Impact and energy absorption of empty and foam-filled conical tubes

Foam-filled conical tubes have recently emerged as efficient energy absorbing devices to mitigate the adverse effects of impacts. The primary aim of this thesis was to generate research and design information on the impact and energy absorption response of empty and foam-filled conical tubes, and to facilitate their application in energy absorbing systems under axial and oblique loading conditions representative of those typically encountered in crashworthiness and impact applications. Finite element techniques supported by experiments and existing results were used in the investigation. Major findings show that the energy absorption response can be effectively controlled by varying geometry and material parameters. A useful empirical formula was developed for providing engineering designers with an initial estimate of the load ratio and hence energy absorption performances of these devices. It was evident that foam-filled conical tubes enhance the energy absorption capacity and stabilise the crush response for both axial and oblique impact loading without a significant increase in the initial peak load. This is practically beneficial when higher kinetic energy needs to be absorbed, thus reducing the impact force transmitted to the protected structure and occupants. Such tubes also increase and maintain the energy absorption capacity under global bending as well as minimise the reduction of energy absorption capacity with increasing load angle. Furthermore, the results also highlight the feasibility of adding a foam-filled conical tube as a supplementary device in energy absorbing systems, since the overall energy absorption performance of such systems can be favourably enhanced by only including a relatively small energy absorbing device. Above all, the results demonstrate the superior performance of foam-filled conical tube for mitigating impact energy in impact and crashworthiness applications.

Enhancing the capacity of oncology nurses to provide supportive care for patients with advanced cancer : evaluation of an educational intervention

Aim: This study aimed to enhance the capacity of oncology nurses to provide supportive care for patients with advanced cancer who have dependent children. ---------- Method: This was a pilot study of an educational intervention comprising a study-developed self-directed learning manual, supported by a day-long communication skills training workshop. Evaluation pre- and post-training included measures of stress and burnout, self-reports of confidence and attitudes, responses to clinical vignettes and video-taped interviews with simulated patients.---------- Results: Nurses found the educational intervention highly acceptable, and reported increased confidence in their ability to provide information and support for parents, and to initiate discussion about emotional issues. There were significant improvements in general communication skills and skills specific to this training, as well as reduced use of blocking.---------- Conclusion: Brief communication skills training supplemented with tailored educational resources can enhance confidence skills and knowledge of oncology nurses regarding their supportive care of parents with advanced cancer.

Mobile learning, social learning

Understanding the future development of interaction design as it applies to learning and training scenarios is crucial to effective development of curriculum and appropriate application of social and mobile communication technologies. As Attewell & Saville-Smith have recognised (2004), the use of mobile communication devices for improved literacy and numeracy is a desirable prospect among young people who represent the average age of undergraduate students. Further, with the growing penetration of broadband internet access, the ubiquity of wireless access in educational locations, the rise of ultra-mobile portable computers and the proliferation of social software applications in educational contexts, there are a growing number of channels for facilitation of learning. Nevertheless, there has been insufficient consideration of the interaction design issues that affect the effective facilitation of such learning. This paper contends that there is a clear need to design mobile and social learning to accommodate the benefits of these diverse channels for interaction. Additionally, there is a need to implement suitable testing processes to ensure participants in mobile and social learning are contributing effectively and maximising their learning. Through the presentation of case studies in mobile and social learning, the paper attempts to demonstrate how considered interaction design techniques can improve the effectiveness of new learning channels.

Location-based games : transforming everyday environments into dynamic learning spaces

Location based games (LBGs) provide an opportunity to look at how new technologies can support a reciprocal relationship between formal classroom learning and learning that can potentially occur in other everyday environments. Fundamentally many games are intensely engaging due to the resulting social interactions and technical challenges they provide to individual and group players. By introducing the use of mobile devices we can transport these characteristics of games into everyday spaces. LBGs are understood as a broad genre incorporating ideas and tools that provide many unique opportunities for us to to reveal, create and even subvert various social, cultural, technical, and scientific interpretations of place, in particular places where learning is sometimes problematic.--------- A team of Queensland game developers have learnt a great deal through designing a range of LBGs such as SCOOT for various user groups and places. While these LBGs were primarily designed as social events, we found that the players recognised and valued the game as an opportunity to learn about their environment, it's history, cultural significance, inhabitants, services etc. Since identifying the strong pedagogical outcomes of LBGs, the team has created a set of authoring tools for people to design and host their own LBGs. A particular version of this is known as MiLK the mobile learning kit for schools.---------- This presentation will include examples of how LBGs have been used to improve the teaching and learning outcomes in various contexts. Participants will be introduced to MiLK and invited to trial it in their own classrooms with students.

SCOOT game event : families as partners in learning

How games can be designed to engage families in learning spaces outside of the classroom. SCOOT Game has been played by families in various science museums and art galleries in Australian capital cities since 2004. Families form groups to collaborate in the game that takes them on an SMS quest through these places engaging them with artworks, historic facts, landmarks, puzzles, street performances etc.

Studio game-on

The studio-gameon event was supported by the Institute of the Creative Industries and Innovation and the Faculty of IT as part of the State Library of Queensland GAME ON exhibition (ex Barbican, UK) The studio produced a full game in six weeks. It was a curated event, a live web-based exhibition, a performance for the public and the team produced a digital / creative work which is available for download. The studio enabled a team of students to experience the pressures of a real game studio within the space of the precincts but also very much in the public eye. It was a physical hypothesis of the University's mantra - "for the real world" statement: Studio GameOn is an opportunity running alongside the GAME ON exhibition at the State Library of Queensland. The exhibition itself is open to the public from November 17th through to February 15th. The studio runs from January 5th to February 13th 2009. The Studio GameOn challenge? To put together a team of game developers and make a playable game in six weeks! The studio-game on team consists of a group of game developers in training - the team members are all students who are either half-way through or completing a qualification in game design and all its elements - we have designers, artists, programmers and productionteam members. We are also fortunate to have an Industry Board consisting of local Queensland Games professionals: John Passfield (Red Sprite Studios), Adrian Cook (WIldfire Studios) and Duncan Curtis and Marko Grgic (The 3 Blokes). We also invite the public to play with us - there is an ideas box both on-site at the State Library and a number of ways to communicate with us on this studio website.

48 hour game making challenge

The 48 hour game making challenge has been running since its inception at the NEXT LEVEL Festival in 2004. It is curated by Truna aka j. Turner and Lubi Thomas and sees teams of both future game makers and industry professionals going head to head under pressure to produce playable games within the time period. The 48 hour is supported by the International Game Developers Association (Brisbane Chapter)and the Creative Industries Precincts as part of their public programs. It is a curated event which engages industry with Brisbane educational institutes and which fosters the Australian Games Industry

Critical social theory and transformative learning : evidence in pre-service teachers' service-learning reflection logs

This paper reports on the opportunities for transformational learning experienced by a group of pre-service teachers who were engaged in service-learning as a pedagogical process with a focus on reflection. Critical social theory informed the design of the reflection process as it enabled a move away from knowledge transmission toward knowledge transformation. The structured reflection log was designed to illustrate the critical social theory expectations of quality learning that teach students to think critically: ideology critique and utopian critique. Butin's lenses and a reflection framework informed by the work of Bain, Ballantyne, Mills and Lester were used in the design of the service-learning reflection log. Reported data provide evidence of transformational learning and highlight how the students critique their world and imagine how they could contribute to a better world in their work as a beginning teacher.

Resistance : re-imagining innovation in higher education teaching and learning

The call to innovate is ubiquitous across the Australian educational policy context. The claims of innovative practices and environments that occur frequently in university mission statements, strategic plans and marketing literature suggest that this exhortation to innovate appears to have been taken up enthusiastically by the university sector. Throughout the history of universities, a range of reported deficiencies of higher education have worked to produce a notion of crisis. At present, it would seem that innovation is positioned as the solution to the notion of crisis. This thesis is an inquiry into how the insistence on innovation works to both enable and constrain teaching and learning practices in Australian universities. Alongside the interplay between innovation and crisis is the link between resistance and innovation, a link which remains largely unproblematized in the scholarly literature. This thesis works to locate and unsettle understandings of a relationship between innovation and Australian higher education. The aim of this inquiry is to generate new understandings of what counts as innovation within this context and how innovation is enacted. The thesis draws on a number of postmodernist theorists, whose works have informed firstly the research method, and then the analysis and findings. Firstly, there is an assumption that power is capillary and works through discourse to enact power relations which shape certain truths (Foucault, 1990). Secondly, this research scrutinised language practices which frame the capacity for individuals to act, alongside the language practices which encourage an individual to adopt certain attitudes and actions as one’s own (Foucault, 1988). Thirdly, innovation talk is read in this thesis as an example of needs talk, that is, as a medium through which what is considered domestic, political or economic is made and contested (Fraser, 1989). Fourthly, relationships between and within discourses were identified and analysed beyond cause and effect descriptions, and more productively considered to be in a constant state of becoming (Deleuze, 1987). Finally, the use of ironic research methods assisted in producing alternate configurations of innovation talk which are useful and new (Rorty, 1989). The theoretical assumptions which underpin this thesis inform a document analysis methodology, used to examine how certain texts work to shape the ways in which innovation is constructed. The data consisted of three Federal higher education funding policies selected on the rationale that these documents, as opposed to state or locally based policy and legislation, represent the only shared policy context for all Australian universities. The analysis first provided a modernist reading of the three documents, and this was followed by postmodernist readings of these same policy documents. The modernist reading worked to locate and describe the current truths about innovation. The historical context in which the policy was produced as well as the textual features of the document itself were important to this reading. In the first modernist reading, the binaries involved in producing proper and improper notions of innovation were described and analysed. In the process of the modernist analysis and the subsequent location of binary organisation, a number of conceptual collisions were identified, and these sites of struggle were revisited, through the application of a postmodernist reading. By applying the theories of Rorty (1989) and Fraser (1989) it became possible to not treat these sites as contradictory and requiring resolution, but rather as spaces in which binary tensions are necessary and productive. This postmodernist reading constructed new spaces for refusing and resisting dominant discourses of innovation which value only certain kinds of teaching and learning practices. By exploring a number of ironic language practices found within the policies, this thesis proposes an alternative way of thinking about what counts as innovation and how it happens. The new readings of innovation made possible through the work of this thesis were in response to a suite of enduring, inter-related questions – what counts as innovation?, who or what supports innovation?, how does innovation occur?, and who are the innovators?. The truths presented in response to these questions were treated as the language practices which constitute a dominant discourse of innovation talk. The collisions that occur within these truths were the contested sites which were of most interest for the analysis. The thesis concludes by presenting a theoretical blueprint which works to shift the boundaries of what counts as innovation and how it happens in a manner which is productive, inclusive and powerful. This blueprint forms the foundation upon which a number of recommendations are made for both my own professional practice and broader contexts. In keeping with the conceptual tone of this study, these recommendations are a suite of new questions which focus attention on the boundaries of innovation talk as an attempt to re-configure what is valued about teaching and learning at university.

Up the e-learning curve : ensuring quality online education within an Australian university

The paper describes the implementation of a project within Australian Catholic University designed to launch the Faculties into online education in a manner which ensured quality in all aspects of the teaching-learning experiences of academics and students. Key elements of the strategic approach adopted by the project leaders, including the involvement of a specialist commercial provider of web-based delivery systems as a partner in the project, mechanisms to support the initiative through the first stages, careful choice of the programs offered online, and staff development matched to the emerging needs of those involved in the teaching of courses, are described. Challenges encountered in the implementation process, and the factors which assisted in overcoming these problems are identified. The paper draws upon this experience to raise some important issues relevant to the successful introduction of online education as an integral component of the teaching repertoire of Faculties.

Research training and national innovation systems in Australia, Finland and the United States : a policy and systems study supported by 30 case studies of research students in the fields of geospatial science, wireless communication, biosciences, and materials science and engineering

Reforms to the national research and research training system by the Commonwealth Government of Australia sought to effectively connect research conducted in universities to Australia's national innovation system. Research training has a key role in ensuring an adequate supply of highly skilled people for the national innovation system. During their studies, research students produce and disseminate a massive amount of new knowledge. Prior to this study, there was no research that examined the contribution of research training to Australia's national innovation system despite the existence of policy initiatives aiming to enhance this contribution. Given Australia's below average (but improving) innovation performance compared to other OECD countries, the inclusion of Finland and the United States provided further insights into the key research question. This study examined three obvious ways that research training contributes to the national innovation systems in the three countries: the international mobility and migration of research students and graduates, knowledge production and distribution by research students, and the impact of research training as advanced human capital formation on economic growth. Findings have informed the concept of a research training culture of innovation that aims to enhance the contribution of research training to Australia's national innovation system. Key features include internationally competitive research and research training environments; research training programs that equip students with economically-relevant knowledge and the capabilities required by employers operating in knowledge-based economies; attractive research careers in different sectors; a national commitment to R&D as indicated by high levels of gross and business R&D expenditure; high private and social rates of return from research training; and the horizontal coordination of key organisations that create policy for, and/or invest in research training.

Student perceptions of the impact of online discussion forum participation on learning outcomes

Choosing the “right” type of technology, either synchronous or asynchronous, to facilitate learning outcomes is a new challenge as the pace of emerging technologies increases and diversifies. Teachers are encouraged to design courses that require collaboration in online learning communities to facilitate the development of higher order thinking skills for life long learning. It is therefore important to gather evidence of the kinds of opportunities afforded to students and whether the students themselves endorse collaborative online tools as a legitimate method of assisting in their learning. This paper outlines the way in which one secondary school has used an online discussion forum to support students in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program in enhancing research skills and skills for lifelong learning. The paper considers whether online collaborative tools are perceived by students as a positive way to improve learning outcomes.

Modelling the process of learning in economics

Student learning research literature has shown that students' learning approaches are influenced by the learning context (Evans, Kirby, & Fabrigar, 2003). Of the many contextual factors, assessment has been found to have the most important influence on the way students go about learning. For example, assessment that is perceived to required a low level of cognitive abilities will more likely elicit a learning approach that concentrate on reproductive learning activities. Moreover, assessment demand will also interact with learning approach to determine academic performance. In this paper an assessment specific model of learning comprising presage, process and product variables (Biggs, 2001) was proposed and tested against data obtained from a sample of introductory economics students (n=434). The model developed was used to empirically investigate the influence of learning inputs and learning approaches on academic performances across assessment types (essay assignment, multiple choice question exam and exam essay). By including learning approaches in the learning model, the mechanism through which learning inputs determine academic performance was examined. Methodological limitations of the study will also be discussed.