TURNITIN? TURNITOFF: The Deskilling of Information Literacy

CC-BY-NC-SAPlagiarism is a folk devil into which is poured many of the challenges, problems and difficulties confronting higher education. This article investigates how software -Turnitin in particular- is ‘solving’ a particular ‘crisis’ in universities. However, I investigate how alternative strategies for the development of information literacy offer concrete, productive and imaginative trajectories for university staff and students

The Best Bookshop In The World: Changing Capitalism With Global Reading

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Dancing through Post-Youth Cultures

A review of Ros Jennings and Abigail Gardner (eds), ‘Rock on’: Women, Ageing and Popular Music (Ashgate, 2012) and Andy Bennett and Paul Hodkinson (eds), Ageing and Youth Cultures: Music, Style and Identity (Berg, 2012)

Take the Red Pill: A New Matrix of Literacy

Using The Matrix film series as an inspiration, aspiration and model, this article integrates horizontal and vertical models of literacy. My goal is to create a new matrix for media literacy, aligning the best of analogue depth models for meaning making with the rapid scrolling, clicking and moving through the read-write web. To undertake this study I deploy not only the filmic series, but one of the scholars who inspired it. I explore the relevance and application of Jean Baudrillard’s research on contemporary understandings of media literacy

Skirt, Cap and Gown: How Fair are Universities to Young Women in Postgraduate Study?

If democratisation in the tertiary sector is to be taken seriously, then we must carefully survey how previously disadvantaged groups are incorporated into higher education. In response to the words of my ex-postgraduate, I sent emailed questions to my six female doctoral students. Their testimony was then labelled ‘A’ through to ‘F’ to connote the seniority of their candidature. I then pleated their answers against DEST surveys of the Australian academy and theoretical/historical approaches to the university’s purpose. Via this approach, the attitudes of my students wedge the page, providing an intervention in the calm facade of DEST documents stressing science, training and vocationalism. We do not hear—let alone read—the experi- ences of postgraduates in sufficient depth. When presented in this way, different approaches to the postgraduate journey are revealed that are distinct from the imperatives of completion rates, supervisory training and professional competencies

Digital fitness: Self-monitored fitness and the commodification of movement

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY_ND) Licence. For information on use, visit www.creativecommons.org/licenses.This article moves beyond a history of domestic home video fitness programs to explore digital fitness with specific attention to the self-monitored fitness 'movement' and the hardware and software that facilitate its proliferation. The research in this area is currently conducted through preliminary small scale studies, alongside some flawed but still (inadvertently) useful undergraduate and graduate projects. Popular cultural interest is burgeoning, with the popularity of the Fitbit suite and the iWatch surging through an array of commentaries on blogs, YouTube videos, tweets and Facebook posts. This theoretical paper links digitisation with fitness to explore the balance between self-monitoring and surveillance, motivation and shaming. The Fitbit is an example of this self-monitored fitness 'movement' that reveals the ambivalence of quantifying steps and stairs while managing a volatile neoliberal working environment

Wasted? Managing Decline and Marketing Difference in Third Tier Cities

Third-tier cities are neglected in the research literature. Global and second-tier cities provide the positive, proactive applications of city imaging and creative industries strategies. However, small cities - particularly those who reached their height and notoriety through the industrial revolution - reveal few strategies for stability, let alone growth. This study investigates an unusual third-tier city: Oshawa in Ontario Canada. Known as the home of General Motors, its recent economic and social development has been tethered to the arrival of a new institution of higher education: the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Yet this article confirms that simply opening a university is not enough to commence regeneration or renewal, particularly if an institution is imposed on unwilling residents. Therefore, an alternative strategy - involving geosocial networking - offers a way for local businesses and organizations to attract customers and provide a digital medication to analogue injustice and decay

BA (Google) : graduating to information literacy

BA (Google) : graduating to information literac

Popping the museum: the cases of Sheffield and Preston

This article excavates the ‘problem’ of popular culture in museums, with particular attention to Sheffield’s National Centre for Popular Music and Preston’s National Football Museum. In both cases, profound issues are raised for information and knowledge experts who must manage and negotiate the contradictions of the popular. These two case studies are contextualized through both urban regeneration policies and sports tourism strategies. Both institutions were situated in the North of England, and both faced extraordinary obstacles. What is interesting is that Sheffield’s Centre was termed – derisively – a Museum. It failed. Preston embraced the label of a National Museum, and after profound threats to the institution, has survived. Part of the explanation for these distinct trajectories is found in understanding the specific challenges that popular culture presents for the presentation of history, narrative, identity and space

Freedom from Choice? The Rollout of Person-centered Disability Funding and the National Disability Insurance Scheme

Person-centered funding models are replacing block-funding models in the disability services sector.  Australia is part of this international trend.  Concerns have been raised by service providers, suggesting that people with disabilities are not benefiting from this system.  This paper evaluates the views of service providers from a large non-government organization in South Australia, responsible for leading the transition from a block-funded model of support to a person-centered model of support.  Two focus groups were conducted.  Two themes emerged from these focus group discussions: customers with disabilities are vulnerable in the market, and marketizing disability services compromises quality.  Neoliberal ideologies and market-based values frame the challenges and opportunities for not-for-profit organizations when transitioning to person-centered funding for disability support.  This research both enlivens and confirms the existing research literature.  Although person-centered funding models offer a socially just model, there is evidence that unintended consequences emerge in an open and competitive quasi-market.  This study reveals that the competitive market design had stopped trans-sector collaboration. [Saat ini, model pendanaan berbasis orang banyak menggantikan model pendanaan-blok di sektor layanan disabilitas. Australia adalah bagian dari tren internasional ini. Lembaga layanan sosial khawatir bahwa para difabel tidak akan mendapatkan manfaat dari sistem ini. Artikel ini meninjau pandangan penyedia layanan dari organisasi non-pemerintah besar di Australia Selatan. Dua FGD dilakukan dalam riset ini. Dua tema muncul dari FGD: pelanggan difabel mengalami kerentanan di pasar dan ‘swastanisasi’ layanan disabilitas mengganggu kualitas. Ideologi neoliberal dan nilai berbasis-pasar menyajikan tantangan dan peluang bagi organisasi nirlaba ketika beralih ke pendanaan berbasis orang dalam layanan disabilitas. Penelitian ini mengonfirmasi literatur penelitian yang sudah ada. Meskipun model pendanaan berbasis orang menawarkan model yang adil secara sosial, ada bukti bahwa konsekuensi yang tidak diinginkan dapat muncul dalam pasar kuasi terbuka dan kompetitif. Studi ini mengungkapkan bahwa desain pasar yang kompetitif telah menghentikan kolaborasi lintas sector.