Democratic and participatory citizenship: Youth action for sustainability in Australia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of recent examples of action competence among young people engaged in democratic participatory action in sustainability programs in Australia. It explores examples of priorities identified for citizen action, the forms this action takes and the ways that democratic participation can achieve positive outcomes for future sustainability. It suggests multiple ways for developing action competence that provides further opportunities for authentic and engaging citizen action for youth connected to school- and community-based learning, in new and powerful ways. Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper examines international literature on the theory of “action competence,” its significance for education for sustainability (EfS) and the ways it can inform education for young people’s democratic participatory citizenship and civic engagement. It analyses examples of the development of action competency among young people in Australia, including the problems and priorities identified for citizen action, the forms this action takes and how it can achieve positive outcomes for sustainability. Following this analysis, the paper suggests multiple ways for developing action competence in EfS in schools and communities in new and powerful ways. Findings – Developing EfS to increase democratic and participatory action among young citizens is now widely regarded as an urgent education priority. There are growing exemplars of school and community organizations’ involvement in developing EfS learning and teaching to increase participatory citizenship. Young people are being empowered to develop a greater sense of agency through involvement in programs that develop action competence with a focus on sustainability in and out of school. New forms of participation include student action teams and peer collaboration among youth who are marshaling social media and direction action to achieve change. Originality/value – It contributes to the literature on multiple ways for developing action competence in EfS.

The organisational context of nursing care in stroke units: A case study approach

Background Internationally the stroke unit is recognised as the evidence-based model for patient management, although clarity about the effective components of stroke units is lacking. Whilst skilled nursing care has been proposed as one component, the theoretical and empirical basis for stroke nursing is limited. We attempted to explore the organisational context of stroke unit nursing, to determine those features that staff perceived to be important in facilitating high quality care. Design A case study approach was used, that included interviews with nurses and members of the multidisciplinary teams in two Canadian acute stroke units. A total of 20 interviews were completed, transcribed and analysed thematically using the Framework Approach. Trustworthiness was established through the review of themes and their interpretation by members of the stroke units. Findings Nine themes that comprised an organisational context that supported the delivery of high quality nursing care in acute stroke units were identified, and provide a framework for organisational development. The study highlighted the importance of an overarching service model to guide the organisation of care and the development of specialist and advanced nursing roles. Whilst multidisciplinary working appears to be a key component of stroke unit nursing, various organisational challenges to its successful implementation were highlighted. In particular the consequence of differences in the therapeutic approach of nurses and therapy staff needs to be explored in greater depth. Successful teamwork appears to depend on opportunities for the development of relationships between team members as much as the use of formal communication systems and structures. A co-ordinated approach to education and training, clinical leadership, a commitment to research, and opportunities for role and practice development also appear to be key organisational features of stroke unit nursing. Recommendations for the development of stroke nursing leadership and future research into teamwork in stroke settings are made.

Utility of web content blocks in content extraction

Currently we are facing an overburdening growth of the number of reliable information sources on the Internet. The quantity of information available to everyone via Internet is dramatically growing each year [15]. At the same time, temporal and cognitive resources of human users are not changing, therefore causing a phenomenon of information overload. World Wide Web is one of the main sources of information for decision makers (reference to my research). However our studies show that, at least in Poland, the decision makers see some important problems when turning to Internet as a source of decision information. One of the most common obstacles raised is distribution of relevant information among many sources, and therefore need to visit different Web sources in order to collect all important content and analyze it. A few research groups have recently turned to the problem of information extraction from the Web [13]. The most effort so far has been directed toward collecting data from dispersed databases accessible via web pages (related to as data extraction or information extraction from the Web) and towards understanding natural language texts by means of fact, entity, and association recognition (related to as information extraction). Data extraction efforts show some interesting results, however proper integration of web databases is still beyond us. Information extraction field has been recently very successful in retrieving information from natural language texts, however it is still lacking abilities to understand more complex information, requiring use of common sense knowledge, discourse analysis and disambiguation techniques.

IdeaWall: Mixed mode distributed collaboration in enterprise environments

In early stages of design and modeling, computers and computer applications are often considered an obstacle, rather than a facilitator of the process. Most notably, brainstorms, process modeling with business experts, or development planning, are often performed by a team in front of a whiteboard. While "whiteboarding" is recognized as an effective tool, low-tech solutions that allow remote participants to contribute are still not generally available. This is a striking observation, considering that vast majority of teams in large organizations are distributed teams. And this has also been one of the key triggers behind the project described in this article, where a team of corporate researchers decided to identify state of the art technologies that could facilitate the scenario mentioned above. This paper is an account of a research project in the area of enterprise collaboration, with a strong focus on the aspects of human computer interaction in mixed mode environments, especially in areas of collaboration where computers still play a secondary role. It is describing a currently running corporate research project. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

IdeaWall: Bridging the digital and non-digital worlds to facilitate distant collaboration

Creative and ad-hoc work often involves non-digital artifacts, such as whiteboards and post-it notes. The preferred method of brainstorming and idea development, while facilitating work among collocated participants, makes it particularly tricky to involve remote participants, not even mentioning cases where live social involvement is required and the number and location of remote participants can be vast. Our work has originally focused on large distributed teams in business entities. Vast majority of teams in large organizations are distributed teams. Our team of corporate researchers decided to identify state of the art technologies that could facilitate the scenarios mentioned above. This paper is an account of a research project in the area of enterprise collaboration, with a strong focus on the aspects of human computer interaction in mixed mode environments, especially in areas of collaboration where computers still play a secondary role. It is describing a currently running corporate research project. In this paper we signal the potential use of the technology in situation, where community involvement is either required or desirable. The goal of the paper is to initiate a discussion on the use of technologies, initially designed as supporting enterprise collaboration, in situation requiring community engagement. In other words, it is a contribution of technically focused research exploring the uses of the technology in areas such as social engagement and community involvement. © 2012 IEEE.

Females as mobile resources: communal roosts promote the adoption of lek breeding in a temperate bat

Males of lek-breeding species defend clustered territories from which they display to visiting females. However, the mechanisms leading to the adoption of clustered male display sites are often unknown. In this study, we examined the possibility of a resource-based lek in New Zealand’s lesser short-tailed bat (Mystacina tuberculata) (Mammalia: Chiroptera), by assessing the placement of “singing roosts” used by males in relation to communal roosting sites used by females. The “resource-based lek” model posits that males settle near resources required by females to increase female encounter rates. For most bat species, where females are highly mobile and widely dispersed across landscapes while foraging, communal daytime roosts dominated by females may represent such a resource. Through use of video footage, spatial analyses of singing-roost locations, and passive-integrated transponder tags we confirmed that M. tuberculata employs a lek mating system. We found that male singing roosts were significantly clustered in space, were defended by resident individuals, and were visited by females (who did not receive resources from males) for mating purposes. Transponder records also indicated that some singing roosts were shared between multiple males. Spatial logistic regression indicated that singing-roost locations were associated with communal roosting sites. Communal roosts are selected based on criteria independent of the locations of singing roosts, suggesting that males responded to the location of communal roosts and not the reverse. Mystacina tuberculata thus provides evidence of a resource-based lek, and is only the second bat species worldwide confirmed to use a lek-mating system.

Origins of Australian Football: Victoria's Early History. Volume 3: Covert 'Professionalism': The Power of the Wealthy Clubs 1886 to 1890

This volume continues the story of football in Marvellous Melbourne during the 1880s. At this time the VFA continued to expand as Melbourne’s boom continued apace. In 1886 Port Melbourne, Prahran, St Kilda, Footscray and South Williamstown joined the competition, and the Ballarat clubs Ballarat, Ballarat Imperial and South Ballarat were also contending for the VFA premiership. In 1886 matches were divided into four quarters, goal umpires waved two flags to announce a goal, and time clocks and bells were employed to mark the end of quarters. Victoria also played inter-colonial matches against New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia. VFA secretary T.S. Marshall was at the forefront of fighting the game’s turn towards professionalism, but although it was illegal to pay players, the practice continued. The period 1886 to 1890 also set the stage for the eventual formation of the Victorian Football League, for by the end of the 1880s the Victorian Football Association had become in effect a two-tier competition. The most popular clubs in the VFA, South Melbourne, Geelong, Carlton and Essendon collected the lion’s share of the gate money, which they used to build their wealth and entrench their position as the dominant Victorian teams. The lower tier clubs had to make do with paltry gate money and season fixtures that advantaged the strong clubs. In these fixtures the strong clubs elected to play each other first to increase their gate money, and only deemed to play the poorer clubs at the start of the season. This led to an increasing divide between the VFA’s rich and poor, and by 1890 South Williamstown and Prahran merged with Williamstown and St Kilda respectively, University dropped out of senior ranks, and the Ballarat clubs were excluded from competing for the VFA premiership, which left 12 senior clubs until Collingwood’s emergence in 1892. At this time, no team was as powerful as South Melbourne, which experienced the greatest success in the club’s VFA and VFL history when it collected triple premiership crowns in 1888, 1889, and 1890. South Melbourne was a most ambitious club and spearheaded the move towards professionalism, although this could not be made public. The fine teams it produced at this time contained some of the greatest players of the era, such as Peter Burns, “Sonny” Elms and “Dinny” McKay, and it looked after players with health insurance, jobs, inter-colonial trips, and other incentives. Geelong’s premiership in 1886 was perhaps its greatest triumph, but this success was followed by a premiership drought that would last for 39 years. Carlton remained one of Victorian football’s power clubs, and after securing the premiership in 1887 continued to compete for top honours. As always, the game became ever more popular and world record crowds of over 30,000 attended matches between South Melbourne, Carlton, Geelong and Essendon.

Creative work environments and employee engagement: Exploring potential links and possibilities

Companies that perform well are often identified as either possessing creative work environments and (or) having high levels of employee engagement. Creative work environments are largely not well defined, although research alludes to contributing factors. On the other hand employee engagement is defined as the multiple emotional, rational and behavioural dimensions of an employee's consistent level of effort, commitment and connection to their job. Some authors including Saks (2006) and Shuck and Wollard (2010) call for more scholarly research to increase our understanding of the drivers of employee engagement and the actions that organisations can take to improve engagement. There are references made in the literature to the existence of a relationship between a creative work environment and engaged employees (Isaksen & Ekvall 2010), but there is a lack of empirical evidence providing support for the direct relationship between the two. This study aims to explore the relationship, addressing the question of how a creative work environment impacts on employee engagement. Exploratory research to investigate this relationship will use a qualitative methodology with semi-structured interviews, field observations and document analysis. Key themes will be analysed at both the individual and team level reflecting the multi-level nature of the constructs.

The role of institutional pressures and top management support in the intention to adopt cloud computing solutions

Purpose – While many studies have predominantly looked at the benefits and risks of cloud computing, little is known whether and to what extent institutional forces play a role in cloud computing adoption. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of institutional factors in top management team’s (TMT’s) decision to adopt cloud computing services. Design/methodology/approach – A model is developed and tested with data from an Australian survey using the partial least squares modeling technique. Findings – The results suggest that mimetic and coercive pressures influence TMT’s beliefs in the benefits of cloud computing. The results also show that TMT’s beliefs drive TMT’s participation, which in turn affects the intention to increase the adoption of cloud computing solutions. Research limitations/implications – Future studies could incorporate the influences of local actors who might also press for innovation. Practical implications – Given the influence of institutional forces and the plethora of cloud-based solutions on the market, it is recommended that TMTs exercise a high degree of caution when deciding for the types of applications to be outsourced as organizational requirements in terms of performance and security will differ. Originality/value – The paper contributes to the growing empirical literature on cloud computing adoption and offers the institutional framework as an alternative lens with which to interpret cloud-based information technology outsourcing.

Caught in the act of collaboration: Students’ experiences of collective learning within a real-world design studio context

This study is an evaluation of design students’ perceptions of the benefits of collective learning in a real-world collaborative design studio. Third year students worked in inter-disciplinary teams representing architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, and industrial design. Responding to a real-world brief and in consultation with an industry partner client and early childhood education pre-service teachers, the teams were required to collectively propose a design response for a community-based child and family centre, on an iconic koala sanctuary site. Data were collected using several methods including a participatory action research method, through the form of a large analogue, collaborative jigsaw puzzle. Using a grounded theory methodology, qualitative data were thematically analysed to reveal six distinct aspects of collaboration, which positively impacted the students’ learning experience. The results of this study include recommendations for improving real world collaboration in the design studio in preparation for students’ transition into professional practice.

Transdisciplinary synthesis for ecosystem science, policy and management: The Australian experience

Mitigating the environmental effects of global population growth, climatic change and increasing socio-ecological complexity is a daunting challenge. To tackle this requires synthesis: the integration of disparate information to generate novel insights from heterogeneous, complex situations where there are diverse perspectives. Since 1995, a structured approach to inter-, multi- and trans-disciplinary1 collaboration around big science questions has been supported through synthesis centres around the world. These centres are finding an expanding role due to ever-accumulating data and the need for more and better opportunities to develop transdisciplinary and holistic approaches to solve real-world problems. The Australian Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (ACEAS ) has been the pioneering ecosystem science synthesis centre in the Southern Hemisphere. Such centres provide analysis and synthesis opportunities for time-pressed scientists, policy-makers and managers. They provide the scientific and organisational environs for virtual and face-to-face engagement, impetus for integration, data and methodological support, and innovative ways to deliver synthesis products. We detail the contribution, role and value of synthesis using ACEAS to exemplify the capacity for synthesis centres to facilitate trans-organisational, transdisciplinary synthesis. We compare ACEAS to other international synthesis centres, and describe how it facilitated project teams and its objective of linking natural resource science to policy to management. Scientists and managers were brought together to actively collaborate in multi-institutional, cross-sectoral and transdisciplinary research on contemporary ecological problems. The teams analysed, integrated and synthesised existing data to co-develop solution-oriented publications and management recommendations that might otherwise not have been produced. We identify key outcomes of some ACEAS working groups which used synthesis to tackle important ecosystem challenges. We also examine the barriers and enablers to synthesis, so that risks can be minimised and successful outcomes maximised. We argue that synthesis centres have a crucial role in developing, communicating and using synthetic transdisciplinary research.

Imagined Landscapes: Geovisualizing Australian Spatial Narratives

Imagined Landscapes teams geocritical analysis with digital visualization techniques to map and interrogate films, novels, and plays in which space and place figure prominently. Drawing upon A Cultural Atlas of Australia, a database-driven interactive digital map that can be used to identify patterns of representation in Australia’s cultural landscape, the book presents an integrated perspective on the translation of space across narrative forms and pioneers new ways of seeing and understanding landscape. It offers fresh insights on cultural topography and spatial history by examining the technical and conceptual challenges of georeferencing fictional and fictionalized places in narratives. Among the items discussed are Wake in Fright, a novel by Kenneth Cook, adapted iconically to the screen and recently onto the stage; the Australian North as a mythic space; spatial and temporal narrative shifts in retellings of the story of Alexander Pearce, a convict who gained notoriety for resorting to cannibalism after escaping from a remote Tasmanian penal colony; travel narratives and road movies set in Western Australia; and the challenges and spatial politics of mapping spaces for which there are no coordinates.

Separate or simultaneous removal of radioactive cations and anions from water by layered sodium vanadate-based sorbents

Nanofibers of sodium vanadate, consisting of very thin negatively charged layers and exchangeable sodium ions between the layers, are efficient sorbents for the removal of radioactive 137Cs+ and 85Sr2+ cations from water. The exchange of 137Cs+ or 85Sr2+ ions with the interlayer Na+ ions eventually triggered structural deformation of the thin layers, trapping the 137Cs+ and 85Sr2+ ions in the nanofibers. Furthermore, when the nanofibers were dispersed in a AgNO3 solution at pH >7, well-dispersed Ag2O nanocrystals formed by firmly anchoring themselves on the fiber surfaces along planes of crystallographic similarity with those of Ag2O. These nanocrystals can efficiently capture I– anions by forming a AgI precipitate, which was firmly attached to the substrates. We also designed sorbents that can remove 137Cs+ and 125I– ions simultaneously for safe disposal by optimizing the Ag2O loading and sodium content of the vanadate. This study confirms that sorbent features such as fibril morphology, negatively charged thin layers and readily exchangeable Na+ ions between the layers, and the crystal planes for the formation of a coherent interface with Ag2O nanocrystals on the fiber surface are very important for the simultaneous uptake of cations and anions.

Speaking of supervision: A dialogic approach to building higher degree research supervision capacity in the creative arts

In the emergent field of creative practice higher degrees by research, first generation supervisors have developed new models of supervision for an unprecedented form of research that combines creative practice and written thesis. In a national research project, entitled 'Effective supervision of creative practice higher research degrees', we set out to capture and share early supervisors' insights, strategies and approaches to supporting their creative practice PhD students. From the insights we gained during the early interview process, we expanded our research methods in line with a distributed leadership model and developed a dialogic framework. This led us to unanticipated conclusions and unexpected recommendations. In this study, we primarily draw on philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogics to explain how giving precedence to the voices of supervisors not only facilitated the articulation of dispersed tacit knowledge, but also led to other 20 discoveries. These include the nature of supervisors' resistance to prescribed models, policies and central academic development programmes; the importance of polyvocality and responsive dialogue in enabling continued innovation in the field; the benefits to supervisors of reflecting, discussing and sharing practices with colleagues; and the value of distributed leadership and dialogue to academic development and supervision capacity building in research education.

Collaborative learning from distributed places and spaces: Exploring the use of virtual collaborative tools for local and global student teamwork projects

Educating responsive graduates. Graduate competencies include reliability, communication skills and ability to work in teams. Students using Collaborative technologies adapt to a new working environment, working in teams and using collaborative technologies for learning. Collaborative Technologies were used not simply for delivery of learning but innovatively to supplement and enrich research-based learning, providing a space for active engagement and interaction with resources and team. This promotes the development of responsive ‘intellectual producers’, able to effectively communicate, collaborate and negotiate in complex work environments. Exploiting technologies. Students use ‘new’ technologies to work collaboratively, allowing them to experience the reality of distributed workplaces incorporating both flexibility and ‘real’ time responsiveness. Students are responsible and accountable for individual and group work contributions in a highly transparent and readily accessible workspace. This experience provides a model of an effective learning tool. Navigating uncertainty and complexity. Collaborative technologies allows students to develop critical thinking and reflective skills as they develop a group product. In this forum students build resilience by taking ownership and managing group work, and navigating the uncertainties and complexities of group dynamics as they constructively and professionally engage in team dialogue and learn to focus on the goal of the team task.