The ‘Get Marketer Challenge’: Engaging first year students in an introductory marketing course

Research on student engagement suggests courses that involve students in challenging, authentic tasks linking students to their peers and educators are associated with high levels of engagement. This paper presents an assessment innovation within a first year marketing course that was designed to promote student engagement. Currently in its pilot stage, the ‘Get Marketer Challenge’ is a constructively aligned, authentic assessment task; requiring student teams to solve a real-world marketing problem as part of a course-wide competition. Student enrolment data suggests the Get Marketer Challenge is an attractive assessment option that encourages students to enrol in the Marketing course. Educators have been surprised by the consistency and high level of effort expended by student teams. Students report the Get Marketer Challenge is an enjoyable assessment task that helped them to understand some of the challenges faced by marketers.

Validation of the Flinders decision : making questionnaire in course decision making by students

The Flinders Decision Making Questionnaire (DMQ; Mann, 1982) was designed to measure decision making coping patterns identified by Janis and Mann (1977). The validity of four DMQ Scales (vigilance, defensive avoidance, hypervigilance, and decision self-esteem) were tested as predictors of students' course and career decision making. Students administered the DMQ scales were also measured on independence of choice, satisfaction, and planfulness relating to their university course and on planfulness and options relating to their future employment. Two samples were studied. In study 1, 40 students residing in a university college were the subjects. In Study 2, 42 second-year students who completed the DMQ one year earlier constituted the subjects. Modest but significant correlations were found in both samples between DMQ scores and measures of course and career decision making. The findings lend support to the validity of the DMQ as an instrument for measuring decision making behaviour.

Library technician course recognition : meeting the challenge of a distributed national education program

This paper looks at the challenges presented for the Australian Library and Information Association by its role as the professional association responsible for ensuring the quality of Australian library technician graduates. There is a particular focus on the issue of course recognition, where the Association's role is complicated by the need to work alongside the national quality assurance processes that have been established by the relevant technical education authorities. The paper describes the history of course recognition in Australia; examines the relationship between course recognition and other quality measures; and describes the process the Association has undertaken recently to ensure appropriate professional scrutiny in a changing environment of accountability.

Optimizing construction planning schedules by virtual prototyping enabled resource analysis

The inherent uncertainty and complexity of construction work make construction planning a particularly difficult task for project managers due to the need to anticipate and visualize likely future events. Conventional computer-assisted technology can help but is often limited to the constructability issues involved. Virtual prototyping, however, offers an improved method through the visualization of construction activities by computer simulation — enabling a range of ‘what-if’ questions to be asked and their implications on the total project to be investigated. This paper describes the use of virtual prototyping to optimize construction planning schedules by analyzing resource allocation and planning with integrated construction models, resource models, construction planning schedules and site-layout plans. A real-life case study is presented that demonstrates the use of a virtual prototyping enabled resource analysis to reallocate space, logistic on access road and arrange tower cranes to achieve a 6-day floor construction cycle.

Blogs, wikis and podcasts : collaborative knowledge building tools in a design and technology course

Design and Technology has become an important part of the school curriculum. In Queensland, Australia, Technology (which encompasses Design) is one of the Key Learning Areas (KLAs) for students in the first ten years of schooling. This KLA adopts a student-centred, hands-on constructivist approach to teaching and learning. The ability to conceptualise and implement appropriate learning experiences, however, has been a challenge for some early career teachers. This paper describes how Design and Technology is being taught to pre-service primary teachers at an Australian University through their involvement in a range of authentic problem-solving activities supported by social learning tools such as wikis and blogs. An interview with a sample from this group (N=5) provides an insight into how these social software tools enhanced their knowledge and learning. This paper will describe how these social learning tools impact on the agency of learning.

Mildura, Victoria : Aboriginal health promotion short course

The Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation’s (VACCHO) Public Health and Research Unit delivered an Aboriginal Health Promotion Short Course in Mildura in 2009. ----- The VACCHO delivered Aboriginal Health Promotion Short Course included current health promotion theory and practice as it specifically relates to Aboriginal people within Victoria. As Aboriginal people have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, the course specifically addressed risk factors for chronic disease including smoking, physical activity, nutrition and mental health and well-being. Hence, a key part of the course involved participants working in groups to plan a health promotion program for one of the key health issues- smoking, physical activity and nutrition, or spiritual health and wellbeing. The aim is for participants to use these programs in their daily work with Aboriginal clients.

A risk-based approach to course quality assurance

A decade ago, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) developed an innovative annual Courses Performance Report, but through incremental change, this report became quite labour-intensive. A new risk-based approach to course quality assurance, that consolidates voluminous data in a simple dashboard, responds to the changing context of the higher education sector. This paper will briefly describe QUT’s context and outline the second phase of implementation of this new approach to course quality assurance. The main components are: Individual Course Reports (ICRs), the Consolidated Courses Performance Report (CCPR), Underperforming Courses Status Update and the Strategic Faculty Courses Update (SFCU). These components together form a parsimonious and strategic annual cycle of reporting and place QUT in a positive position to respond to future sector change

In the Rough : In-Field evaluation of an autonomous vehicle for golf course maintenance

Maintenance is a time consuming and expensive task for any golf course or driving range manager. For a golf course the primary tasks are grass mowing and maintenance (fertilizer and herbicide spreading), while for a driving range mowing, maintenance and ball collection are required. All these tasks require an operator to drive a vehicle along paths which are generally predefined. This paper presents some preliminary in-field tsting results for an automated tractor vehicle performing golf ball collection on an actual driving range, and mowing on difficult unstructured terrain.

Personal epistemology in pre-service teachers : belief changes throughout a teacher education course

Classrooms of the 21st century are complex systems. They support diverse learners from varied contexts and function in a “messy” bricolage of policy contexts. This complexity is also evident in the nature of teaching and learning deployed in these classrooms. There is also, in current contexts, a general expectation that teachers will support students to construct, rather than simply receive knowledge. This process of constructing knowledge requires a focus on critical thinking in complex social and real world contexts (see also Elen & Clarebout, 2001; Yang, Chang & Hsu 2008). Critical thinking, which involves the identification and evaluation of multiple perspectives when making decisions, is a process of knowing – a tool of wisdom (Kuhn & Udell, 2001). Schommer-Aikens, Bird and Bakken (2010) refer to classrooms that encourage critical thinking as “epistemologically based” in which “the teacher encourages his/her students to look for connections among concepts within the text, with their prior knowledge, and with concepts found in the world beyond themselves” (p. 48).

Cluster-based network model for time-course gene expression data

We propose a model-based approach to unify clustering and network modeling using time-course gene expression data. Specifically, our approach uses a mixture model to cluster genes. Genes within the same cluster share a similar expression profile. The network is built over cluster-specific expression profiles using state-space models. We discuss the application of our model to simulated data as well as to time-course gene expression data arising from animal models on prostate cancer progression. The latter application shows that with a combined statistical/bioinformatics analyses, we are able to extract gene-to-gene relationships supported by the literature as well as new plausible relationships.

Researching with the Aboriginal Community, MPH2057- Aboriginal Health Course (Monash University), delivered by the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO) & The Burnet Institute at The Burnet Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, 29 September 2010

A copy of the slide presentation titled 'Researching with the Aboriginal Community'. It was presented by Bronwyn Fredericks for the Master of Public Health Program (MPH2057- Aboriginal Health Course) at Monash University. The Monash University Aboriginal Health Course (MPH2057) is delivered in partnership by the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO) & The Burnet Institute. The 2010 Aboriginal Health Course was run on Level 3 of The Burnet Institute, 89 Commercial Road, Prahan, Melbourne, Victoria, 29 September 2010.