Community-based environmental monitoring goes to school: translations, detours and escapes

Community-school partnerships are an established practice within environmental science education, where a focus on how local phenomena articulate with broader environmental issues and concerns brings potential benefits for schools, community organisations and local communities. This paper contributes to our understanding of such educational practices by tracing of the diverse socio-material flows that constitute a community environmental monitoring project, where Australian school students became investigators of and advocates for particular sites in their neighbourhood. The theoretical resources of Actor-Network Theory are drawn upon to describe how the project—as conceptualised by its initiators—was enacted as both human and non-human actors sought to progress their own agendas thus translating the concept-project into multiple project realities. We conclude by identifying implications for sustaining educational innovations of this kind

Boltzmann-Shannon Entropy: Generalization and Application

The paper deals with the generalization of both Boltzmann entropy and distribution in the light of most-probable interpretation of statistical equilibrium. The statistical analysis of the generalized entropy and distribution leads to some new interesting results of significant physical importance.Comment: 5 pages, Accepted in Mod.Phys.Lett.

Leveraging icebreaking tasks to facilitate uptake of voice communication in multiplayer games

Voice Communication (VC) is widely employed by developers as an essential component of online games. Typically, it is assumed that communications through this mechanism will be helpful and enjoyable, but existing literature suggests that the entry into VC can be problematic. In this paper, we present a study that attempts to mitigate player discomfort when first engaging with VC with strangers, through the use of traditional icebreaking tasks. We integrate these into the game RET, an online cooperative first person shooter which requires effective communication for players to succeed. An online user study with 18 participants suggests that icebreaking tasks can contribute to a positive VC experience, but their inclusion also creates further issues to be considered for successful integration

Developing online support and counseling to enhance family dispute resolution in Australia

Participation in online support and counseling constitutes an essential but often overlooked second step in the Lodder-Zeleznikow (Harv Negot Law Rev 10:287-337, 2005, Enhanced dispute resolution through the use of information technology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010) model of online dispute resolution; dialogue techniques. This paper highlights the potential role that online support and counseling can play in avoiding extreme family conflict and potential hazardous litigation. The research centers on a case study organization, Relationships Australia Victoria, who provide counseling and support services and who are moving toward online service delivery. It analyzes this case and contrasts it with relevant international cases to identify key considerations and approaches for those developing, enhancing and evaluating online support and counseling sites in the future. The goal of this research is to assist Relationships Australia Victoria to construct online support and counseling services for isolated men, who have lost day-to day contact with their children and have diminished social networks, so that they might enhance the quality of life of both their children and themselves. The lessons learned in this research are relevant for the wider use of online support and counseling services by separating parents

How do ICT project managers manage project knowledge in the public sector? An empirical enquiry from the Victorian Public Sector in Australia

Projects are temporal organisation forms that are highly knowledge-intensive and play an important role in modern public (and private) sector organisations. The effective and efficient creation, dissemination, application and conservation of relevant knowledge are a critical success factor in the management of projects. Yet, project management (PM) and knowledge management (KM) are two distinct disciplines. This paper explores the relationship between PM and KM by analysing the literature at the intersection of those disciplines and presenting the empirical results of a case study of the Victorian Public Sector (VPS) in Australia. A series of 14 interviews were conducted to explore how ICT project managers manage project knowledge across the departments of the VPS. Findings show a strong preference among the participants for informal, face-to-face interactions and agile approaches to facilitate knowledge transfer and creation in ICT project environments

Exploring academics’ approaches to managing team assessment

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of academics’ approaches to managing team assessment at an Australian University with a view to informing policy development and assessment design.Design/methodology/approach– The research was conducted using a single exploratory case study approach focussing on the team assessment approach of academics teaching in two colleges at an Australian University. A desktop audit of publicly available assessment policy from 38 Australian universities was conducted alongside a review of relevant college subject guides. The findings of this review framed a subsequent focus group and online survey of academic staff.Findings– Results suggest that staff have adopted highly diverse and idiosyncratic approaches to team assessment and have mixed views about varied approaches to managing and assessing teamwork. Findings identify a need for explicit guidance and professional development on designing, managing and grading team assessments. Institutional limits and criteria should be introduced to ensure a whole-of-course approach to developing teamwork skills and ensure students are not burdened with an excessive number of team assessment tasks in a degree.Research limitations/implications– The paper reports results from an exploratory case study at a single Australian University. As such, the results are not generalizable.Practical implications– The findings could inform guidelines, policies or support resources for designing team assessment tasks.Originality/value– The research explores a challenging area for academics: team assessment, which the research indicates is not currently adequately managed through university policy and procedure. The findings highlight options for universities to consider when developing policies and procedures to manage team assessment. The study also provides recommendations for academics to consider when developing and managing team assessment.</jats:sec

“Financialized Capitalism: After the Crisis and Beyond Neoliberalism”

This paper serves as an introduction to a special issue which explores many new questions, intellectual and political, posed by the current global financial crisis. The aim is to get beyond the convention asking the well-rehearsed questions about what caused the crisis, or why the established theories could not predict it. For we can safely predict that many critical thinkers in political and cultural economy already know, or think they know, the answer to what caused the crisis. This is because they will construct the origins and causes of the within the problematic which they endorsed before the crisis began. Namely, that neoliberalism demarcates the period since 1970 as one of privatisation, liberalisation and support for free markets which essentially takes ideological propositions at their own word and, consequently, fail to distinguish between rhetoric and practice. This special issue explores some new ways of fundamentally reconsidering or challenging established ideas about neoliberalism and finance. For financialisation researchers, the intellectual struggle against organising concepts of neoliberalism and disembedded finance is unfinished business