The social side of social media : technology or collaboration?

This paper discusses how course design may draw upon social media in order to teach students appropriate skills for a network society in the context of team-work based learning. The emphasis is not upon web 2.0 and social media as inherently suited to providing educational solutions, but upon the ways in which they can be adapted by course designers within the framework of explicit learning objectives. More specifically, we provide a case study of how the use of social media in a blended or wholly-online learning environment provides affordances for team-based collaborative learning, especially when incorporated within a course design that encourages independent, self-directed and authentic learning. This paper argues we need to assess the social aspects of social media, rather than upon the technological, that is, avoid the fetishisation of 'apps,' through the creation of assessment that alternately foregrounds a critical appraisal of web 2.0 technologies and places onus upon the students to develop, with guidance, teamwork skills and processes. We provide an example of how it is possible to integrate web 2.0 technologies into their learning processes and assessment, in order to teach about the realities of collaborating with others in small teams in a work environment increasingly mediated by the Internet. In order to achieve these learning outcomes, course design needs to balance scaffolding with the need to place the imperative for learning specific content and skills upon the students, the latter through the provision of assessment outcomes and resources that the students need to work towards together.

Entrepreneurial training project in China : retraining laid-off workers

Despite the tremendous economic progress made by the Chinese economy, averaging a nine percent growth per year, one section of the community remains outside the economic boom. As state-owned enterprises (SOEs) restructure into more efficient organisations able to compete in the global economy, the plight of workers within these enterprises has become a pressing issue. No longer able to depend on a job for life, these workers present challenges for local governments. One initiative proposed by the International Labour Organisation called the Start Your Own Business (SYB) Program has been identified as a way to retrain laid-off workers, xiagang. By focussing on one city in China, this paper analyses some of the key issues associated with this program. Using anecdotal evidence from workers who have undergone the retraining, the paper has identified at least three areas of concern for workers participating in the SYB retraining program. Access to seed funding, the implementation of knowledge and skills into practice, and furthering support and guidance in market analysis remain issues for the continued success of this program.

Glassimations

Glassimations, an exhibition of contemporary Australian artworks that bridge the materials of glass and animation to produce works with qualities that are unique to these two mediums and yet create a dialogue between them. The exhibition includes the work of a variety of artists. Lee Whitmore paints on glass to achieve an animated image that metamorphs with its own unique movement; Tom Moore animates his blown glass creations into their own world; Deirdre Feeney animates onto her glass architectural forms to produce places of light that condense time and are full of intangible narrative; Mark Eliott and Jack McGrath collaborate to bring their understanding and skills of glass and animation together, creating works that are founded in the production processes of both materials; and Lienors Torre and Alastair Boell collaborate to create animated films that become objects of glass and furniture, able to occupy real spaces in our domestic lives.

Experiencing indigenous East African dance songs : reflections from North West University (South Africa)

After democracy (1994) the doors of teaching and learning in music opened widely to include local indigenous music and culture in South Africa. Since 2005, African music has been a vibrant aspect of the music curriculum within the School of Music, North West University, South Africa. Globally tertiary music educators are challenged to include informal pedagogy of indigenous musics within the formal context of university courses. University music courses in South Africa are still predisposed towards ‘western’ music pedagogies. In October 2012, the School of Music invited a visiting expert in African music and dance to offer onsite teaching and learning of Ugandan dance songs to tertiary students. The initiative to include Ugandan music as part of the teaching and learning workshops on African music at the School of Music was funded by the South African Music Rights Organization. The School of Music has an ongoing policy to invite and include culture bearers to share their skills and expertise with students and academics. Such sharing provides culture bearers the opportunity to transmit much needed skills, which are not often offered by academics. UNESCO (2012) identifies scarce knowledge and skills as intangible heritage.

Understanding nutrition

A practical and engaging introduction to the core principles of nutrition. A thorough introductory guide, this text will equip students with the knowledge and skills required to optimise health and well-being. With its focus on Australasia, the text incorporates current nutrition recommendations and public health nutrition issues relevant to those studying and working in nutrition in this region of the world. The text begins with core nutrition topics, such as diet planning, macronutrients, vitamins and minerals, and follows with chapters on diet and health, fitness, life span nutrition and food safety. With a consistent level and readability, careful explanations of all key topics (including energy metabolism and other complex processes), this is a book that connects with students; engaging them as it teaches them the basic concepts and applications of nutrition.

Is the valuer the barrier to identifying the value of sustainability?

Purpose - Broad-scale investment in sustainability is limited due to the lack of evidence of the relationship between sustainability and the property’s market value. Although evidence is amassing and being analyzed through advanced modeling, this evidence is not being reflected in the valuation process. Valuers have a pivotal role in financial markets, in the reporting of asset values. Consequently, they are the current barrier in large-scale investment in sustainability, due to their lack of reporting or consideration of sustainability in the valuation process.

Design/methodology/approach - This research investigates, in the Australian context, whether valuers’ are incorporating sustainability as a consideration in the valuation process and their depth of reporting on it. Further, the research investigates whether valuers’ have the knowledge and skills to accurately report on sustainability in the valuation process. This research used an online survey to gather responses from valuers around Australia, using a combination of structured and semi-structured questions.

Findings - This paper has identified that valuers are identifying a value relationship between sustainability and market value, and clearly emphasizing that they are not the barrier to this relationship from a lack of inclusion in valuation practice. However, what this research has identified is that although valuers are acknowledging sustainability in their practice, they maybe inhibiting further investment in sustainability due to inaccurate or misjudged assessments of sustainability in valuations.

Practical implications - The research highlights the implications for the broader market and the valuation profession, as a result of the valuers’ current lack of knowledge, skills and ability to incorporate or consider sustainability in the valuation process. The potential for inaccurate knowledge regarding sustainability being incorporated in the valuation process is very high, and could potentially have litigious issues in the future.

Originality/value - The research has highlighted that although valuers are beginning to consider sustainability at some level in the valuation process, their current knowledge of sustainability and its implications to long term viability is limited and in some cases grossly inaccurate. Consequently, this research has identified there is an imperative requirement for investigation into appropriate, accurate knowledge development in the field of sustainability for the valuation profession.

Smart grid

All over the world, electrical power systems are encountering radical change stimulated by the urgent need to decarbonize electricity supply, to swap aging resources and to make effective application of swiftly evolving information and communication technologies (ICTs). All of these goals converge toward one direction; ‘Smart Grid.’ The Smart Grid can be described as the transparent, seamless, and instantaneous two-way delivery of energy information, enabling the electricity industry to better manage energy delivery and transmission and empowering consumers to have more control over energy decisions. Basically, the vision of Smart Grid is to provide much better visibility to lower-voltage networks as well as to permit the involvement of consumers in the function of the power system, mostly through smart meters and Smart Homes. A Smart Grid incorporates the features of advanced ICTs to convey real-time information and facilitate the almost instantaneous stability of supply and demand on the electrical grid. The operational data collected by Smart Grid and its sub-systems will allow system operators to quickly recognize the best line of attack to protect against attacks, susceptibility, and so on, sourced by a variety of incidents. However, Smart Grid initially depends upon knowing and researching key performance components and developing the proper education program to equip current and future workforce with the knowledge and skills for exploitation of this greatly advanced system. The aim of this chapter is to provide a basic discussion of the Smart Grid concept, evolution and components of Smart Grid, environmental impacts of Smart Grid and then in some detail, to describe the technologies that are required for its realization. Even though the Smart Grid concept is not yet fully defined, the chapter will be helpful in describing the key enabling technologies and thus allowing the reader to play a part in the debate over the future of the Smart Grid. The chapter concludes with the experimental description and results of developing a hybrid prediction method for solar power which is applicable to successfully implement the ‘Smart Grid.’

Evaluation of the intercultural understanding field trial

In 2011, the Innovation and Next Practice Division (INP) of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) conducted a field trial on intercultural understanding in partnership with a research and evaluation team from the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University. The field trial was sponsored by the Languages, English as another Language (EAL) and Multicultural Education Division of DEECD.

Students' intercultural development through language learning in Vietnamese tertiary education: a case study on the use of film as an innovative approach

Vietnam's open-door policy, its socialist-oriented market economy, recent growth in cross-border education and skills mobility, regionalisation and globalisation have created an increasing demand for Vietnamese graduates to develop not only their English language but also their intercultural competence. This paper discusses the issue of student intercultural learning and development in the Vietnamese English as a foreign language (EFL) class. Especially, it addresses the use of film as an innovative approach to engage Vietnamese students in intercultural learning and development in the EFL classroom. The study reported in this paper draws on rich sources of data which include in-depth interviews with students, student reflective journals and video-recorded class observations at a university in central Vietnam. Overall, five key themes relating to student intercultural learning through film have been identified in this study. These include enhancing knowledge about cultural differences, engaging in cross-cultural comparison, breaking cultural stereotypes, immersing students in authentic learning and living in the world of ‘other’ culture and the integrated mode of intercultural language learning. The study is a significant contribution to scholarly research on the use of media objects to enhance student intercultural learning in language classrooms in developing countries.

Health assessment

This chapter presents an overview of the fundamental health assessment knowledge and skills need to be learned by nursing students in preparation for their role as beginning registered nurses.

Understanding the balance of experienced teachers' ICT learning

In the Information Age, ICT learning requires a balance between the concrete and experiential learning process and the abstract conceptualisation of Andragogy. Future Teacher Professional Development will need to understand the complexities of the concrete experience and the abstract conceptualisation of new knowledge. Professional Development will need to comprehend how experienced teachers as digital immigrants learn. It will further need to understand what abilities are essential for these experienced teachers and how they develop an awareness of their ICT learning. This paper will examine a study that was undertaken with a group of Post Registration Primary School Educators. These experienced teachers undertook the Post Registration or fourth year of their Bachelor of Education (Primary) course at an Australian Educational Institute. These experienced teachers with limited ICT exposure went through an ICT learning process over a period of one year. They finally acquired the ICT knowledge and skills, however within the time span of one year, theoretical pedagogy was absent or minimal.

How do Digital Immigrant Teachers (DITs) learn ICT for the information age?

This study reports about teacher learning and in particular, teachers who have extensive teaching experience but limited ICT knowledge and skills. The Digital Immigrant Teachers (DITs) grew up before digital technologies; they are not frequently confident or comfortable with ICT. Like all immigrants, they have to learn new and creative ways to enhance their survival in the third millennium, where the acceleration of knowledge has allowed communication and application of information to be rapidly disseminated. In order to fully participate in the technologically rich society DITs must actively engage in the construction of authentic and purposeful learning. This research came about as a result of the digital immigrants' struggles to construct and acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to teach in the Knowledge Economy and the Information Age. The experienced present day teachers, as digital immigrants are trying to teach digital natives (Prensky, 2001 & 2003). And in order to assist these teachers in their learning ICT struggle, it is imperative to understand the teacher learning process, and the learning style through which they acquire the knowledge and skills for this new milieu.

How ready are you? A preliminary investigation into the workplace readiness of final-year education students at a regional university

One criticism of teacher-training programs is that they do not sufficiently prepare graduating teachers for the transition between higher education and the demands and practicalities of classroom teaching. This lack of workplace readiness or 'teacher ready' status of graduates has been attributed to insufficient pre-service practical experience and the failure of training programs to adequately coach pre-service teachers in the delivery of quality pedagogy (Nelson, 2005). On the other hand, the Australian Council of Deans of Education (2005, p. 3) argues that teacher-training programs should provide foundational knowledge and skills with the onus on the profession to build on these foundations and elevate the teacher 'to the point of full and complete practitioner-readiness'. Central Queensland University has tried to respond to these concerns through the introduction of the Bachelor of Learning Management. This paper reports on a preliminary investigation into the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the program in preparing graduates and enabling workplace readiness. Towards the end of 2005 a cohort of final year students was asked to identify their levels of confidence in the transition from university to work; and how the cohort could have been better prepared. It is intended that the issues identified will be translated into recommendations for future program improvements.

Challenges for undergraduate speech pathology students undertaking cross-cultural clinical placements

Background: Two Australian undergraduate speech pathology students completed a series of clinical placements working with people with complex communication needs in cross-cultural contexts. Aims: To describe the challenges that the students faced and how best to prepare future students for such experiences. Methods & Procedures: The students completed the placements in Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh, India and South Africa. They used personal journaling to record their experiences. The students used the journals as the basis for reflective discussion when considering the challenges they experienced in applying their knowledge and skills. Outcomes & Results: The challenges were (1) to prepare adequately ahead of the placements; (2) to select appropriate models of service delivery; (3) to use existing service approaches, resources and infrastructure appropriately; (4) to access professional support; (5) to define their professional role; (6) to manage variable shared language proficiency; (7) to adapt personally; and (8) to work using an undergraduate level of knowledge, skills and experience. Conclusions: The students encountered challenges related to their clinical preparation and their capacity to adapt in both a professional and personal sense. Future students preparing to undertake such placements need to attain at least minimum clinical competencies before placements. They will be helped if they have some clinical experience in working with people with complex communication needs in cross-cultural contexts, information about the cultures they will visit, and if they set professional and personal learning goals for each clinical placement. This preparation will aid students in maximizing their learning experience.

Australian primary pre-service teachers’ conceptions of geography

This article reports on the results of a survey of Australian primary pre-service teachers’ experiences, conceptions and perceptions of geography. Research was conducted with two cohorts of undergraduate primary pre-service teachers; one group in second year and another in the final year of a four-year teacher education course. The findings show congruence with similar studies conducted in the UK and indicate that pre-service teachers had a very narrow conception of geography and geography education; a conception that was information-oriented and focused on broad knowledge about the world and locational knowledge and skills. The article concludes by exploring some of the implications for the implementation of the new national geography curriculum in Australia and for primary pre-service geography teacher education more broadly.