The role of information literacy competence and higher order thinking skills to develop academic writing in science and engineering students

This article discusses a study organized to develop academic writing skills in undergraduate students pursuing engineering courses. The target group consisted of 30 students pursuing a Bachelor of Technology in their third year. The classroom observations regarding teaching writing revealed that writing proficiency for most of the students was at a very low level. Followed by this, an intervention program was organized in one college, where the researcher taught academic writing to the students. Units comprising tasks that focused on raising awareness of the academic texts and involving the students in the cognitive processes of writing were designed. The study focused on raising student awareness regarding the nature and characteristics of academic texts in order to develop academic writing skills. The study also emphasized that involving the students in the cognitive processes of writing (e.g., defining the rhetorical problem, identifying the rhetorical situation, determining the audience, setting goals for writing, planning for the text by generating, and organizing ideas) is necessary. The study further suggests that discussions between students and teachers regarding the construction of a text and the way language works in various text types facilitates better writing.

Exploratory spatial analysis of social and environmental factors associated with the incidence of Ross River Virus in Brisbane, Australia

We used geographic information systems and a spatial analysis approach to explore the pattern of Ross River virus (RRV) incidence in Brisbane, Australia. Climate, vegetation and socioeconomic data in 2001 were obtained from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the Brisbane City Council and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, respectively. Information on the RRV cases was obtained from the Queensland Department of Health. Spatial and multiple negative binomial regression models were used to identify the socioeconomic and environmental determinants of RRV transmission. The results show that RRV activity was primarily concentrated in the northeastern, northwestern, and southeastern regions in Brisbane. Multiple negative binomial regression models showed that the spatial pattern of RRV disease in Brisbane seemed to be determined by a combination of local ecologic, socioeconomic, and environmental factors.

neXus2. An investigation into the library and information services workforce in Australia: The institutional perspective. Final report prepared for the Australian Library and Information Association and National and State Libraries Australia

The neXus2 research project has sought to investigate the library and information services (LIS) workforce in Australia, from the institutional or employer perspective. The study builds on the neXus1 study, which collected data from individuals in the LIS workforce in order to present a snapshot of the profession in 2006, highlighting the demographics, educational background and career details of library and information professionals in Australia. To counterbalance this individual perspective, library institutions were invited to participate in a survey to contribute further data as employers. This final report on the neXus2 project compares the findings from the different library sectors, ie academic libraries, TAFE libraries, the National and State libraries, public libraries, special libraries and school libraries.

Science and subjectivity

Science has been under attack in the last thirty years, and recently a number of prominent scientists have been busy fighting back. Here, an argument is presented that the `science wars' stem from an unreasonably strict adherence to the reductive method on the part of science, but that weakening this stance need not imply a lapse into subjectivity. One possible method for formalising the description of non-separable, contextually dependent complex systems is presented. This is based upon a quantum-like approach.

Libr@ries : changing information space and practice

This volume examines the social, cultural, and political implications of the shift from traditional forms of print-based libraries to the delivery of online information in educational contexts. Despite the central role of libraries in literacy and learning, research of them has, in the main, remained isolated within the disciplinary boundaries of information and library science. By contrast, this book problematizes and thereby mainstreams the field. It brings together scholars from a wide range of academic fields to explore the dislodging of library discourse from its longstanding apolitical, modernist paradigm. Collectively, the authors interrogate the presuppositions of current library practice and examine how library as place and library as space blend together in ways that may be both complementary and contradictory. Seeking a suitable term to designate this rapidly evolving and much contested development, the editors devised the word “libr@ary,” and use the term arobase to signify the conditions of formation of new libraries within contexts of space, knowledge, and capital.

Cultural Science and Methodological Challenge!

The processes of digitization and deregulation have transformed the production, distribution and consumption of information and entertainment media over the past three decades. Today, researchers are confronted with profoundly different landscapes of domestic and personal media than the pioneers of qualitative audience research that came to form much of the conceptual basis of Cultural Studies first in Britain and North America and subsequently across all global regions. The process of media convergence, as a consequence of the dual forces of digitisation and deregulation, thus constitutes a central concept in the analysis of popular mass media. From the study of the internationalisation and globalisation of media content, changing regimes of media production, via the social shaping and communication technologies and conversely the impact of communication technology on social, cultural and political realities, to the emergence of transmedia storytelling, the interplay of intertextuality and genre and the formation of mediated social networks, convergence informs and shapes contemporary conceptual debates in the field of popular communication and beyond. However, media convergence challenges not only the conceptual canon of (popular) communication research, but poses profound methodological challenges. As boundaries between producers and consumers are increasingly fluent, formerly stable fields and categories of research such as industries, texts and audiences intersect and overlap, requiring combined and new research strategies. This preconference aims to offer a forum to present and discuss methodological innovations in the study of contemporary media and the analysis of the social, cultural,and political impact and challenges arising through media convergence. The preconference thus aims to focus on the following methodological questions and challenges: *New strategies of audience research responding to the increasing individualisation of popular media consumption. *Methods of data triangulation in and through the integrated study of media production, distribution and consumption. *Bridging the methodological and often associated conceptual gap between qualitative and quantitative research in the study of popular media. *The future of ethnographic audience and production research in light of blurring boundaries between media producers and consumers. *A critical re-examination of which textual configurations can be meaningfully described and studied as text. *Methodological innovations aimed at assessing the macro social, cultural and political impact of mediatization (including, but not limited to, "creative methods"). *Methodological responses to the globalisation of popular media and practicalities of international and transnational comparative research. *An exploration of new methods required in the study of media flow and intertextuality.

Informed learning: a pedagogical construct attending simultaneously to information use and learning.

The idea of informed learning, applicable in academic, workplace and community settings, has been derived largely from a program of phenomenographic research in the field of information literacy, which has illuminated the experience of using information to learn. Informed learning is about simultaneous attention to information use and learning, where both information and learning are considered to be relational; and is built upon a series of key concepts such as second–order perspective, simultaneity, awareness, and relationality. Informed learning also relies heavily on reflection as a strategy for bringing about learning. As a pedagogical construct, informed learning supports inclusive curriculum design and implementation. This paper reports aspects of the informed learning research agenda which are currently being pursued at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The first part elaborates the idea of informed learning, examines the key concepts underpinning this pedagogical construct, and explains its emergence from the research base of the QUT Information Studies research team. The second presents a case, which demonstrates the ongoing development of informed learning theory and practice, through the development of inclusive informed learning for a culturally diverse higher education context.

Down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass: A conception of information seeking and searching through a diary study.

Information behaviour (IB) is an area within Library and Information Science that studies the totality of human behaviour in relation to information, both active and passive, along with the explicit and the tacit mental states related to information. This study reports on a recently completed dissertation research that integrates the different models of information behaviours using a diary study where 34 participants maintained a daily journal for two weeks through a web log or paper diary. This resulted in thick descriptions of IB, which were manually analysed using the Grounded Theory method of inquiry, and then cross-referenced through both text-analysis and statistical analysis programs. Among the many key findings of this study, one is the focus this paper: how participants express their feelings of the information seeking process and their mental and affective states related specifically to the sense-making component which co-occurs with almost every other aspect of information behaviour. The paper title – Down the Rabbit Hole and Through the Looking Glass – refers to an observation that some of the participants made in their journals when they searched for, or avoided information, and wrote that they felt like they have fallen into a rabbit hole where nothing made sense, and reported both positive feelings of surprise and amazement, and negative feelings of confusion, puzzlement, apprehensiveness, frustration, stress, ambiguity, and fatigue. The study situates this sense-making aspects of IB within an overarching model of information behaviour that includes IB concepts like monitoring information, encountering information, information seeking and searching, flow, multitasking, information grounds, information horizons, and more, and proposes an integrated model of information behaviour illuminating how these different concepts are interleaved and inter-connected with each other, along with it's implications for information services.

Information and communication technology for E-regions

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are essential components of the knowledge economy, and have an immense complementary role in innovation, education, knowledge creation, and relations with government, civil society, and business within city regions. The ability to create, distribute, and exploit knowledge has become a major source of competitive advantage, wealth creation, and improvements in the new regional policies. Growing impact of ICTs on the economy and society, rapid application of recent scientific advances in new products and processes, shifting to more knowledge-intensive industry and services, and rising skill requirements have become crucial concepts for urban and regional competitiveness. Therefore, harnessing ICTs for knowledge-based urban development (KBUD) has a significant impact on urban and regional growth (Yigitcanlar, 2005). In this sense, e-region is a novel concept utilizing ICTs for regional development. Since the Helsinki European Council announced Turkey as a candidate for European Union (EU) membership in 1999, the candidacy has accelerated the speed of regional policy enhancements and adoption of the European regional policy standards. These enhancements and adoption include the generation of a new regional spatial division, NUTS-II statistical regions; a new legislation on the establishment of regional development agencies (RDAs); and new orientations in the field of high education, science, and technology within the framework of the EU’s Lisbon Strategy and the Bologna Process. The European standards posed an ambitious new agenda in the development and application of contemporary regional policy in Turkey (Bilen, 2005). In this sense, novel regional policies in Turkey necessarily endeavor to include information society objectives through efficient use of new technologies such as ICTs. Such a development seeks to be based on tangible assets of the region (Friedmann, 2006) as well as the best practices deriving from grounding initiatives on urban and local levels. These assets provide the foundation of an e-region that harnesses regional development in an information society context. With successful implementations, the Marmara region’s local governments in Turkey are setting the benchmark for the country in the implementation of spatial information systems and e-governance, and moving toward an e-region. Therefore, this article aims to shed light on organizational and regional realities of recent practices of ICT applications and their supply instruments based on evidence from selected local government organizations in the Marmara region. This article also exemplifies challenges and opportunities of the region in moving toward an e-region and provides a concise review of different ICT applications and strategies in a broader urban and regional context. The article is organized in three parts. The following section scrutinizes the e-region framework and the role of ICTs in regional development. Then, Marmara’s opportunities and challenges in moving toward an e-region are discussed in the context of ICT applications and their supply instruments based on public-sector projects, policies, and initiatives. Subsequently, the last section discusses conclusions and prospective research.

Online geographic information systems for improving health planning practice : lessons learned from the case study of Logan-Beaudesert, Australia

This study examines the impact of utilising a Decision Support System (DSS) in a practical health planning study. Specifically, it presents a real-world case of a community-based initiative aiming to improve overall public health outcomes. Previous studies have emphasised that because of a lack of effective information, systems and an absence of frameworks for making informed decisions in health planning, it has become imperative to develop innovative approaches and methods in health planning practice. Online Geographical Information Systems (GIS) has been suggested as one of the innovative methods that will inform decision-makers and improve the overall health planning process. However, a number of gaps in knowledge have been identified within health planning practice: lack of methods to develop these tools in a collaborative manner; lack of capacity to use the GIS application among health decision-makers perspectives, and lack of understanding about the potential impact of such systems on users. This study addresses the abovementioned gaps and introduces an online GIS-based Health Decision Support System (HDSS), which has been developed to improve collaborative health planning in the Logan-Beaudesert region of Queensland, Australia. The study demonstrates a participatory and iterative approach undertaken to design and develop the HDSS. It then explores the perceived user satisfaction and impact of the tool on a selected group of health decision makers. Finally, it illustrates how decision-making processes have changed since its implementation. The overall findings suggest that the online GIS-based HDSS is an effective tool, which has the potential to play an important role in the future in terms of improving local community health planning practice. However, the findings also indicate that decision-making processes are not merely informed by using the HDSS tool. Instead, they seem to enhance the overall sense of collaboration in health planning practice. Thus, to support the Healthy Cities approach, communities will need to encourage decision-making based on the use of evidence, participation and consensus, which subsequently transfers into informed actions.

Human information behavior: Integrating diverse approaches and information use

For millennia humans have sought, organized, and used information as they learned and evolved patterns of human information behaviors to resolve their human problems and survive. However, despite the current focus on living in an "information age," we have a limited evolutionary understanding of human information behavior. In this article the authors examine the current three interdisciplinary approaches to conceptualizing how humans have sought information including (a) the everyday life information seeking-sense-making approach, (b) the information foraging approach, and (c) the problem-solution perspective on information seeking approach. In addition, due to the lack of clarity regarding the role of information use in information behavior, a fourth information approach is provided based on a theory of information use. The use theory proposed starts from an evolutionary psychology notion that humans are able to adapt to their environment and survive because of our modular cognitive architecture. Finally, the authors begin the process of conceptualizing these diverse approaches, and the various aspects or elements of these approaches, within an integrated model with consideration of information use. An initial integrated model of these different approaches with information use is proposed.

Personalised search – a hybrid approach for web information retrieval and its evaluation

Nowadays, everyone can effortlessly access a range of information on the World Wide Web (WWW). As information resources on the web continue to grow tremendously, it becomes progressively more difficult to meet high expectations of users and find relevant information. Although existing search engine technologies can find valuable information, however, they suffer from the problems of information overload and information mismatch. This paper presents a hybrid Web Information Retrieval approach allowing personalised search using ontology, user profile and collaborative filtering. This approach finds the context of user query with least user’s involvement, using ontology. Simultaneously, this approach uses time-based automatic user profile updating with user’s changing behaviour. Subsequently, this approach uses recommendations from similar users using collaborative filtering technique. The proposed method is evaluated with the FIRE 2010 dataset and manually generated dataset. Empirical analysis reveals that Precision, Recall and F-Score of most of the queries for many users are improved with proposed method.

Measuring National Accessibility to Cardiac Services using Geographic Information Systems

The Cardiac Access-Remoteness Index of Australia (Cardiac ARIA) used geographic information systems (GIS) to model population level, road network accessibility to cardiac services before and after a cardiac event for all (20,387) population localities in Australia., The index ranged from 1A (access to all cardiac services within 1 h driving time) to 8E (limited or no access). The methodology derived an objective geographic measure of accessibility to required cardiac services across Australia. Approximately 71% of the 2006 Australian population had very good access to acute hospital services and services after hospital discharge. This GIS model could be applied to other regions or health conditions where spatially enabled data were available.

Traffic-related fine and ultrafine particle exposures of professional drivers and illness : An opportunity to better link exposure science and epidemiology to address an occupational hazard?

Exposures to traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) can be particularly high in transport microenvironments (i.e. in and around vehicles) despite the short durations typically spent there. There is a mounting body of evidence that suggests that this is especially true for fine (b2.5 μm) and ultrafine (b100 nm, UF) particles. Professional drivers, who spend extended periods of time in transport microenvironments due to their job, may incur exposures markedly higher than already elevated non-occupational exposures. Numerous epidemiological studies have shown a raised incidence of adverse health outcomes among professional drivers, and exposure to TRAP has been suggested as one of the possible causal factors. Despite this, data describing the range and determinants of occupational exposures to fine and UF particles are largely conspicuous in their absence. Such information could strengthen attempts to define the aetiology of professional drivers' illnesses as it relates to traffic combustion-derived particles. In this article, we suggest that the drivers' occupational fine and UF particle exposures are an exemplar case where opportunities exist to better link exposure science and epidemiology in addressing questions of causality. The nature of the hazard is first introduced, followed by an overview of the health effects attributable to exposures typical of transport microenvironments. Basic determinants of exposure and reduction strategies are also described, and finally the state of knowledge is briefly summarised along with an outline of the main unanswered questions in the topic area.