A Virtual Reality Approach to Personal Safety and the Design of Built Environment Facilities

The Suzy Lamplugh Trust Research Institute at the University of Glamorgan is conducting research that focuses on personal safety issues as they relate to the design and maintenance of built environment facilities. The project, funded by Valley Lines (a network of 66 railway stations in South Wales) seeks to investigate the perception and reality of personal safety (against crime and nuisance, as opposed to health and safety) on these stations and their immediate access routes and environments. Customer satisfaction surveys have consistently reported that although recorded incidents of crime and nuisance are relatively low, rail users perceive their risk to be significantly higher and therefore discourages people from using the trains. The project uses interactive virtual reality (VR) scenes as the environmental stimuli for investigating perceptions. VR ‘walkthroughs’ of a sample of stations have been shown to focus groups representing samples of users and potential users. The standardisation of the ‘personal journey’ to, from and through the station represented by this approach and its ‘dynamic’ (rather than static) and interactive nature, make it a realistic avenue for evaluating how people decode the railway environment in personal safety terms. A pilot study for three stations was very encouraging and illuminating. The respondents provided a rich source of data, concerning their personal safety concerns in and around the station environment and the findings broadly support Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) theory. It also highlights the crucial importance of user perceptions in the design and management of built environment facilities. This methodology will also be employed to investigate perceptions of personal safety within the University campus environment, its immediate environment and access routes. Within this community, fear of crime has been shown to exist in locations where, according to recorded statistics, crime is low. Therefore, the objective is to develop applied solutions to improve personal safety on the campus. Finally a package of recommended solutions and a generic model shall be developed that can analyse problems and generate solutions to any campus University

"Riders on the storm": A co-teaching mentor model to increase student satisfaction and retention

This paper reports on a co-teaching mentor model focused on improving first year undergraduate retention rates through enhanced teaching practise. A lecturer responsible for first year units was partnered with a co-teaching mentor to offer guidance on how the content (urban and regional planning) could be delivered more effectively with an emphasis on student satisfaction and retention. We present a case study example where the findings demonstrate the effective transfer of teaching awareness and skills through this process. Five educational theories underpin the substantive changes made to the way classes were delivered. The applied relevance of these ideas can be demonstrated in the reflections from the participating lecturer of their teaching practices, and in the improved student evaluation and retention results

Factors that Influence the Desire to Become Teachers of Technology: An Australian Study

In this study, 337 pre-service teachers enrolled in Technology Teacher Education Programs (TTEP), in eight tertiary institutions across Australia, responded to a questionnaire seeking information about those factors that influenced their decision to become teachers of Technical and Applied Studies (TAS). The study found: a majority of the respondents were male (71%); most came from urban areas (61%); just over half (51%) entered the course from the workforce and just over a third of the respondents entered the course direct from school. Of the 172 respondents who came from the work force, a total of 93 (86 male) had prior trade experience. Factor analysis of attitudinal items set against a four-point Likert scale produced three factors related to their decision to become TAS teachers. These included encouragement from members of the community, the influence of experiences in technology at school, and a desire to teach. A three stage regression model was created with the scale ‘Desire to Teach’ as the ultimate dependent variable. Factors most strongly influencing ‘Desire to Teach’ included hobbies and interests prior to enrolment, encouragement from members of the community and the influence of experiences in technology at school. The authors propose a number of strategies for promoting technology teaching and increasing the TTEP student intake, based on their findings

The Effectiveness of the Methods of Reciprocal Teaching: As Applied Within the NSW Primary Subject Human Society and Its Environment: An Exploratory Study

Reciprocal teaching (RT) is a process involving four distinct activities (questioning, clarifying, summarising and predicting) employed in a student-led, team approach to develop reading comprehension skills among primary students. In this study a series of readings were prepared for a topic taught within the NSW key learning area of Human Society and its Environment (HSIE). The readings were used in a study comparing the effects of RT with those of a more traditional approach to reading. A mixedmethod procedure was employed with 25 Year Four students who were divided into two groups (control and experimental) balanced for age, sex and ability. Both groups were pre- and post-tested for their knowledge of information supplied within the readings. An analysis of variance of the results indicated no detriment to the use of the RT procedures in comparison to the effective traditional approach taken by the home-teacher. Further, exit interviews with, and journal entries of students from both groups suggested that while the students in the control group viewed reading as a decoding process, the students from the RT group had begun to internalise the questioning and clarifying strategies and viewed reading as a process of dealing with ideas (comprehension)

Designing Crime Precipitators in Northbridge after dark: Urban Governance in Slumber

Entertainment districts play a significant role in the post-industrial place-making for the night-time economies of many Western cities, and they are significant contributors to these economies. However, many cities are experiencing increased levels of crime in their alcohol-oriented entertainment districts. This paper explores crime in Northbridge entertainment district in Perth, Western Australia and highlights how the legacy of governance can operate counter-intuitively, to foster crime precipitators (Wortley, 2008), which can increase opportunities for crime. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) and Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) are briefly discussed and the authors argued that SCP is a more appropriate strategy to use in the dynamic and complex environmental setting of Northbridge. Based on several years of scientific observation, land-use surveys and pedestrian surveys, the authors provide a critical narrative of Northbridge and crime precipitators after dark. This narrative is expressed from the perspective of environmental criminology and SCP. This exploratory study concludes that Northbridge is in part, a legacy of previous single-issue governance, which has inadvertently created crime precipitators, which exacerbate the problems of crime in the entertainment district after dark. The need for further research is identified and the adoption of a more strategic, multi-issue and multi-agency approach is recommended