (intervention 3). Patient outcomes were measured at baseline (T1: pre-education) and immediately preceding treatment cycles 1 (T2) and 3 (T3). Results: ChemoEd did not significantly reduce patient distress. However, a significant decrease in sensory/psychological (P = 0.027) and procedural (P = 0.03) concerns, as well as prevalence and severity of and bother due to vomiting (all P = 0.001), were observed at T3. In addition, subgroup analysis of patients with elevated distress at T1 indicated a significant decrease (P = 0.035) at T2 but not at T3 (P = 0.055) in ChemoEd patients. Conclusions: ChemoEd holds promise to improve patient treatment-related concerns and some physical/psychological outcomes; however, further research is required on more diverse patient populations to ensure generalisability.

Teaching creatively, teaching for creativity : QUT’s Creative Industries Faculty Showcase Panel

In this panel, we showcase approaches to teaching for creativity in disciplines of the Media, Entertainment and Creative Arts School and the School of Design within the Creative Industries Faculty (CIF) at QUT. The Faculty is enormously diverse, with 4,000 students enrolled across a total of 20 disciplines. Creativity is a unifying concept in CIF, both as a graduate attribute, and as a key pedagogic principle. We take as our point of departure the assertion that it is not sufficient to assume that students of tertiary courses in creative disciplines are ‘naturally’ creative. Rather, teachers in higher education must embrace their roles as facilitators of development and learning for the creative workforce, including working to build creative capacity (Howkins, 2009). In so doing, we move away from Renaissance notions of creativity as an individual genius, a disposition or attribute which cannot be learned, towards a 21st century conceptualisation of creativity as highly collaborative, rhizomatic, and able to be developed through educational experiences (see, for instance, Robinson, 2006; Craft; 2001; McWilliam & Dawson, 2008). It has always been important for practitioners of the arts and design to be creative. Under the national innovation agenda (Bradley et al, 2008) and creative industries policy (e.g., Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2008; Office for the Arts, 2011), creativity has been identified as a key determinant of economic growth, and thus developing students’ creativity has now become core higher education business across all fields. Even within the arts and design, professionals are challenged to be creative in new ways, for new purposes, in different contexts, and using new digital tools and platforms. Teachers in creative disciplines may have much to offer to the rest of the higher education sector, in terms of designing and modelling innovative and best practice pedagogies for the development of student creative capability. Information and Communication Technologies such as mobile learning, game-based learning, collaborative online learning tools and immersive learning environments offer new avenues for creative learning, although analogue approaches may also have much to offer, and should not be discarded out of hand. Each panelist will present a case study of their own approach to teaching for creativity, and will address the following questions with respect to their case: 1. What conceptual view of creativity does the case reflect? 2. What pedagogical approaches are used, and why were these chosen? What are the roles of innovative learning approaches, including ICTs, if any? 3. How is creativity measured or assessed? How do students demonstrate creativity? We seek to identify commonalities and contrasts between and among the pedagogic case studies, and to answer the question: what can we learn about teaching creatively and teaching for creativity from CIF best practice?

Dichotomy in the design studio : adapting to new blended learning environments

Since the architectural design studio learning environment was first established in the early 19th century at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, there has been a complete transformation in how the discipline of architecture is practiced and how students of architecture acquire information. Digital technologies allow students to access information instantly and learning is no longer confined to the rigid boundaries of a physical campus environment. In many schools of architecture in Australia, the physical design studio learning environments however, remain largely unchanged. Many learning environments could be mistaken for those last refurbished 30 years ago, being devoid of any significant technological intervention. While some teaching staff are eagerly embracing new digital technologies and attempting to modify their pedagogical approaches, the physical design studio learning environment is resistant to such efforts. In a study aimed at better understanding how staff and students adapt to new blended learning environments, a group of 165 second year architecture students at a large school of architecture in Australia were separated into two different design studio learning environments. 70% of students were allocated to a traditional design studio setting and 30% to a new, high technology embedded, prototype digital learning laboratory. The digital learning laboratory was purpose designed for the case-study users, adapted Student-Centred Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs [SCALE-UP] principles, and built as part of a larger university research project. The architecture students attended the same lectures, followed the same studio curriculum and completed the same pieces of assessment; the only major differences were the teaching staff and physical environment within which the studios were conducted. At the end of the semester, all staff and students were asked to complete a questionnaire about their experiences and preferences within the two respective learning environments. The questionnaire response rate represented the opinions of 100% of the 10 teaching staff and over 70% of the students. Using a qualitative grounded theory approach, data were coded, extrapolated and compared, to reveal emerging key themes. The key themes formed the basis for in-depth interviews and focus groups of teaching staff and students, allowing the researchers to understand the data in more detail. The results of the data verified what had become increasingly evident during the course of the semester: an underlying negative resistance to the new digital studio learning environment, by both staff and students. Many participants openly exhibited a yearning for a return to the traditional design studio learning environments, particularly when the new technology caused frustration, by being unreliable or failing altogether. This paper reports on the study, discusses the negative resistance and explores the major contributors to resistance. The researchers are not aware of any similar previous studies across these particular settings and believe that it offers a necessary and important contribution to emergent research about adaptation to new digital learning environments.

An intervention to improve motivation for homework

A repeated measures design, with randomly assigned intervention and control groups and multiple sources of information on each participant, was used to examine whether changing the method of delivery of a school’s homework program in order to better meet the students’ needs for autonomy, relatedness and competence would lead to more positive student attitudes to homework and whether there would also be a positive change in overall motivation. The participants were 104 male students aged 10 to 12 years who attended a single sex high school. There was no overall intervention effect on motivation; however, the intervention appeared to have a protective effect on the quality of motivation.

Australian learning and teaching council projects in the mathematical sciences : a retrospective

Since 2004, the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) and its predecessor, the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, have funded numerous teaching and educational research-based projects in the Mathematical Sciences. In light of the Commonwealth Government’s decision to close the ALTC in 2011, it is appropriate to take account of the ALTCs input into the Mathe- matical Sciences in higher education. Here we present an overview of ALTC projects in the Mathematical Sciences, as well as report on the contributions they have made to the Discipline.

Editorial : Learning, teaching and disseminating knowledge in business process management

Process-oriented thinking has become the major paradigm for managing companies and other organizations. The push for better processes has been even more intense due to rapidly evolving client needs, borderless global markets and innovations swiftly penetrating the market. Thus, education is decisive for successfully introducing and implementing Business Process Management (BPM) initiatives. However, BPM education has been an area of challenge. This special issue aims to provide current research on various aspects of BPM education. It is an initial effort for consolidating better practices, experiences and pedagogical outcomes founded with empirical evidence to contribute towards the three pillars of education: learning, teaching, and disseminating knowledge in BPM.

Learning and teaching reflection : developing capacities for lifelong learning

Reflection is an essential part of being an effective learner and working as a productive teacher. It enables the learner or teacher to deliberate about the factors that lead to successful learning and teaching for them and/or their students, in a particular place and for a specific purpose, so they can make reasoned and effective choices. This chapter introduces important frameworks that cover a century of thinking around reflection in education, and illustrates how preservice teachers can use these ideas across three phases. First, becoming a reflective learner as a university student to enhance learning and assessment outcomes; second, becoming a reflective teacher to improve classroom teaching and learning outcomes; and third, developing the reflective capacities of primary students so they can enhance their skills for lifelong learning.

Establishing virtual production as a research and teaching activity at QUT

Located within the Creative Industries Faculty, the Animation team at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) recently acquired a full-body inertial motion capture system. Our research to date has been predominantly concerned with interdisciplinary practice and the benefits this could bring to undergraduate teaching. From early experimental tests it was identified that there was a need to develop a framework for best practice and an efficient production workflow to ensure the system was being used to its full potential. Through our ongoing investigation we have identified at least three areas that stand to have long-term benefits from universities engaging in motion capture related research activity. This includes interdisciplinary collaborative research, undergraduate teaching and improved production processes. The following paper reports the early stages of our research, which explores the use of a full-body inertial motion capture (MoCap) solution in collaboration with performing artists.

Preparing citizens for a complex world : the grand challenge of teaching socio-scientific issues in science education

The dawn of the twenty-first century encouraged a number of scientific and technological organisations to identify what they saw as ‘Grand Challenges and Opportunities’. Issues of environment and health featured very prominently in these quite short lists, as can be seen from a sample of these challenges in Table 1. Indeed, the first two lists of challenges in Table 1 were identified as for the environment and for health, respectively.

Fans teaching fans how to consume : the role of ritual in the consumption of entertainment

The status of entertainment as both a dimension of human culture, and a booming global industry is increasing. Given more recent consumer-centric definitions of entertainment, the entertainment consumer has grown in prominence and is now coming under closer scrutiny. However viewing entertainment consumers as always behaving in a similar fashion towards entertainment as to other products may be selling them short. For a start, entertainment consumers can exhibit a strong loyalty towards their favourite entertainment products that is the envy of the marketing world. Academic researchers and marketers who are keen to investigate entertainment consumers would benefit from a theoretical base from which to commence. This essay therefore, takes a consumer-oriented focus in defining entertainment and conceptualises a model of entertainment consumption. In approaching the study of entertainment one axiomatic question remains: how should we define it? Richard Dyer notes that, considering that the category of entertainment can include – by its own definition in the song ‘That’s entertainment!’ – everything from Hamlet and Oedipus Rex to ‘the clown with his pants falling down’ and ‘the lights on the lady in tights’, it doesn’t make much sense to try to define entertainment as being marked by particular textual features (as is done, for example, by Avrich, 2002). Dyer’s position is rather that ‘entertainment is not so much a category of things as an attitude towards things’ (Dyer, 1973: 9). He traces the modern conception of entertainment back to the writings of Molière. This writer defended the purpose of his plays against attacks from the church that they were not sufficiently edifying by insisting that, as entertainments he had no interest in edifying audiences – his ‘real purpose …was to provide people pleasure – and the definition of that was to be decided by “the people”’(Dyer, 1973: 9). In my own discipline of Marketing this approach has been embraced – Kaser and Oelkers, for example, define entertainment as ‘whatever people are willing to spend their money and spare time viewing’ (2008, 18). That is the approach taken in this paper, where I see entertainment as ‘consumer-driven culture’ (McKee and Collis, 2009) – a definition that is closely aligned with the marketing concept. Within a marketing framework I explore what the consumption of entertainment can tell us about the relationships between consumers and culture more generally. For entertainment offers an intriguing case study, and is often consumed in ways that challenge many of our assumptions about marketing and consumer behaviour.