Retheorising doctoral supervision as professional work

A competitive higher education environment marked by increased accountability and quality assurance measures for doctoral study, including the structured training of doctoral supervisors, has highlighted the need to clearly articulate and delineate the work of supervising doctoral students. This article responds to this imperative by examining the question: in the contemporary university, what do doctoral supervisors do and how might their work be theorized? The response draws on life history interviews with doctoral supervisors in five broad disciplines/fields, working in a large metropolitan university in Australia. Based on empirical analyses, doctoral supervision is theorized as professional work that comprises five facets: the learning alliance, habits of mind, scholarly expertise, techn&ecirc; and contextual expertise. The article proposes that this model offers a more precise discourse, language and theory for understanding and preparing for the work of doctoral supervision in the contemporary university.<br /

The role of research education coordinators in building research cultures in doctoral education

The development of cultures of support has become important in programmes for the preparation of research students. The paper draws on in-depth interviews with 21 research education coordinators from Australian and UK institutions to identify the strategies that they use to build research cultures and integrate research students into them. Students’ research cultures are not always linked to departmental research cultures more generally. Local contexts and conditions and staff (including supervisors’) attitudes are found to be critical in how research education coordinators respond and what is considered possible in order to ensure that research students are involved in research cultures

Academic discipline and profession

C.H. Doevendans, S. Malfroy 2003. Academic discipline and profession.USO-Built Report Series 2:71-77. The development of the USO-Built organisation may be described in terms of H.S. Toulmin's work with the International Research Units (IRU) as the fora of discussion and scientific development, and USO-Built as a whole as their ecological niche. Both appear to be essential to the development of the disciplines of building sciences. USO-Built is in potential strong, but currently not strong enough. We have to better clarify our position and meaning as an essential part of the scientific or academic profession of the disciplines of architecture, urbanism and other building sciences. The criteria Toulmin for a compact discipline, may help us to set the standard for our unfolding activities and enterprises inside USOBuilt to develop into a discipline

Students' experiences and expectations of technologies: An Australian study designed to inform planning and development decisions

The pace of technological change accompanied by an evolution in social, work-based and study behaviours and norms poses particular challenges for universities as they strive to develop high quality and sustainable technology-rich learning environments. Maintaining currency with the latest advances is resource intensive, hence the costs incurred in upgrading existing and introducing new technologies need to be carefully weighed up against the potential benefits to students. This calls for a multidimensional approach to planning, with the student voice being an important dimension. Three Australian universities have recently completed a project to gain a better understanding of students' experiences and expectations of technologies in everyday life and for study purposes. The LMS and 25 other technologies ranging from established university offerings (email, learning management systems) to freely available social networking technologies (YouTube, Facebook) were surveyed. More than 10,000 students responded. This paper discusses the development of the survey and presents the broad trends that have emerged in relation to the current use of technologies and desired future use of these for learning purposes. The implications of the survey findings for developing institutional infrastructure to engage students and support their learning are highlighted. © 2013 Australasian Journal of Educational Technology

Using research to inform learning technology practice and policy: A qualitative analysis of student perspectives

As learning technologies are now integral to most higher education student learning experiences, universities need to make strategic choices about what technologies to adopt and how to best support and develop the use of these technologies, particularly in a climate of limited resources. Information from students is therefore a valuable contribution when determining institutional goals, building infrastructure and improving the quality of student learning. This paper draws on a survey of student experiences and expectations of technology across three Australian universities. Analysis of text responses from 7,000 students provides insight into ways that institutional learning technologies and academicled technologies are influencing the student experience. This paper also discusses how the three universities have used this information to develop strategic initiatives, and identifies a need for new strategies to support academic-led use of the available tools. © Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 2014

L'utilisation rationnelle des sous-produits d'abattoirs

Malfroy F. L’utilisation rationnelle des sous-produits d’abattoirs. In: Bulletin de l'Académie Vétérinaire de France tome 113 n°3, 1960. pp. 179-188

Quality in the e-landscape: a collegial and developmental approach

Since the appearance of e-learning in the tertiary education sector a range of approaches have been used to enhance the quality of online learning environments. Building on these approaches, at the University of Western Sydney our approach is one of developing quality e-learning sites in a collegial and developmental manner, as a central part of overall good teaching practice. Our view is that, in order for the process to be truly collegial and developmental, it needs to be supported across all levels of the academic environment and, importantly, it should be adopted by academics rather than being imposed upon them. A central aspect of the collegial and developmental approach is that academics should be provided with the skills and support to be the drivers of quality in the e-landscape. This paper introduces a project that applies this developmental and collegial philosophy to building quality in our online learning environments in a whole of enterprise context

Socio-economic status and students' experiences of technologies: Is there a digital divide?

With the widening participation agenda in Australia, more students from low socio-economic backgrounds are being encouraged to undertake university degrees, and will be expected to use digital technologies and demonstrate digital literacies. This paper used data from a 2013 survey of students across three universities, to examine whether there were socio-economic differences in students' access to and use of technologies. There were few differences in access to equipment. There were also no differences in the most common uses of technologies, such as accessing course materials from the LMS, and few differences between students from low, medium and high socioeconomic status suburbs. However students who received government support benefits less frequently used technologies that related to disciplinary skills or to creating rather than receiving content. There may be a subtle digital divide, where financially disadvantaged students are engaging less with technologies that will most benefit their future employment

Micromotion and fluid flow around cementless femoral components in total hip arthroplasty

Cementless total hip arthroplasty is a highly successful and reliable procedure to restore joint function and reduce pain in patients with severe osteoarthritis. Nevertheless, despite the technical advances over the last decades in the development of cementless implants, between 5 % and 10% of cementless femoral components have been revised at 15-year follow-up. Revision procedures are less successful, require longer hospital stays, and are associated with higher mortality rates than primary procedures. The main cause for revision of cementless femoral components is aseptic loosening. The mechanisms behind aseptic loosening remain unclear, but the initial local mechanical environment is thought to be critical. In particular, both excessive micromotion and fluid flow at the bone-implant interface during early peri-implant healing have been related to aseptic loosening. In this thesis, micromotion was measured *in vitro* and fluid flow was predicted from measured micromotion using numerical modeling. The thesis is divided into three studies. First, a micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) based technique using radiopaque markers to measure full-field local implant micromotion around metallic cementless stems was developed. The technique was highly reliable, with a bias and repeatability similar to that of linear variable differential transformers (LVDTs), which are the current gold standard for micromotion measurement. It provided the first full-field map of micromotion around a cementless femoral stem. This technique offers promising developments in the area of pre-clinical testing of orthopedic implants, and paves the way towards the validation of patient-specific preoperative planning tools. Then, the developed micro-CT technique was used to compare the primary stability of the collared and collarless versions of the same cementless femoral stem. Local micromotion was measured in two groups of cadaveric femurs implanted with either version of the stem. We found no significant difference in primary stability between collared and collarless stems for activities of daily living. Finally, a poroelastic finite element model of the initial bone-implant interface around a cementless stem was developed. The model predicted micromotion-induced fluid flow based on local micromotion determined experimentally with the micro-CT based technique. We obtained the distribution of fluid velocity in the granulation tissue between the implant and bone, and within the bone that surrounds the implant. From fluid velocity, we inferred the range of shear stress experienced by the cells hosted in each tissue. These results offer new prospects to understand the interplay between mechanical and biological aspects that leads to aseptic loosening. Indeed, the mechanical stimuli experienced by cells in the peri-implant space could be related to results obtained *in vitro* with cells cultured in flow chambers. With the aging population and the continual increase of arthroplasties in young patients, improving the long-term success of cementless implants is becoming a major challenge for the orthopedic community. This thesis proposed tools that can lead to improvements of implants survival, and a better understanding of the mechanisms behind aseptic loosening, reducing the need for implant revisions and their associated social and financial burden