Engaging technology to support, facilitate and develop Social Work students' interpersonal skills

Interpersonal skills are one of eight components of practice identified by the Australian Association of Social Workers as necessary to achieve competency. Although face-to-face has been the preferred method for teaching these skills, the shift to online and blended learning models in the higher education sector has 'encouraged' social work educators to teach interpersonal skills in the online space. Such moves have resulted in rigorous debate within the discipline. In addition to pressure from the university sector, there are a range of reasons to move teaching of these skills into this space including access, inclusivity and development of authentic skills and assessment. Within this changing context, the authors were awarded a small grant which enabled them to redevelop the interpersonal skills subjects, within the BSW and MSW courses at JCU, to facilitate the development of students' interpersonal skills in an online space. The subjects were delivered in a limited mode with a compulsory on-campus workshop. Additionally, there were a number of fully online activities including skills practice, peer review, online recording of interviews and online submission of assessment tasks. The redevelopments were evaluated and the findings relating to the experience and effectiveness are presented in this paper

Douglas House, supported housing services, practice model development and evaluation

[Extract] Executive Summary. This report documents the results of a preliminary investigation into the practice model that has been central to the Douglas House Supported Housing Service since its inception in late 2014. Neither the service nor the model had been formally evaluated, however, anecdotal evidence from staff and external agencies suggest that the service is achieving identified outcomes, with staff attributing much of the agency’s success to their commitment and implementation of the practice model. This report describes the model currently in use, explores its success in addressing the specific needs of the residents, and provides recommendations for the model’s future use in guiding practice within the service and the wider homelessness sector. This report recommends that future projects be initiated to explore and evaluate the service delivery model and its relationship with the practice model. The principal aim of the project was to capture the practice model implemented by staff. The research also sought to identify:•how the model being used may be different from the practice framework of trauma based, strengths and recovery approaches, originally identified in the Service Operational Guide (SOG);•why there may be a difference between the original practice framework and the practice model being implemented;•if the practice model being implemented is working to achieve the goals of the service and meet the needs of the residents;•how the practice model being implemented may inform the delivery of other services and fit within the broader practice context with this client population

A scoping review and thematic analysis of mentoring models that include leadership and school connectedness theories

Little is known about mentoring programs that focus on peer to peer mentoring as a leadership program or peer and school connectedness within Australia in the last ten years. In fact, according to Nora and Crisp (2016), ‘research in the last 15 years on assessing mentoring programs was mainly focused on the academic success of students’ (p. 339). Given the limited reviews addressing the leadership and school connectedness factors in Australia, the objective was to understand the scope of published literature, identify evidence gaps and suggest future research needs. This scoping review searched within five electronic databases, in which only studies reported in English during the period 2010-2020 and published on mentoring, leadership and connectedness were selected. Studies were coded using thematic analysis. Included studies (n=25) were multi-clustered into five themes: peer support and peer relationships (68%), school connectedness (52%), well-being (48%), transition (40%), and leadership (20%). Most studies (64%) were conducted in private or independent schools within Australia, and 65% were qualitative. Future research efforts should focus on the interrelationship of peer to peer mentoring, leadership or school and peer connectedness. Additional studies within all school sectors would help low socio-economic areas, including vulnerable children, Indigenous populations, and regional areas

Industriele marketing in Nederland: Plaatsbepaling, theoretisch kader en vooronderzoek in de kantoormachinebranche

Dit rapport omvat de weerslag van het Vooronderzoek dat verricht is in het kader van het project "Industriele Marketing" dat het Nederlands Instituut voor Marketing (NIMA) uitvoert met steun van het Ministerie van Economische Zaken. Doelstelling van het project is om met aanbevelingen te komen tot verbetering van het niveau van Industr iele Marketing Management in Nederland en tot aanzetten voor verbeterde opleidingen in Industriele Marketing. Ten behoeve van het project is een Begeleidingscommissie ingesteld onder voorzitterschap van drs. G. van der Plassche, oud-voorzitter van de Directie van CEMY en lid van het NIMABestuur. De samenstelling van de Begeleidingscommissie is als bijlage toegevoegd. Als projectleider treedt op drs. E.J. van der Lek, Bedrijfsadviseur Industriele Marketing en voorzitter van de Industr iele Marketing Groep (IMG) van het NIMA

Determining the Critical Degree of Saturation of Brick Using Frost Dilatometry

Improving the energy efficiency of the existing building stock is beneficial in terms of reducing both operational cost and environmental impact. Solid, load bearing masonry buildings comprise an appreciable part of the existing building stock, are valued for their durability and are often of historical significance, however their thermal performance is often poor. Thermal upgrades with interior insulation are usually considered risky as this lowers the drying potential of the wall enclosure which increases the moisture content of the masonry, possibly to damaging levels during freeze-thaw cycles. The current approach to assessing the suitability of brick for exterior use is based on acceptance criteria or a severe freeze-thaw test as prescribed by ASTM and CSA. The first method is based on an incomplete understanding of freeze-thaw physics. The second method subjects the bricks to a set of conditions that cannot encompass the highly variable range of in-service exposures. Past research indicates that rigid porous materials, such as brick and concrete, experience frost damage only if saturated beyond a fixed, critical degree of saturation. A more useful approach to assessing the risk of damage due to freeze-thaw would be to determine the critical degree of saturation of a material and then compare that to anticipated moisture loads under service conditions using computer modelling software such as WUFI. A test method was developed to determine the critical degree of saturation of a material requiring less than two weeks of testing by means of frost dilatometry. Representative brick were first sliced into 10 mm thick specimens. Material properties of the brick specimens were determined, including dry weight, dry density, porosity (determined by either boiling or vacuum saturation), water uptake coefficient (A-value), and initial length, to allow for computer modeling and analysis of results. The specimens were wetted to various degrees of saturation (based on either boil or vacuum saturation), sealed in a manner to ensure minimal moisture loss, and then subjected to at least six freeze-thaw cycles. The change in length of the specimens following freeze thaw testing was measured and the expansion, which in this study was expressed in terms of microstrain, plotted against degree of saturation. Any specimen that experienced expansion greater than that attributable to instrument error was considered damaged by frost. Determining the total open porosity of a material, necessary for measuring degree of saturation, is difficult due to close voids and trapped air in dead end pores. Boiling saturation and vacuum saturation are two methods commonly used to determine open porosity. For the size of specimens used in the test, almost all water absorption when using the boil method occurred during the first hour of boiling and first hour of soaking. The repeatability of boiling to determine total open porosity is low, with approximately 10% variability experienced over three rounds of boiling. Specimens absorbed a greater or equal amount of moisture using the vacuum saturation method than the boiling saturation method, indicating that vacuum saturation is more effective at determining total open porosity. The repeatability of vacuum saturation is good with very little variability observed over 3 rounds. The benefit of boiling saturation is that its equipment requirements and procedure are simpler than that of vacuum saturation. Freeze-thaw cycling was carried out by immersing the sealed specimens in a liquid bath. The change in length was determined by measuring pins attached to the specimens with an outside digital micrometer with a ratchet stop. A combination of experimentation and computer modeling showed that the samples could be wetted to target moisture contents with excellent accuracy and that moisture redistributed evenly in less than 24 hours for most samples. The minimum required temperature of the freeze cycle was chosen to be less than -12°C, in order to freeze all water contained in pores with a radius of 10nm and greater. It was determined, for the small specimen sizes used, that the cooling and warming phases should be at least one hour in duration to ensure that the specimens entirely freeze and thaw. Three sets of brick were subjected to the test to determine their critical degree of saturation: modern extruded brick, pressed brick from the 1950s, and historic brick dating to the 1870s. The older bricks experienced frost dilatation above 0.25 and 0.30 vacuum saturation respectively, with no damage evident below these thresholds. The modern extruded brick only experienced damage at 0.87 of vacuum saturation and greater. Knowledge of the critical degree of saturation of a brick allows architects and engineers to pursue retrofit strategies that increase thermal performance without jeopardizing the durability of the material by creating the conditions that allow the moisture content to increase to dangerous levels

Non-invasive Biomarkers in Asthma: Promises and Pitfalls

The asthma concept has evolved throughout the years: one major step in asthma management is the recognition of the chronic (airway) inflammation; another major step is further understanding of asthma heterogeneity and subsequent development of targeted therapies. While the concept of chronic inflammation, airway structural changes and their variability over time are widely accepted, their measurement and monitoring have gone through many hardships

Allergy in chronic airflow obstruction:a community-based population study

CARA is een van de meest voorkomende aandoeningen in geïndustrialiseerde landen. De term CARA (de afkorting voor chronische aspecifieke respiratoire aandoeningen) omvat de klinische aandoeningen astma, chronische bronchitis en emfyseem. De gevolgen van CARA kunnen aanzienlijk zijn, zowel individueel als sociaal-economisch: invaliditeit, school- en werkverzuim, ziekenhuisopname, vroegtijdig overlijden. Onze kennis ten aanzien van de oorzaken van CARA is echter nog beperkt. Het verwerven van meer inzicht, middels wetenschappelijk onderzoek, is daarom noodzakelijk. Het doel van deze studie is om in het bijzonder de rol van allergie bij CARA te onderzoeken, omdat allergie een van de mogelijke oorzaken van CARA kan zijn. Allergie is een overgevoeligheidsreactie die op kan treden na contact met allergenen uit de omgeving (door inademing, voedsel of huidcontact).... Zie: Samenvatting