The WIL pathway: shared understandings build vocational identity, occupational capacity and professional transition

Work integrated learning (WIL) has become a catch phrase in higher education in recent years with various models advanced, and each advocating their virtues for students, educators and professions. In the milieu of WIL experiences, the notion of developing professionals is a key driving factor of WIL programs. At James Cook University (JCU), this imperative is equally noticeable across the various disciplines and schools but one model is exemplary for its linking of students within the Human Resource Management (HRM) discipline with Human Resource Professionals through the ongoing support of and collaboration between School of Business, JCU Careers and Employment, and the local HRM Professional Association. This partnership has been effective in developing graduate attributes, vocational identity, occupational capacity and professional skills that facilitate the successful transition of students to graduates to professionals. The aim of this paper is to examine in more depth the factors which have contributed to the evolution of this model and to evaluate its success as measured by the perspectives of various stakeholders, especially those of students, graduates and HRM professionals. It uses qualitative approaches integrating individual conversations and reflective tools to illuminate how shared meanings of what it means to become a HRM professional have enabled the program to grow over the years such that graduates return as HRM professionals to perpetuate best practice in the HRM profession. In this way, the paper proposes a model for a scaffolded approach to embedding WIL activities in a HRM major so that students are presented with valuable opportunities to position themselves for entry into the professional world of HRM

Mapping susceptibility with open-source tools: A new plugin for QGIS

In this study, a new tool for quantitative, data-driven susceptibility zoning (SZ) is presented. The SZ plugin has been implemented as a QGIS plugin to maximize its operational use within the geoscientific community. QGIS is in fact a commonly used open-source geographic information system. We have scripted the plugin in Python, and developed it as a collection of functions that allow one to pre-process the input data, calculate the susceptibility, and then estimate the quality of the classification results. The susceptibility zoning can be carried out via a number of classifiers including weight of evidence, frequency ratio, logistic regression, random forest, support vector machine, and decision tree. The plugin allows one to use any kind of mapping units, to fit the model, to test it via a k-fold cross-validation, and to visualize the relative receiving operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Moreover, a new classification method of the susceptibility index (SI) has been implemented in the SZ plugin. A typical workflow of the SZ plugin is described, and its application for landslide susceptibility zoning in Northeast India is reported. The data of the predisposing factors used are open, and the analysis has been carried out using a logistic regression and weight of evidence models. The corresponding area under the curve of the relative ROC curves reflects an optimal model prediction capacity. The user-friendly graphical interface of the plugin has allowed us to perform the analysis efficiently in few steps

ICT Applications in the Research for Environmental Sustainability

26 p.Whether Information and Communication Technology (ICT) constitutes a threat to or a cure for environmental deterioration is a matter of controversy. Empirical evidence on the impacts of ICT is rare, so few generalisable lessons can be drawn. This study addresses precisely this critique by providing empirical results on the role of ICT in research for environmental sustainability. The application of ICT in research is generally regarded as a way to exploit such technology in favour of the environment. Our analysis shows that the use of ICT in environmental research is of great importance in the scientific community, but it can also play a crucial role in the policy context, as well as in the business sector