Concurrent undergraduate study and industry employment - the Australian experience

Undergraduate education in Quantity Surveying (QS) and Construction Management (CM) in Australia has traditionally incorporated concurrent industry experience as an important requisite prior to graduation. This has been primarily driven by accrediting professional associations but most universities have also recognized the value of this cooperative approach to education with industry. However, in recent years many universities have become concerned about the amount of time that students are spending in industry employment to the point where, for some students, their employment takes precedence over their academic studies. Past research has shown that working long hours has a negative effect on the study patterns of undergraduate students. This paper presents the results of research undertaken to examine the amount of time that Quantity Surveying and Construction Management students actually spend engaged in paid work during semester time and the impact on their studies. The methodology for the research was based on two separate questionnaire surveys distributed to undergraduate Quantity Surveying and Construction Management students at 7 universities across Australia. The questionnaires focused on the nature and extent of their paid work while enrolled in full-time study. The results indicate that students in the early stages of their program tend to undertake casual work that is not related to their degree but move to construction industry employment in the later stages of their program. The research found that students were spending an average of 18 hours per week in industry employment with this average increasing to over 23 hours in their final year. A number of students were spending well over 30 hours per week in industry employment. The implications of the extent of this concurrent industry employment are discussed.

Code-switching and teaching Chinese as a second language

This book aims to explore the nature of code-switching. The purpose is to find out how this works and thereby inform language-teaching strategies. It focuses on Chinese / English bilinguals with special emphasis on younger students living in two linguistic worlds (Chinese and English). The book examines code-switching in relation to several aspects: grammatical structures, tonal facilitation, contextual factors, speakers' social background aspects and their participation in school language programs.

Making connections in a regional city: social capital and the primary social contract

Government policy in many countries encourages migration to regional centres to relieve pressure on major cities and to boost economic development. Migrants are more likely to remain in a new location if they have meaningful work and establish social connections there. This article explores how organisations and groups in a regional city provide newcomers with access to social capital resources which migrants can use to forge social connections. Past research has shown that migrants require a mix of linking, bridging and bonding social capital to form an effective primary social contract with their new home. This research suggests that regional cities – such as Geelong, Victoria – which are proactive in assembling diverse social capital resources and making them accessible to migrants, are more likely not only to receive more newcomers but also more likely to retain migrants and a skilled workforce. The findings have relevance to other regional centres.

Towards designing privacy-preserving signature-based IDS as a service : a study and practice

With the advent of Cloud Computing, IDS as a service (IDSaaS) has been proposed as an alternative to protect a network (e.g., financial organization) from a wide range of network attacks by offloading the expensive operations such as the process of signature matching to the cloud. The IDSaaS can be roughly classified into two types: signature-based detection and anomaly-based detection. During the packet inspection, no party wants to disclose their own data especially sensitive information to others, even to the cloud provider, for privacy concerns. However, current solutions of IDSaaS have not much discussed this issue. In this work, focus on the signature-based IDSaaS, we begin by designing a promising privacy-preserving intrusion detection mechanism, the main feature of which is that the process of signature matching does not reveal any specific content of network packets by means of a fingerprint-based comparison. We further conduct a study to evaluate this mechanism under a cloud scenario and identify several open problems and issues for designing such a privacy-preserving mechanism for IDSaaS in a practical environment.

International comparisons of mathematics classrooms and curricula: the validity-comparability compromise

The pursuit of commensurability in international comparative research by imposing general classificatory frameworks can misrepresent valued performances, school knowledge and classroom practice as these are actually conceived by each community and sacrifice validity in the interest of comparability. The “validity-comparability compromise” is proposed as a theoretical concern with significant implications for international cross-cultural research. We draw on current international research to illustrate a variety of aspects of the issue and its consequences for the manner in which international research is conducted and its results interpreted. The effects extend to data generation and analysis and constitute essential contingencies on the interpretation and application of international comparative research.

Learning how to teach chemistry with technology: pre-service teachers’ experiences with integrating technology into their learning and teaching

The Australian Government initiative, Teaching Teachers for the Future (TTF), was a targeted response to improve the preparation of future teachers with integrating technology into their practice. This paper reports on TTF research involving 28 preservice teachers undertaking a chemistry curriculum studies unit that adopted a technological focus. For chemistry teaching the results showed that technological knowledge augmented the fundamental pedagogical knowledge necessary for teaching chemistry content. All the pre-service teachers demonstrated an understanding of the role of technology in teaching and learning and reported an increased skill level in a variety of technologies, many they had not used previously. Some students were sceptical about this learning when schools did not have technological resources available. This paper argues that teacher education courses should include technological skills that match those available in schools, as well as introduce new technologies to support a change in the culture of using technology in schools.

Prolonged and flexible primary moult overlaps extensively with breeding in beach-nesting Hooded Plovers Thinornis rubricollis

We present the first report of complete overlap of breeding and moult in a shorebird. In southeastern Australia, Hooded Plovers Thinornis rubricollis spend their entire lives on oceanic beaches, where they exhibit biparental care. Population moult encompassed the 6-month breeding season. Moult timing was estimated using the Underhill-Zucchini method for Type 2 data with a power transformation to accommodate sexual differences in rates of moult progression in the early and late stages of moult. Average moult durations were long in females (170.3 ± 14.2 days), and even longer in males (210.3 ± 13.5 days). Breeding status was known for most birds in our samples, and many active breeders (especially males) were also growing primaries. Females delayed the onset of primary moult but were able to increase the speed of moult and continue breeding, completing moult at about the same time as males. The mechanism by which this was achieved appeared to be flexibility in moult sequence. All moult formulae fell on one of two linked moult sequences, one faster than the other. The slower sequence had fewer feathers growing concurrently and also had formulae indicating suspended moults. Switching between sequences via common formulae is possible at many points during the moult cycle, and three of 12 recaptures were confirmed to have switched sequences in the same moult season. Hooded Plovers thus have a prolonged primary moult with the flexibility to change their rate of moult; this may facilitate high levels of replacement clutches that are associated with passive nest defence and low reproductive success. © 2014 British Ornithologists' Union.

Study and exploration on inorganic nanomaterials as additive in lubricant application.

 In this thesis, the application of planetary ball milling for the efficient production of nanomaterials is systematically studied. Three inorganic materials: calcium carbonate (CaCO3), molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) and hexagonal-boron nitride (h-BN) are chosen as model systems.