Experience of problem-based learning (PBL) in virtual space : a phenomenographical study

This thesis reports the outcomes of an investigation into students’ experience of Problem-based learning (PBL) in virtual space. PBL is increasingly being used in many fields including engineering education. At the same time many engineering education providers are turning to online distance education. Unfortunately there is a dearth of research into what constitutes an effective learning experience for adult learners who undertake PBL instruction through online distance education. Research was therefore focussed on discovering the qualitatively different ways that students experience PBL in virtual space. Data was collected in an electronic environment from a course, which adopted the PBL strategy and was delivered entirely in virtual space. Students in this course were asked to respond to open-ended questions designed to elicit their learning experience in the course. Data was analysed using the phenomenographical approach. This interpretative research method concentrated on mapping the qualitative differences in students’ interpretations of their experience in the course. Five qualitatively different ways of experiencing were discovered: Conception 1: ‘A necessary evil for program progression’; Conception 2: ‘Developing skills to understand, evaluate, and solve technical Engineering and Surveying problems’; Conception 3: ‘Developing skills to work effectively in teams in virtual space’; Conception 4: ‘A unique approach to learning how to learn’; Conception 5: ‘Enhancing personal growth’. Each conception reveals variation in how students attend to learning by PBL in virtual space. Results indicate that the design of students’ online learning experience was responsible for making students aware of deeper ways of experiencing PBL in virtual space. Results also suggest that the quality and quantity of interaction with the team facilitator may have a significant impact on the student experience in virtual PBL courses. The outcomes imply pedagogical strategies can be devised for shifting students’ focus as they engage in the virtual PBL experience to effectively manage the student learning experience and thereby ensure that they gain maximum benefit. The results from this research hold important ramifications for graduates with respect to their ease of transition into professional work as well as their later professional competence in terms of problem solving, ability to transfer basic knowledge to real-life engineering scenarios, ability to adapt to changes and apply knowledge in unusual situations, ability to think critically and creatively, and a commitment to continuous life-long learning and self-improvement.

Girl in the Shadows and resilience and coping strategies in contemporary young adult fiction

The novel manuscript Girl in the Shadows tells the story of two teenage girls whose friendship, safety and sanity are pushed to the limits when an unexplained phenomenon invades their lives. Sixteen-year-old Tash has everything a teenage girl could want: good looks, brains and freedom from her busy parents. But when she looks into her mirror, a stranger’s face stares back at her. Her best friend Mal believes it’s an evil spirit and enters the world of the supernatural to find answers. But spell books and ouija boards cannot fix a problem that comes from deep within the soul. It will take a journey to the edge of madness for Tash to face the truth inside her heart and see the evil that lurks in her home. And Mal’s love and courage to pull her back into life. The exegesis examines resilience and coping strategies in adolescence, in particular, the relationship of trauma to brain development in children and teenagers. It draws on recent discoveries in neuroscience and psychology to provide a framework to examine the role of coping strategies in building resilience. Within this broader context, it analyses two works of contemporary young adult fiction, Freaky Green Eyes by Joyce Carol Oates and Sonya Hartnett’s Surrender, their use of the split persona as a coping mechanism within young adult fiction and the potential of young adult literature as a tool to help build resilience in teen readers.

When He is a She is a He : the pregnant man and the transgendered mother

The recent successful pregnancy of Thomas Beatie, a transgender FTM, billed by the various media as ‘the pregnant man’, has stirred up considerably diverse public opinion and debate, some supportive and indicative of changing and progressive ideas around sex, gender and sexuality; others condemnatory in their claims that Beatie’s pregnancy is an affront to the laws of Nature and/or God. Desired or derided, the pregnant male body contests the terrain of reproductive embodiment and the orthodoxy of Western systems of gender categorization. This chapter analyses a selection of media and internet responses to the case of the pregnant man, arguing that most disturbing of all it seems, is the body in-between (Kristeva 1982, p.4), the one that visibly defies socially obdurate gender oppositions of male and female, feminine and masculine in its insistence on being, to borrow from Homi Bhabha, a ‘third space of enunciation.’ Banana Yoshimoto’s novella Kitchen, also contests gender boundaries in its characterisation of Eriko, a transgendered male to female, a father, then a mother. In this narrative the in-between, the ambiguous, is not reviled but rather celebrated as a ‘horizon of possibility’ (Halperin, qtd in Jagose 1996 http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-Dec- 1996/jagose.html).

Of ivory towers and boundary spanners

We all live in a yellow submarine… When I go to work in the morning, in the office building that hosts our BPM research group, on the way up to our level I come by this big breakout room that hosts a number of computer scientists, working away at the next generation software algorithms and iPad applications (I assume). I have never actually been in that room, but every now and then the door is left ajar for a while and I can spot couches, lots (I mean, lots!) of monitors, the odd scientist, a number of Lara Croft posters, and the usual room equipment you’d probably expect from computer scientists (and, no, it’s not like that evil Dennis guy from the Jurassic Park movie, buried in chips, coke, and flickering code screens… It’s also not like the command room from the Nebuchadnezzar, Neo’s hovercraft in the Matrix movies, although I still strongly believe these green lines of code make a good screensaver).

How to pick a fight : Visualisation and sharing in catastrophic times

In a post September 11 era “the fight”, as a cultural construct, could hardly be more pertinent. We are seemingly forever poised on the edge of controversial U.S. led attacks on wayward Middle Eastern states and unexamined oppositions between the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are evoked as valid justifications for battle. Our leaders muster us into wars of vigilance and national cohesion against unseen, unknown and uncomprehended terrorists hiding where communists once lurked under our beds. The articles in this issue examine fights in terms of media strategies and cultural divides in a range of contexts.

Something rotten in the state of Minnesota: or the morality of backwoodsmen: 'A Simple Plan'

'A Simple Plan' is a deceptively complex and multilayered film, combining elements of Celtic mythology with the morality play and the windfall fantasy gone disastrously wrong. Despite its blending of realism and heavyhanded symbolism, and its abundant trans-textual gestures, 'A Simple Plan' is in many ways defiantly not a 90s movie: its leading characters are fashionably flawed, but they are neither sensitive, nor honourable, nor heroic; there are no startling special effects or intricate timeshifts; and it desperately gives the impression of depth, of being emphatically more than mere superficial excess. At a stretch it almost appears to be a throwback to the 1930s Production Code emphasis on the role of cinema in moral instruction; while good hardly triumphs over evil, venality is painfully and emphatically punished. But in other ways it is a quintessential late 90s film: an American/British/Japanese/German/French co-production, 'A Simple Plan' acts most palpably as a commentary on the moral, economic and social condition of the United States at the end of the American century.

The Road to Whatever: Middle Class Cultgure and the Crisis of Adolescence

In this groundbreaking book, acclaimed sociologist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Elliott Currie draws on years of interviews to offer a profound investigation of what has gone wrong for so many “mainstream” American adolescents. Rejecting such predictable answers as TV violence, permissiveness, and inherent evil, Currie links this crisis to a pervasive “culture of exclusion” fostered by a society in which medications trump guidance and a punitive “zero tolerance” approach to adolescent misbehavior has become the norm. Broadening his inquiry, he dissects the changes in middle-class life that stratify the world into "winners" and "losers," imposing an extraordinarily harsh culture—and not just on kids. Vivid, compelling, and deeply empathetic, The Road to Whatever is a stark indictment of a society that has lost the will—or the capacity—to care.

Tolerance, Freedom, Justice and Peace?: Britain, Australia and anti-Muslim Racism in the UK and Australia before 11 September 2001

Since 11 September 2001, Muslim minorities have experienced intensive "othering" in “Western” countries, above all in those US-led anglophone nations which invaded Afghanistan and Iraq to prosecute their "war on terror". This paper examines the cases of Britain and Australia, where whole communities of Muslims have been criminalised as "evil" and a "fifth column" enemy within by media, politicians, the security services and the criminal justice system. Although constituted by disparate ethnic groups, the targeted communities in each of these nations have experienced similar treatment in the State's anti-terrorist measures, as well as ideological responses and everyday racism, making comparable the two cases.

Fatalism, superstition, religion, and culture : road user beliefs and behaviour in Pakistan

Road traffic crashes have emerged as a major health problem around the world. Road crash fatalities and injuries have been reduced significantly in developed countries, but they are still an issue in low and middle-income countries. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2009) estimates that the death toll from road crashes in low- and middle-income nations is more than 1 million people per year, or about 90% of the global road toll, even though these countries only account for 48% of the world's vehicles. Furthermore, it is estimated that approximately 265,000 people die every year in road crashes in South Asian countries and Pakistan stands out with 41,494 approximately deaths per year. Pakistan has the highest rate of fatalities per 100,000 population in the region and its road crash fatality rate of 25.3 per 100,000 population is more than three times that of Australia's. High numbers of road crashes not only cause pain and suffering to the population at large, but are also a serious drain on the country's economy, which Pakistan can ill-afford. Most studies identify human factors as the main set of contributing factors to road crashes, well ahead of road environment and vehicle factors. In developing countries especially, attention and resources are required in order to improve things such as vehicle roadworthiness and poor road infrastructure. However, attention to human factors is also critical. Human factors which contribute to crashes include high risk behaviours like speeding and drink driving, and neglect of protective behaviours such as helmet wearing and seat belt wearing. Much research has been devoted to the attitudes, beliefs and perceptions which contribute to these behaviours and omissions, in order to develop interventions aimed at increasing safer road use behaviours and thereby reducing crashes. However, less progress has been made in addressing human factors contributing to crashes in developing countries as compared to the many improvements in road environments and vehicle standards, and this is especially true of fatalistic beliefs and behaviours. This is a significant omission, since in different cultures in developing countries there are strong worldviews in which predestination persists as a central idea, i.e. that one's life (and death) and other events have been mapped out and are predetermined. Fatalism refers to a particular way in which people regard the events that occur in their lives, usually expressed as a belief that an individual does not have personal control over circumstances and that their lives are determined through a divine or powerful external agency (Hazen & Ehiri, 2006). These views are at odds with the dominant themes of modern health promotion movements, and present significant challenges for health advocates who aim to avert road crashes and diminish their consequences. The limited literature on fatalism reveals that it is not a simple concept, with religion, culture, superstition, experience, education and degree of perceived control of one's life all being implicated in accounts of fatalism. One distinction in the literature that seems promising is the distinction between empirical and theological fatalism, although there are areas of uncertainty about how well-defined the distinction between these types of fatalism is. Research into road safety in Pakistan is scarce, as is the case for other South Asian countries. From the review of the literature conducted, it is clear that the descriptions given of the different belief systems in developing countries including Pakistan are not entirely helpful for health promotion purposes and that further research is warranted on the influence of fatalism, superstition and other related beliefs in road safety. Based on the information available, a conceptual framework is developed as a means of structuring and focusing the research and analysis. The framework is focused on the influence of fatalism, superstition, religion and culture on beliefs about crashes and road user behaviour. Accordingly, this research aims to provide an understanding of the operation of fatalism and related beliefs in Pakistan to assist in the development and implementation of effective and culturally appropriate interventions. The research examines the influence of fatalism, superstition, religious and cultural beliefs on risky road use in Pakistan and is guided by three research questions: 1. What are the perceptions of road crash causation in Pakistan, in particular the role of fatalism, superstition, religious and cultural beliefs? 2. How does fatalism, superstition, and religious and cultural beliefs influence road user behaviour in Pakistan? 3. Do fatalism, superstition, and religious and cultural beliefs work as obstacles to road safety interventions in Pakistan? To address these questions, a qualitative research methodology was developed. The research focused on gathering data through individual in-depth interviewing using a semi-structured interview format. A sample of 30 participants was interviewed in Pakistan in the cities of Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The participants included policy makers (with responsibility for traffic law), experienced police officers, religious orators, professional drivers (truck, bus and taxi) and general drivers selected through a combination of purposive, criterion and snowball sampling. The transcripts were translated from Urdu and analysed using a thematic analysis approach guided by the conceptual framework. The findings were divided into four areas: attribution of crash causation to fatalism; attribution of road crashes to beliefs about superstition and malicious acts; beliefs about road crash causation linked to popular concepts of religion; and implications for behaviour, safety and enforcement. Fatalism was almost universally evident, and expressed in a number of ways. Fate was used to rationalise fatal crashes using the argument that the people killed were destined to die that day, one way or another. Related to this was the sense of either not being fully in control of the vehicle, or not needing to take safety precautions, because crashes were predestined anyway. A variety of superstitious-based crash attributions and coping methods to deal with road crashes were also found, such as belief in the role of the evil eye in contributing to road crashes and the use of black magic by rivals or enemies as a crash cause. There were also beliefs related to popular conceptions of religion, such as the role of crashes as a test of life or a source of martyrdom. However, superstitions did not appear to be an alternative to religious beliefs. Fate appeared as the 'default attribution' for a crash when all other explanations failed to account for the incident. This pervasive belief was utilised to justify risky road use behaviour and to resist messages about preventive measures. There was a strong religious underpinning to the statement of fatalistic beliefs (this reflects popular conceptions of Islam rather than scholarly interpretations), but also an overlap with superstitious and other culturally and religious-based beliefs which have longer-standing roots in Pakistani culture. A particular issue which is explored in more detail is the way in which these beliefs and their interpretation within Pakistani society contributed to poor police reporting of crashes. The pervasive nature of fatalistic beliefs in Pakistan affects road user behaviour by supporting continued risk taking behaviour on the road, and by interfering with public health messages about behaviours which would reduce the risk of traffic crashes. The widespread influence of these beliefs on the ways that people respond to traffic crashes and the death of family members contribute to low crash reporting rates and to a system which appears difficult to change. Fate also appeared to be a major contributing factor to non-reporting of road crashes. There also appeared to be a relationship between police enforcement and (lack of) awareness of road rules. It also appears likely that beliefs can influence police work, especially in the case of road crash investigation and the development of strategies. It is anticipated that the findings could be used as a blueprint for the design of interventions aimed at influencing broad-spectrum health attitudes and practices among the communities where fatalism is prevalent. The findings have also identified aspects of beliefs that have complex social implications when designing and piloting driver intervention strategies. By understanding attitudes and behaviours related to fatalism, superstition and other related concepts, it should be possible to improve the education of general road users, such that they are less likely to attribute road crashes to chance, fate, or superstition. This study also underscores the understanding of this issue in high echelons of society (e.g., policy makers, senior police officers) as their role is vital in dispelling road users' misconceptions about the risks of road crashes. The promotion of an evidence or scientifically-based approach to road user behaviour and road safety is recommended, along with improved professional education for police and policy makers.

Paris 1947 : The woman of fashion

Paris 1947 is the site of one of twentieth century fashion’s fictive highpoints. The New Look combined drama and poetics through an abiding rhetoric of elegance. In doing so it employed traditional modes of femininity, casting the woman of fashion in the guise of an ambiguous ‘new’ figure: half fairytale princess, half evil witch. This fashionable ideal was widely disseminated through key photographic representations, Willy Maywald’s 1947 image of the Bar Suit being a case in point. It was precisely such mythic formulations of ‘woman’ which Simone de Beauvoir was to take to task just two years later with the publication of The Second Sex. Driven by frustration with the status quo of real women, de Beauvoir recognised the role of fictive representations, both textual and visual in defining women. This paper reads key sections of The Second Sex through a comparative analysis of two iconic images of French women from 1947; Cartier-Bresson’s classic portrait of de Beauvoir and Willy Mayhold’s spectacular evocation of Christian Dior’s New Look. Cued by a compelling range of similarities between these images this paper explores links between fashion, feminism and fiction in mid-century French culture.

Writing the oriental woman : an examination of the representation of Japanese women in contemporary Australian crime fiction

This study considers the challenges in representing women from other cultures in the crime fiction genre. The study is presented in two parts; an exegesis and a creative practice component consisting of a full length crime fiction novel, Batafurai. The exegesis examines the historical period of a section of the novel—post-war Japan—and how the area of research known as Occupation Studies provides an insight into the conditions of women during this period. The exegesis also examines selected postcolonial theory and its exposition of representations of the 'other' as a western construct designed to serve Eurocentric ends. The genre of crime fiction is reviewed, also, to determine how characters purportedly representing Oriental cultures are constricted by established stereotypes. Two case studies are examined to investigate whether these stereotypes are still apparent in contemporary Australian crime fiction. Finally, I discuss my own novel, Batafurai, to review how I represented people of Asian background, and whether my attempts to resist stereotype were successful. My conclusion illustrates how novels written in the crime fiction genre are reliant on strategies that are action-focused, rather than character-based, and thus often use easily recognizable types to quickly establish frameworks for their stories. As a sub-set of popular fiction, crime fiction has a tendency to replicate rather than challenge established stereotypes. Where it does challenge stereotypes, it reflects a territory that popular culture has already visited, such as the 'female', 'black' or 'gay' detective. Crime fiction also has, as one of its central concerns, an interest in examining and reinforcing the notion of societal order. It repeatedly demonstrates that crime either does not pay or should not pay. One of the ways it does this is to contrast what is 'good', known and understood with what is 'bad', unknown, foreign or beyond our normal comprehension. In western culture, the east has traditionally been employed as the site of difference, and has been constantly used as a setting of contrast, excitement or fear. Crime fiction conforms to this pattern, using the east to add a richness and depth to what otherwise might become a 'dry' tale. However, when used in such a way, what is variously eastern, 'other' or Oriental can never be paramount, always falling to secondary side of the binary opposites (good/evil, known/unknown, redeemed/doomed) at work. In an age of globalisation, the challenge for contemporary writers of popular fiction is to be responsive to an audience that demands respect for all cultures. Writers must demonstrate that they are sensitive to such concerns and can skillfully manage the tensions caused by the need to deliver work that operates within the parameters of the genre, and the desire to avoid offence to any cultural or ethnic group. In my work, my strategy to manage these tensions has been to create a back-story for my characters of Asian background, developing them above mere genre types, and to situate them with credibility in time and place through appropriate historical research.

Roller Derby Dolls

In the sprawling outer suburbs of Brisbane, a revolution is brewing. A sassy group of women from all walks of life has a dream: to resurrect the lost sport of full-contact roller derby in Australia. Led by their president Evil Doll, and despite none having experience in business, the roller girls have set up a roller derby league, one of 220 now dotted around the globe. Roller Derby Dolls is a story of female empowerment and of women with a dream—the dream of inspiring women in Australia to strap on the skates and give the sport a go.

The whole world shook : shifts in ethnic, national and heroic identities in children's fiction about 9/11

Like many other cataclysmic events September 11, a day now popularly believed to have 'changed the world', has become a topic taken up by children's writers. This thesis, titled The Whole World Shook: Ethnic, National and Heroic Identities in Children's Fiction About 9/11, examines how cultural identities are constructed within fictional texts for young people written about the attacks on the Twin Towers. It identifies three significant identity categories encoded in 9/11 books for children: ethnic identities, national identities, and heroic identities. The thesis argues that the identities formed within the selected children's texts are in flux, privileging performances of identities that are contingent on post-9/11 politics. This study is located within the field of children's literature criticism, which supports the understanding that children's books, like all texts, play a role in the production of identities. Children's literature is highly significant both in its pedagogical intent (to instruct and induct children into cultural practices and beliefs) and in its obscurity (in making the complex simple enough for children, and from sometimes intentionally shying away from difficult things). This literary criticism informed the study that the texts, if they were to be written at all, would be complex, varied and most likely as ambiguous and contradictory as the responses to the attacks on New York themselves. The theoretical framework for this thesis draws on a range of critical theories including literary theory, cultural studies, studies of performativity and postmodernism. This critical framework informs the approach by providing ways for: (i) understanding how political and ideological work is performed in children's literature; (ii) interrogating the constructed nature of cultural identities; (iii) developing a nuanced methodology for carrying out a close textual analysis. The textual analysis examines a representative sample of children's texts about 9/11, including picture books, young adult fiction, and a selection of DC Comics. Each chapter focuses on a different though related identity category. Chapter Four examines the performance of ethnic identities and race politics within a sample of picture books and young adult fiction; Chapter Five analyses the construction of collective, national identities in another set of texts; and Chapter Six does analytic work on a third set of texts, demonstrating the strategic performance of particular kinds of heroic identities. I argue that performances of cultural identities constructed in these texts draw on familiar versions of identities as well as contribute to new ones. These textual constructions can be seen as offering some certainties in increasingly uncertain times. The study finds, in its sample of books a co-mingling of xenophobia and tolerance; a binaried competition between good and evil and global harmony and national insularity; and a lauding of both the commonplace hero and the super-human. Being a recent corpus of texts about 9/11, these texts provide information on the kinds of 'selves' that appear to be privileged in the West since 2001. The thesis concludes that the shifting identities evident in texts that are being produced for children about 9/11 offer implicit and explicit accounts of what constitute good citizenship, loyalty to nation and community, and desirable attributes in a Western post-9/11 context. This thesis makes an original contribution to the field of children's literature by providing a focussed and sustained analysis of how texts for children about 9/11 contribute to formations of identity in these complex times of cultural unease and global unrest.

Commuting mode choice in transit oriented development: Disentangling the effects of competitive neighbourhoods, travel attitudes, and self-selection

This research identifies the commuting mode choice behaviour of 3537 adults living in different types of transit oriented development (TOD) in Brisbane by disentangling the effects of their “evil twin” transit adjacent developments (TADs), and by also controlling for residential self-selection, travel attitudes and preferences, and socio-demographic effects. A TwoStep cluster analysis was conducted to identify the natural groupings of respondents’ living environment based on six built environment indicators. The analysis resulted in five types of neighbourhoods: urban TODs, activity centre TODs, potential TODs, TADs, and traditional suburbs. HABITAT survey data were used to derive the commute mode choice behaviour of people living in these neighbourhoods. In addition, statements reflecting both respondents’ travel attitudes and living preferences were also collected as part of the survey. Factor analyses were conducted based on these statements and these derived factors were then used to control for residential self-selection. Four binary logistic regression models were estimated, one for each of the travel modes used (e.g. public transport, active transport, less sustainable transport such as the car/taxi, and other), to differentiate between the commuting behaviour of people living in the five types of neighbourhoods. The findings verify that urban TODs enhance the use of public transport and reduce car usage. No significant difference was found in the commuting behaviour between respondents living in traditional suburbs and TADs. The results confirm the hypothesis that TADs are the “evil twin” of TODs. The data indicates that TADs and the mode choices of residents in these neighbourhoods is a missed transport policy opportunity. Further policy efforts are required for a successive transition of TADs into TODs in order to realise the full benefits of these. TOD policy should also be integrated with context specific TOD design principles.

Who owns Superman? The Man of Steel fights trademark law

Who is Superman’s greatest threat? Evil genius Lex Luthor? General Zod from the Phantom Zone? The doppelganger Bizarro? Super-villain Brainiac? Kryptonite? Or is it intellectual property law?