Sustainable water provision : challenges, alternative strategies and sources in the era of climate change

As a result of rapid urbanisation, population growth, changes in lifestyle, pollution and the impacts of climate change, water provision has become a critical challenge for planners and policy-makers. In the wake of increasingly difficult water provision and drought, the notion that freshwater is a finite and vulnerable resource is increasingly being realised. Many city administrations around the world are struggling to provide water security for their residents to maintain lifestyle and economic growth. This chapter reviews the global challenge of providing freshwater to sustain lifestyles and economic growth, and the contributing challenges of climate change, urbanisation, population growth and problems in rainfall distribution. The chapter proceeds to evaluate major alternatives to current water sources such as conservation, recycling and reclamation, and desalination. Integrated water resource management is briefly looked at to explore its role in complementing water provision. A comparative study on alternative resources is undertaken to evaluate their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and constraints, and the results are discussed.

Personalising teacher professional development : strategies enabling effective learning for educators of 21st century students

In the Knowledge Society, new demands are placed on teachers as they strive to empower young people to be global citizens, ready for the 21st century. Systemic shifts need to be made, however, to build capacity across the workforce to practise new ways of teaching and learning, including the personalisation of teacher professional development. This article argues new strategies and approaches for effective adult learning, including an individualised focus, context-based learning and an empowerment of teachers to develop their own personal learning networks. This article concludes with an analysis of the challenges facing professional development leaders in moving towards personalised teacher learning.

Strategies to engage engineering students in group project work

Project focused group work is significant in developing social and personal skills as well as extending the ability to identify, formulate and solve engineering problems. As a result of increasing undergraduate class sizes, along with the requirement for many students to work part-time, group projects, peer and collaborative learning are seen as a fundamental part of engineering education. Group formation, connection to learning objectives and fairness of assessment has been widely reported as major issues that leave students dissatisfied with group project based units. Several strategies were trialled including a study of formation of groups by different methods across two engineering disciplines over the past 2 years. Other strategies involved a more structured approach to assessment practices of civil and electrical engineering disciplines design units. A confidential online teamwork management tool was used to collect and collate student self and peer assessment ratings and used for both formative feedback as well as assessment purposes. Student satisfaction and overall academic results in these subjects have improved since the introduction of these interventions. Both student and staff feedback highlight this approach as enhancing student engagement and satisfaction, improved student understanding of group roles, reducing number of dysfunctional groups whilst requiring less commitment of academic resources.

Support for gold open access publishing strategies at QUT

INTRODUCTION: Since the introduction of its QUT ePrints institutional repository of published research outputs, together with the world’s first mandate for author contributions to an institutional repository, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has been a leader in support of green road open access. With QUT ePrints providing our mechanism for supporting the green road to open access, QUT has since then also continued to expand its secondary open access strategy supporting gold road open access, which is also designed to assist QUT researchers to maximise the accessibility and so impact of their research. ---------- METHODS: QUT Library has adopted the position of selectively supporting true gold road open access publishing by using the Library Resource Allocation budget to pay the author publication fees for QUT authors wishing to publish in the open access journals of a range of publishers including BioMed Central, Public Library of Science and Hindawi. QUT Library has been careful to support only true open access publishers and not those open access publishers with hybrid models which “double dip” by charging authors publication fees and libraries subscription fees for the same journal content. QUT Library has maintained a watch on the growing number of open access journals available from gold road open access publishers and their increased rate of success as measured by publication impact. ---------- RESULTS: This paper reports on the successes and challenges of QUT’s efforts to support true gold road open access publishers and promote these publishing strategy options to researchers at QUT. The number and spread of QUT papers submitted and published in the journals of each publisher is provided. Citation counts for papers and authors are also presented and analysed, with the intention of identifying the benefits to accessibility and research impact for early career and established researchers.---------- CONCLUSIONS: QUT Library is eager to continue and further develop support for this publishing strategy, and makes a number of recommendations to other research institutions, on how they can best achieve success with this strategy.

Rethinking public service media and citizenship : digital strategies for news and current affairs at Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS)

This article considers the concept of media citizenship in relation to the digital strategies of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). At SBS, Australia’s multicultural public broadcaster, there is a critical appraisal of its strategies to harness user-created content (UCC) and social media to promote greater audience participation through its news and current affairs Web sites. The article looks at the opportunities and challenges that user-related content presents for public service media organizations as they consolidate multiplatform service delivery. Also analyzed are the implications of radio and television broadcasters’ moves to develop online services. It is proposed that case study methodologies enable an understanding of media citizenship to be developed that maintains a focus on the interaction between delivery technologies, organizational structures and cultures, and program content that is essential for understanding the changing focus of 21st-century public service media.

Strategies to facilitate grading consistency in large classes

First year undergraduate university classes can be very large, and big student numbers often creates a challenge for instructors to ensure assignments are graded consistently across the cohort. This session describes and demonstrates the use of interactive audience response technology (ART) with assessors (rather than students) to moderate assignment grading. Results from preliminary research indicate this method of moderating the grading of assignments is effective, and achieves more consistent outcomes for students.

Rethinking public service media and citizenship: digital strategies for news and current affairs at Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service

This article considers the concept of media citizenship in relation to the digital strategies of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). At SBS, Australia’s multicultural public broadcaster, there is a critical appraisal of its strategies to harness user-created content (UCC) and social media to promote greater audience participation through its news and current affairs Web sites. The article looks at the opportunities and challenges that user-created content presents for public service media organizations as they consolidate multiplatform service delivery. Also analyzed are the implications of radio and television broadcasters’ moves to develop online services. It is proposed that case study methodologies enable an understanding of media citizenship to be developed that maintains a focus on the interaction between delivery technologies, organizational structures and cultures, and program content that is essential for understanding the changing focus of 21st-century public service media.

Optimal fluid injection strategies for in situ mineral leaching in two-dimensions

This paper examines the ground-water flow problem associated with the injection and recovery of certain corrosive fluids into mineral bearing rock. The aim is to dissolve the minerals in situ, and then recover them in solution. In general, it is not possible to recover all the injected fluid, which is of concern economically and environmentally. However, a new strategy is proposed here, that allows all the leaching fluid to be recovered. A mathematical model of the situation is solved approximately using an asymptotic solution, and exactly using a boundary integral approach. Solutions are shown for two-dimensional flow, which is of some practical interest as it is achievable in old mine tunnels, for example.

Cognitive processes and strategies employed by children to learn spatial representations

Children often have difficulties in learning spatial representations. This study investigated the effect of four different instructional formats on learning outcomes and strategies used when dealing with spatial tasks such as assembly procedures. It was hypothesised that instructional material that imposed least extraneous cognitive load would facilitate enhanced learning. Forty secondary students were presented with four types of instruction; orthographic drawing, isometric drawing, physical model and, isometric and physical model together. The findings provide evidence to suggest that working from physical models caused least extraneous cognitive load compared to the isometric and orthographic groups. The model group took less time, had more correctly completed models, required fewer extra looks, spent less time studying the instruction and made fewer errors. Problem decomposition, forward working and attending to information in the foreground of the graphical representation strategies were analysed.

Processing load and the use of concrete representations and strategies for solving linear equations

This paper is a report of students' responses to instruction which was based on the use of concrete representations to solve linear equations. The sample consisted of 21 Grade 8 students from a middle-class suburban state secondary school with a reputation for high academic standards and innovative mathematics teaching. The students were interviewed before and after instruction. Interviews and classroom interactions were observed and videotaped. A qualitative analysis of the responses revealed that students did not use the materials in solving problems. The increased processing load caused by concrete representations is hypothesised as a reason.

Slum free India program. Report on the findings and recommendations of QUT BEE workshop to investigate strategies to deliver better outcomes

As a result of a broad invitation extended by Professor Martin Betts, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering, to the community of interest at QUT, a cross-disciplinary collaborative workshop was conducted to contribute ideas about responding to the Government of India’s urgent requirement to implement a program to re-house slum dwellers. This is a complex problem facing the Indian Ministry of Housing. Not only does the government aspire to eradicate existing slum conditions and to achieve tangible results within five years, but it must also ensure that slums do not form in the future. The workshop focused on technological innovation in construction to deliver transformation from the current unsanitary and overcrowded informal urban settlements to places that provide the economically weaker sections of Indian society with healthy, environmentally sustainable, economically viable mass housing that supports successful urban living. The workshop was conducted in two part process as follows: Initially, QUT academics from diverse fields shared current research and provided technical background to contextualise the challenge at a pre-workshop briefing session. This was followed by a one-day workshop during which participants worked intensively in multi-disciplinary groups through a series of exercises to develop innovative approaches to the complex problem of slum redevelopment. Dynamic, compressed work sessions, interspersed with cross-functional review and feedback by the whole group took place throughout the day. Reviews emphasised testing the concepts for their level of complexity, and likelihood of success. The two-stage workshop process achieved several objectives:  Inspired a sense of shared purpose amongst a diverse group of academics  Built participants’ knowledge of each other’s capacity  Engaged multi disciplinary team in an innovative design research process  Built participants’ confidence in the collaborative process  Demonstrated that collaborative problem solving can create solutions that represent transformative change.  Developed a framework of how workable solutions might be developed for the program through follow up workshops and charrettes of a similar nature involving stakeholders drawn from the context of the slum housing program management.

Generalised finite volume strategies for simulating transport in strongly orthotropic porous media

In this work two different finite volume computational strategies for solving a representative two-dimensional diffusion equation in an orthotropic medium are considered. When the diffusivity tensor is treated as linear, this problem admits an analytic solution used for analysing the accuracy of the proposed numerical methods. In the first method, the gradient approximation techniques discussed by Jayantha and Turner [Numerical Heat Transfer, Part B: Fundamentals, 40, pp.367–390, 2001] are applied directly to the

Bushfire sustainability : Strategies for reconciling bushfire and biodiversity with daily life

This exhibition and catalogue provides a visual record of student work exhibited at the Australian Institute of Architects offices in Brisbane from November 15 to 29, 2010. The exhibition features the final design outcomes of the inaugural Bushfire Sustainability unit conducted at QUT in semester two, 2010. The core objective of this unit was to develop our students’ skills in collaborative practice in design, research and presentation. The theme of ‘bushfire sustainability’ was chosen because living sustainably in bushfire prone landscapes presents a number of problems, the nature of which might only be resolved via multidisciplinary collaboration among the design disciplines. The students involved represent the disciplines of Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Industrial Design, Architecture and Sustainability – all from within the School of Design at QUT. 55 students, mostly in their third year of study, worked in teams of five (one from each discipline) to design one of a number of homes in highly bushfire prone sites in either Western Australia or SE Queensland. This year level and the interdisciplinary mix are perhaps the best placed to resolve these problems: being unrestrained from the burdens of professional practice and technical overload they retain the potential for innovative, lateral thinking across the range of spatial scales and philosophical perspectives associated with inhabitation of bushfire prone landscapes. It is envisaged that, through the ‘vehicle’ of this design research, that the students’ work will contribute to understandings of how creative design disciplines might respond to this significant national problem, which hitherto has been attended to primarily by engineering and the sciences.