Travel journalists’ attitudes toward public relations : findings from a representative survey

The impact of public relations on emerging fields such as travel journalism has not gained much attention, despite the broader growth of lifestyle journalism, and its particular dependence on PR. This study reports the findings of a representative survey of Australian travel journalists, focusing on their views of PR. Results show that travel journalists are wary of PR, although they believe they can be relatively immune from its influence and see some PR activities as quite useful. Cluster analysis identifies three distinct groups based on their views of PR, which range from a positive attitude to strong criticism. Their backgrounds and differences are explored, pointing to gender, job status, and background in mainstream journalism as main determinants for differences.

Psychological stress and employee engagement

“The challenge today is not just retaining talented people, but fully engaging them, capturing their minds and hearts at each stage of their work lives” (Kaye & Jordan-Evans, 2003, p. 11). Engaged employees produce positive work outcomes such as increased productivity satisfaction, and reduced turnover (Kahn, 1990, 1992; Saks, 2006). Engaged employees also impact on customers and co-workers’ positive experiences such as increased customer satisfaction (Wagner & Harter, 2006). Further, engaged employees demonstrate higher levels of trust in management and share more positive experiences with co-workers than disengage employees (Payne, Cangemi, Fuqua, & Muhleakamp, 1998). Past studies show that having a high proportion of engaged employees increases organizational performance, such as profitability and reputation (Wagner & Harter, 2006; Fleming & Asplund, 2007; Ketter, 2008). Having experienced the benefits of having engaged employees, organizations have become more aware of this issue and have been focusing on facilitating engagement climate within workplaces. Recently, an interest in positive psychology, instead of negative aspects of human behaviours, has become a focus for both scholars and practitioners. The trend towards positive psychology has led to the emergence of the concept of work engagement(Chughtai & Buckley, 2008). This article reviews literatures in the area of positive psychology and psychological stress, and discusses how organizations can increase work engagement among their organizational members. The remainder of this article is organised in four sections. First, we define work engagement as used in this article and psychological outcomes of work engagement. Second, we identify ways to increase work engagement among employees. Following this, we further discuss how gender roles influence individuals’ engagement at work. The final sections conclude the paper with a discussion of the practical implications.

Challenges of knowledge integration in small and medium enterprises

This study attempts to develop a better understanding of the challenges of knowledge integration (KI) within the innovation process in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Using several case studies, this study investigates how knowledge integration may be managed within the context of innovation in SMEs. The research places particular focus on identifying the challenges of knowledge integration in SMEs in relation to three aspects of knowledge integration activities, namely knowledge identification, knowledge acquisition, and knowledge sharing. Four distinct tasks emerged in the knowledge integration process, namely team building capability, capturing tacit knowledge, role of knowledge management (KM) systems, and technological systemic integration. The paper suggests that managing knowledge integration in SMEs can be best managed by focusing on these four tasks, which in turn will lead to innovation.

Sedation breaks : are they good for the critically ill patient? A review.

Background:  Tradition has led us to believe that a heavily sedated patient is a comfortable, settled, compliant patient for whom sedation will improve outcome. The current move witnessed in clinical practice today of limiting sedation has led health care in recent years to question the benefit and necessity of routine, continuous sedation for all patients requiring mechanical ventilation. However, as a result there has been a rise in the amount of agitation being reported as being experienced by patients with the daily withdrawal of sedation. Aims:  The purpose of this paper is to review current arguments for and against perserving with agitation versus re-sedating, when it presents during the daily sedation breaks. Findings:  Of the literature reviewed, the question to re-sedate the mechanically ventilated agitated patient during sedation breaks remains an issue of contention. Although there is evidence focusing on the psychological effects of long-term sedation and sedation breaks specifically, the complex nature of critical illness in some cases means that individualized care is of paramount importance and in-depth assessment is crucial when deciding to re-sedate in the face of undetermined agitation. Agitation has been closely linked with several incidents that can be detrimental to patient safety, such as removal of lines and unplanned self-extubation. Conclusion:  The recommendations of this review are that nurses should re-commence sedation if the patient becomes agitated following a sedation break. Aims:  The purpose of this paper is to review current arguments for and against perserving with agitation versus re-sedating, when it presents during the daily sedation breaks. Findings:  Of the literature reviewed, the question to re-sedate the mechanically ventilated agitated patient during sedation breaks remains an issue of contention. Although there is evidence focusing on the psychological effects of long-term sedation and sedation breaks specifically, the complex nature of critical illness in some cases means that individualized care is of paramount importance and in-depth assessment is crucial when deciding to re-sedate in the face of undetermined agitation. Agitation has been closely linked with several incidents that can be detrimental to patient safety, such as removal of lines and unplanned self-extubation. Conclusion:  The recommendations of this review are that nurses should re-commence sedation if the patient becomes agitated following a sedation break.

Distributed public-key cryptography from weak secrets

We introduce the notion of distributed password-based public-key cryptography, where a virtual high-entropy private key is implicitly defined as a concatenation of low-entropy passwords held in separate locations. The users can jointly perform private-key operations by exchanging messages over an arbitrary channel, based on their respective passwords, without ever sharing their passwords or reconstituting the key. Focusing on the case of ElGamal encryption as an example, we start by formally defining ideal functionalities for distributed public-key generation and virtual private-key computation in the UC model. We then construct efficient protocols that securely realize them in either the RO model (for efficiency) or the CRS model (for elegance). We conclude by showing that our distributed protocols generalize to a broad class of “discrete-log”-based public-key cryptosystems, which notably includes identity-based encryption. This opens the door to a powerful extension of IBE with a virtual PKG made of a group of people, each one memorizing a small portion of the master key.

Working knowledge for collaborative water planning in Australia’s Wet Tropics region

Cooperation between multiple environmental decision-makers and activities is necessary to address the impacts of diffuse sources of agricultural pollution on the water quality entering Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Water planning efforts requires available knowledge to inform this co-operative water program implementation and reform. This paper uses knowledge sharing, translation and feedback features of collaboration as a way to assess knowledge work practices during key phases of the water planning process. This enabled a systematic review of knowledge work practices in partnership with collaborative water planning groups established to inform water quality program investment decisions in the GBR’s Wet Tropics region. This research builds on the growing academic and policy interest in the conditions required to enable different types of knowledge to be successfully used for policy-making by focusing on when, how and why knowledge work to meet these conditions is required.

Experiential role of artefacts in cooperative design

The role of material artefacts in supporting distributed and co-located work practices has been well acknowledged within HCI and CSCW research. In this paper, we show that in addition to their ecological, coordinative and organizational support, artefacts also play an 'experiential' role. In this case, artefacts not only improve efficiency or have a purely functional role (e.g. allowing people to complete tasks quickly), but the materiality, use and manifestations of these artefacts bring quality and richness to people's performance and help them make better sense of their everyday lives. In a domain such as industrial design, such artefacts play an important role for supporting creativity and innovation. Based on our ethnographic fieldwork on understanding cooperative design practices of industrial design students and researchers, we describe several experiential practices that are supported by design-related artefacts such as sketches, drawings, physical models and explorative prototypes -- used and developed in designers' everyday work. Our main intention in carrying out this kind of research is to develop technologies to support designers' everyday practices. We believe that with the emergence of ubiquitous computing, there is a growing need to focus on the personal, social and creative side of people's everyday experiences. By focusing on the experiential practices of designers, we can provide a much broader view in the design of new interactive technologies.

Dynamics of affordances and implications for design

Affordance is an important concept in HCI. There are various interpretations of affordances but it has been difficult to use this concept for design purposes. Often the treatment of affordances in the current HCI literature has been as a one-to-one relationship between a user and an artefact. According to our views, affordance is a dynamic, always emerging relationship between a human and his environment. We believe that the social and cultural contexts within which an artefact is situated affect the way in which the artefact is used. Using a Structuration Theory approach, we argue that affordances need also be treated at a much broader level, encompassing social and cultural aspects. We suggest that affordances should be seen at three levels: single user, organizational (or work group) and societal. Focusing on the organizational level affordances, we provide details of several important factors that affect the emergence of affordances.

Analysis of distance learner value assessment of distance education in engineering

Numerous research studies have evaluated whether distance learning is a viable alternative to traditional learning methods. These studies have generally made use of cross-sectional surveys for collecting data, comparing distance to traditional learners with intent to validate the former as a viable educational tool. Inherent fundamental differences between traditional and distance learning pedagogies, however, reduce the reliability of these comparative studies and constrain the validity of analyses resulting from this analytical approach. This article presents the results of a research project undertaken to analyze expectations and experiences of distance learners with their degree programs. Students were given surveys designed to examine factors expected to affect their overall value assessment of their distance learning program. Multivariate statistical analyses were used to analyze the correlations among variables of interest to support hypothesized relationships among them. Focusing on distance learners overcomes some of the limitations with assessments that compare off- and on-campus student experiences. Evaluation and modeling of distance learner responses on perceived value for money of the distance education they received indicate that the two most important influences are course communication requirements, which had a negative effect, and course logistical simplicity, which revealed a positive effect. Combined, these two factors accounted for approximately 47% of the variability in perceived value for money of the educational program of sampled students. A detailed focus on comparing expectations with outcomes of distance learners complements the existing literature dominated by comparative studies of distance and nondistance learners.

More than simple living : a cultural perspective on sustainable living

This paper provides a cultural perspective to the sustainability research within HCI. I draw on the results from an ethnographic field study of sustainable household practices of ten women belonging to the so-called middle class in India. Focusing on their reuse practices, I provide examples of domestic artefacts that are creatively and resourcefully reused from worn-out artefacts. My initial findings show that the rationale behind creating such artefacts is not limited to the practicality and usefulness, but how cultural and religious beliefs are incorporated into such practices.

Active awareness : supporting the intentional disclosure of awareness information in collaborative systems

This thesis opens up the design space for awareness research in CSCW and HCI. By challenging the prevalent understanding of roles in awareness processes and exploring different mechanisms for actively engaging users in the awareness process, this thesis provides a better understanding of the complexity of these processes and suggests practical solutions for designing and implementing systems that support active awareness. Mutual awareness, a prominent research topic in the fields of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) refers to a fundamental aspect of a person’s work: their ability to gain a better understanding of a situation by perceiving and interpreting their co-workers actions. Technologically-mediated awareness, used to support co-workers across distributed settings, distinguishes between the roles of the actor, whose actions are often limited to being the target of an automated data gathering processes, and the receiver, who wants to be made aware of the actors’ actions. This receiver-centric view of awareness, focusing on helping receivers to deal with complex sets of awareness information, stands in stark contrast to our understanding of awareness as social process involving complex interactions between both actors and receivers. It fails to take into account an actors’ intimate understanding of their own activities and the contribution that this subjective understanding could make in providing richer awareness information. In this thesis I challenge the prevalent receiver-centric notion of awareness, and explore the conceptual foundations, design, implementation and evaluation of an alternative active awareness approach by making the following five contributions. Firstly, I identify the limitations of existing awareness research and solicit further evidence to support the notion of active awareness. I analyse ethnographic workplace studies that demonstrate how actors engage in an intricate interplay involving the monitoring of their co-workers progress and displaying aspects of their activities that may be of relevance to others. The examination of a large body of awareness research reveals that while disclosing information is a common practice in face-to-face collaborative settings it has been neglected in implementations of technically mediated awareness. Based on these considerations, I introduce the notion of intentional disclosure to describe the action of users actively and deliberately contributing awareness information. I consider challenges and potential solutions for the design of active awareness. I compare a range of systems, each allowing users to share information about their activities at various levels of detail. I discuss one of the main challenges to active awareness: that disclosing information about activities requires some degree of effort. I discuss various representations of effort in collaborative work. These considerations reveal that there is a trade-off between the richness of awareness information and the effort required to provide this information. I propose a framework for active awareness, aimed to help designers to understand the scope and limitations of different types of intentional disclosure. I draw on the identified richness/effort trade-off to develop two types of intentional disclosure, both of which aim to facilitate the disclosure of information while reducing the effort required to do so. For both of these approaches, direct and indirect disclosure, I delineate how they differ from related approaches and define a set of design criteria that is intended to guide their implementation. I demonstrate how the framework of active awareness can be practically applied by building two proof-of-concept prototypes that implement direct and indirect disclosure respectively. AnyBiff, implementing direct disclosure, allows users to create, share and use shared representations of activities in order to express their current actions and intentions. SphereX, implementing indirect disclosure, represents shared areas of interests or working context, and links sets of activities to these representations. Lastly, I present the results of the qualitative evaluation of the two prototypes and analyse the results with regard to the extent to which they implemented their respective disclosure mechanisms and supported active awareness. Both systems were deployed and tested in real world environments. The results for AnyBiff showed that users developed a wide range of activity representations, some unanticipated, and actively used the system to disclose information. The results further highlighted a number of design considerations relating to the relationship between awareness and communication, and the role of ambiguity. The evaluation of SphereX validated the feasibility of the indirect disclosure approach. However, the study highlighted the challenges of implementing cross-application awareness support and translating the concept to users. The study resulted in design recommendations aimed to improve the implementation of future systems.

Localising national identity : Albany's Anzacs

Local representations of the significance of Albany, Western Australia, in the first world war and of the city's part in the birth of Anzac register substantial points of departure from national histories. While both the Anzac mythos and official renderings of Australia's wars are vigorously contested, Albany's reformulation offers a clear example of the ways in which communities actively inflect national narratives to create expressions of differentiated local identity. This article explores the relationship between the national and the local by focusing on the local narrative of the massing and departure of'The Great Anzac Convoy' in King George Sound in 1914. Particular attention is given to the way Albany has been able to appropriate and localise this event and the origins of Anzac, consequently promoting itself as an important element of the national identity, from which it nevertheless remains distinct. This localisation of an important element of national identity confers cultural standing and a potentially empowered position in relation to this national identity.

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.

Tools for Mobile Multimedia Programming and Development

Mobile devices are rapidly developing into the primary technology for users to work, socialize, and play in a variety of settings and contexts. Their pervasiveness has provided researchers with the means to investigate innovative solutions to ever more complex user demands. Tools for Mobile Multimedia Programming and Development investigates the use of mobile platforms for research projects, focusing on the development, testing, and evaluation of prototypes rather than final products, which enables researchers to better understand the needs of users through image processing, object recognition, sensor integration, and user interactions. This book benefits researchers and professionals in multiple disciplines who utilize such techniques in the creation of prototypes for mobile devices and applications. This book is part of the Advances in Wireless Technologies and Telecommunication series collection.

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.