The getting of wisdom : reflections of a teaching librarian

The shift in focus from teaching to learning in higher education can be paralleled in the shift from bibliographic instruction to information literacy. This move has resulted in a change of role from librarians as service providers to educators. This paper argues that in order to facilitate students' 'getting of wisdom', librarians who design and deliver information literacy programs should see themselves as teachers rather than trainers. It compares the role of the school teacher-librarian with that of the academic teaching librarian. The implications of a dominant training paradigm result in the reduction of information literacy to lower order surface learning. Support for teaching librarians is crucial in changing roles and self-image.

Embedded engagements : the challenge of creative practice research to the humanities

This article explores the opportunities and challenges surrounding a viable cross-disciplinary engagement between the Humanities disciplines and the Creative Practice disciplines within the innovative context of the Creative Industries Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology. This will involve a charting of the intersection of the emerging field of creative practice-led research with various disciplines in the Humanities such as cultural studies. The potential for a reciprocal, transformative process in these creative fields will be addressed. Several examples of postgraduate students’ research will be foregrounded as case studies of the issues involved in fostering a genuine cultural critique both within and through creative practice. Some observers may argue that the research higher degree creative practitioner in effect looks outward from the symbolic material forms being created, in search of an interpretative paradigm, thereby trawling the Humanities for a theory. Several current debates within the postgraduate research arena regarding the balance between the theoretical exegesis and the creative work (e.g. performance, drama, dance, visual art, creative writing, film and screen production, music, interactive media etc) will also be critically examined.

National guidelines for digital modelling

These National Guidelines and Case Studies for Digital Modelling are the outcomes from one of a number of Building Information Modelling (BIM)-related projects undertaken by the CRC for Construction Innovation. Since the CRC opened its doors in 2001, the industry has seen a rapid increase in interest in BIM, and widening adoption. These guidelines and case studies are thus very timely, as the industry moves to model-based working and starts to share models in a new context called integrated practice. Governments, both federal and state, and in New Zealand are starting to outline the role they might take, so that in contrast to the adoption of 2D CAD in the early 90s, we ensure that a national, industry-wide benefit results from this new paradigm of working. Section 1 of the guidelines give us an overview of BIM: how it affects our current mode of working, what we need to do to move to fully collaborative model-based facility development. The role of open standards such as IFC is described as a mechanism to support new processes, and make the extensive design and construction information available to asset operators and managers. Digital collaboration modes, types of models, levels of detail, object properties and model management complete this section. It will be relevant for owners, managers and project leaders as well as direct users of BIM. Section 2 provides recommendations and guides for key areas of model creation and development, and the move to simulation and performance measurement. These are the more practical parts of the guidelines developed for design professionals, BIM managers, technical staff and ‘in the field’ workers. The guidelines are supported by six case studies including a summary of lessons learnt about implementing BIM in Australian building projects. A key aspect of these publications is the identification of a number of important industry actions: the need for BIM-compatible product information and a national context for classifying product data; the need for an industry agreement and setting process-for-process definition; and finally, the need to ensure a national standard for sharing data between all of the participants in the facility-development process.

National guidelines for digital modelling : case studies

These National Guidelines and Case Studies for Digital Modelling are the outcomes from one of a number of Building Information Modelling (BIM)-related projects undertaken by the CRC for Construction Innovation. Since the CRC opened its doors in 2001, the industry has seen a rapid increase in interest in BIM, and widening adoption. These guidelines and case studies are thus very timely, as the industry moves to model-based working and starts to share models in a new context called integrated practice. Governments, both federal and state, and in New Zealand are starting to outline the role they might take, so that in contrast to the adoption of 2D CAD in the early 90s, we ensure that a national, industry-wide benefit results from this new paradigm of working. Section 1 of the guidelines give us an overview of BIM: how it affects our current mode of working, what we need to do to move to fully collaborative model-based facility development. The role of open standards such as IFC is described as a mechanism to support new processes, and make the extensive design and construction information available to asset operators and managers. Digital collaboration modes, types of models, levels of detail, object properties and model management complete this section. It will be relevant for owners, managers and project leaders as well as direct users of BIM. Section 2 provides recommendations and guides for key areas of model creation and development, and the move to simulation and performance measurement. These are the more practical parts of the guidelines developed for design professionals, BIM managers, technical staff and ‘in the field’ workers. The guidelines are supported by six case studies including a summary of lessons learnt about implementing BIM in Australian building projects. A key aspect of these publications is the identification of a number of important industry actions: the need for BIMcompatible product information and a national context for classifying product data; the need for an industry agreement and setting process-for-process definition; and finally, the need to ensure a national standard for sharing data between all of the participants in the facility-development process.

The league of men : masculinity, the media and rugby league football

The rhetoric of masculinity is at melting point in Australian culture. In the nineties, Australian television news and sporting programs have constructed a particularly shrill and insistent form of brash, heterosexual sporting masculinity in football reporting. Against this norm of rippling 'muscularity' and aggressive competition, all so-called aberrant forms of humanity such as women, homosexuals, and men who do not fit into Connell's 'hegemonic masculinity' paradigm have been effectively marginalised and silenced. Class and ethnicity discourses are at best muted, and at worst, ignored in much of the writing about sporting masculinity. While acknowledging the significance of class and ethnicity, this paper explores the nexus between gender, sexuality, the media and League football.

Developing authentic achievement for disengaged young people using an electronic portfolio system

Credentials are a salient form of cultural capital and if a student’s learning and productions are not assessed, they are invisible in current social systems of education and employment. In this field, invisible equals non-existent. This paper arises from the context of an alternative education institution where conventional educational assessment techniques currently fail to recognise the creativity and skills of a cohort of marginalised young people. In order to facilitate a new assessment model an electronic portfolio system (EPS) is being developed and trialled to capture evidence of students’ learning and their productions. In so doing a dynamic system of arranging, exhibiting, exploiting and disseminating assessment data in the form of coherent, meaningful and valuable reports will be maintained. The paper investigates the notion of assessing development of creative thinking and skills through the means of a computerised system that operates in an area described as the efield. A model of the efield is delineated and is explained as a zone existing within the internet where free users exploit the cloud and cultivate social and cultural capital. Drawing largely on sociocultural theory and Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus and capitals, the article positions the efield as a potentially productive instrument in assessment for learning practices. An important aspect of the dynamics of this instrument is the recognition of teachers as learners. This is seen as an integral factor in the sociocultural approach to assessment for learning practices that will be deployed with the EPS. What actually takes place is argued to be assessment for learning as a field of exchange. The model produced in this research is aimed at delivering visibility and recognition through an engaging instrument that will enhance the prospects of marginalised young people and shift the paradigm for assessment in a creative world.

International labour standards and Queensland

Queensland’s legal labour disputes history does not exhibit the current trend seen in Canada and Switzerland (Gravel & Delpech, 2008) where cases citing International Labour Standards (ILS) are often successful (which is not presently the case in Queensland either). The two Queensland cases (Kuhler v. Inghams Enterprises P/L & Anor, 1997 and Bale v. Seltsam Pty Ltd, 1996) that have used ILSs were lost. Australia is a member state of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and a signatory of many ILSs. Yet, ILSs are not used in their legal capacity when compared to other international standards in other areas of law. It is important to recognize that ILSs are uniquely underutilized in labour law. Australian environmental, criminal, and industrial disputes consistently draw on international standards. Why not for the plight of workers? ILSs draw their power from supranational influence in that when a case cites an ILS the barrister or solicitor is going beyond legal precedence and into international peer pressure. An ILS can be appropriately used to highlight that Australian or Queensland legislation does not conform to a Convention or Recommendation. However, should the case deal with a breach of existing law based or modified by an ILS, citing the ILS is a good way to remind the court of its origin. It’s a new legal paradigm critically lacking in Queensland’s labour law practice. The following discusses the research methodology used in this paper. It is followed by a comparative discussion of results between the prevalence of ILSs and other international standards in Queensland case history. Finally, evidence showing the international trend of labour disputes using ILSs for victory is discussed.

Object-centric process models and the design of flexible processes

Mainstream business process modelling techniques promote a design paradigm wherein the activities to be performed within a case, together with their usual execution order, form the backbone of a process model, on top of which other aspects are anchored. This paradigm, while eective in standardised and production-oriented domains, shows some limitations when confronted with processes where case-by-case variations and exceptions are the norm. In this thesis we develop the idea that the eective design of exible process models calls for an alternative modelling paradigm, one in which process models are modularised along key business objects, rather than along activity decompositions. The research follows a design science method, starting from the formulation of a research problem expressed in terms of requirements, and culminating in a set of artifacts that have been devised to satisfy these requirements. The main contributions of the thesis are: (i) a meta-model for object-centric process modelling incorporating constructs for capturing exible processes; (ii) a transformation from this meta-model to an existing activity-centric process modelling language, namely YAWL, showing the relation between object-centric and activity-centric process modelling approaches; and (iii) a Coloured Petri Net that captures the semantics of the proposed meta-model. The meta-model has been evaluated using a framework consisting of a set of work ow patterns. Moreover, the meta-model has been embodied in a modelling tool that has been used to capture two industrial scenarios.

The trouble with English

So much has been made over the crisis in English literature as field, as corpus, and as canon in recent years, that some of it undoubtedly has spilled over into English education. This has been the case in predominantly English-speaking Anglo-American and Commonwealth nations, as well as in those postcolonial states where English remains the medium of instruction and lingua franca of economic and cultural elites. Yet to attribute the pressures for change in pedagogic practice to academic paradigm shift per se would prop up the shaky axiom that English education is forever caught in some kind of perverse evolutionary time-lag, parasitic of university literary studies. I, too, believe that English education has reached a crucial moment in its history, but that this moment is contingent upon the changing demographics, cultural knowledges, and practices of economic globalization.

Creative Industries : A New Direction?

This paper looks at the work of the ARC Centre for Creative Industries and Innovation at Queensland University of Technology. They have attempted to deal with some of the definitional and policy ambiguities surrounding the DCMS’s re-branding of ‘cultural industries’ as ‘creative industries’. The paper focuses on three central claims. First, that Art falls outside the creative industries; second, that the creative industries moves beyond a cultural policy paradigm towards that of innovation systems; third, that the notion of ‘social network markets’ represents the central defining characteristic of the creative industries. The paper suggests that the attempt to separate out art and culture from the creative industries is misplaced and represents a significant shift away from a longer trajectory of ‘cultural industries’ policies with some damaging consequences for cultural policy and creative businesses.

The 'authentic dancer' as a tool for audience engagement

An engagement with performance is an experiential event. To have a lived experience within a performance construct infers that the experience is somehow ‘more live’. This paper situates the body of the audience member as a site of understanding and meaning making, and challenges the role of the traditional ‘passive’ presentation format and ensuing ethical considerations within that assertion. It looks at the relationships between audience experience and a series of creative tools that facilitate subtle shifts in this traditional dance paradigm. Along with the tools of audience agency, liminality, variations of site and proximity – tools that create engagement via physical interactions with the audience – can ‘performer authenticity’ also become a tool of connection with the audience? This paper looks at the overarching field of contemporary dance, with a primary focus on Western contemporary dance and the traditional dance paradigms prevalent in the construction and presentation of that form. It outlines the role of the experiential within this form and highlights established research and creation tools that encourage audience connection via audience interaction. It also looks at the role of the dancer within this construct, citing both current qualitative research into audience responses, as well as current theory and creative practice from an international field of artists creating work with the ‘authentic dancer’.

Maintaining nutrition in aged care residents with a train-the-trainer intervention and nutrition coordinator

Objective: To investigate the impact of a train-the-trainer program on the nutritional status of older people in residential care. ----- Design: Prospective, randomized controlled study. Setting: Eight nursing homes in Southeast Queensland, Australia. ----- Participants: A total of 352 residents participated - 245 were female (69.6%). The mean age was 84.2 years and the majority (79.4%) were classified as high dependency. ----- Intervention: Residents from four nursing homes were randomly selected for a nutrition education program coordinated by Nutrition Coordinators. Residents from the other four nursing homes (control) received usual care. ----- Measurements: The Subjective Global Assessment was used to determine prevalence of malnutrition at baseline and six months post intervention. The Resident Classification Scale measured functional dependency. Prescribed diet, fluids, oral hygiene status and allied health referrals were obtained by chart audit. ----- Results: Approximately half the residents were well nourished with 49.4% moderately or severely malnourished. Residents in the intervention group were more likely to maintain or improve their nutritional status compared with the control group who were more likely to experience a deterioration (P=0.027). The odds of the control group being malnourished post test was 1.6 times more likely compared with the intervention group but this did not reach statistical significance (P=0.1). ----- Conclusion: The results of the study encourage the implementation of a Nutrition Coordinator program to maintain nutritional status of aged care residents. Nevertheless, malnutrition rates continue to be unacceptably high. In a rapidly aging society, the aged care sector needs to confront malnutrition and provide better resources for staff to take measures against this problem.

Building the toolkit of quality monitoring clinical outcomes as a means of assessing quality in residential care

Residential aged care in Australia does not have a system of quality assessment related to clinical outcomes, creating a significant gap in quality monitoring. Clinical outcomes represent the results of all inputs into care, thus providing an indication of the success of those inputs. To fill this gap, an assessment tool based on resident outcomes (the ResCareQA) was developed and evaluated in collaboration with residential care providers. A useful output of the ResCareQA is a profile of resident clinical status, and this paper will use such outputs to present a snapshot of nine residential facilities. Such comprehensive data has not yet been available within Australia, so this will provide an important insight. ResCareQA data was collected from all residents (N=498) of nine aged care facilities from two major aged care providers. For each facility, numerator–denominator data were calculated to assess the degree of potential clinical problems. Results varied across clinical areas and across facilities, and rank-ordered facility results for selected clinical areas are reviewed and discussed. Use of the ResCareQA to generate clinical outcome data provides a concrete means of monitoring care quality within residential facilities; regular use of the ResCareQA could thus contribute to improved care outcomes within residential aged care.

Literacy education in the context of globalisation

This review chapter provides an overview of English language literacy education in the contexts of cultural and economic globalisation. Drawing case study examples of India and China, the authors outline three complementary models: the development paradigm, the hegemony paradigm and the new literacies paradigm. The analysis focuses on effects of the spread of English on vernacular languages and the non-synchronous issues raised by digital production cultures. Noting the difficulties of education systems in contending with new literacies - it argues for the reframing of transnational relations, global material conditions and new communications technologies as the objects of critical literacy education.

Post-colonial law : legal establishments from past empires are illegitimate

The extant literature covering the plights of indigenous people resident to the African continent consistently targets colonial law as an obstacle to the recognition of indigenous rights. Whereas colonial law is argued to be archaic and in need of review, which it is, this article argues the new perspective that colonial law is illegitimate for ordering the population it presides over – specifically in Africa. It is seen, in five case studies, that post-colonial legal structures have not considered the legitimacy of colonial law and have rather modified a variety of statutes as country contexts dictated. However, the modified statutes are based on an alien theoretical legality, something laden with connotations that hark to older and backward times. It is ultimately argued that the legal structures which underpin ex-colonies in Africa need considerable revision so as to base statutes on African theoretical legality, rather than imperialistic European ones, so as to maximise the law’s legitimacy.