Collaboration on a national scale: journalism educators, students and the 2016 Australian federal election

Journalism is a collaborative process that requires individuals to work autonomously and collectively to produce news and information. In 2016, journalism educators from 28 Australian universities collaborated to provide coverage of the Australian federal election in a project called UniPollWatch. This project involved around 1000 students and 75 staff producing coverage of 150 House of Representatives seats that included 346 candidate profiles, 125 electorate profiles and verdict stories, profiles of 26 Senate candidates, and feature stories on nine key policy areas. The purpose-built UniPollWatch website also hosted two large-scale data journalism projects. This paper describes how the largest Australian student university project was devised and how it attracted and sustained collaborative participation. It also reports on the results of a survey of participating journalism academics about the structure of the project and draws insight from their comments about the management of future projects on this scale. The theoretical perspectives of analysis are drawn from journalism practice as well as governance theory, journalism pedagogy and work integrated learning. This paper argues that the UniPollWatch model offers possibilities for further development and adaptation for universities to collaborate for the benefit of journalism education, students and the practice of journalism

“We don't tend to have that here”: exploring child and adult relationships to trans-contextual objects in early childhood education institutions

The project reported in this chapter examined the subject of sustainable consumption from the perspective of early childhood educators and young children. This chapter focuses on the meaning of trans-contextual objects, that is, objects that pass between homes and sites of early education either materially or in the form of representations. Interviews with practitioners revealed that early childhood sites were expected to act as a haven from the perceived negative influence of consumer culture, individualism and associated object relations. In an action research phase, children were given the opportunity to bring in and speak about significant objects, which were ordinarily excluded from these sites. Analysis of the children\u27s talk and of the objects themselves challenges the adult perspectives. Through their semiotic practices children had the means of breaching the barriers that had been erected, via institutional regulation, on the passage of objects from “there” to “here”

Media Studies 101 : A Creative Commons Textbook

Led by Erika Pearson with assistance from Bernard Madill (both from the University of Otago) and featuring contributors from Massey University, University of Canterbury and University of South Australia. "Inspired by similar projects around the world, and supported by funding from Creative Commons, the Media Text Hack Group sought to act as 'curators' of the vast array of information about media and communication, and drew together examples specific to the region ... This first release represents a core of work based on the common curricula of media and communication studies programs across the region. It is hoped that future versions will develop and expand these areas, as well as take advantage of new tools of collaboration and sharing. All are welcome to take, use, recycle and adapt the material under the Creative Commons Attribution licence"--Media release, 13 Feb. 2013Pt. 1. Reading media texts -- Pt. 2. Culture and contexts -- Pt. 3. Production and structures -- Pt. 4. Audiences & identity

Healthy Workplaces: The Past, the Present and the Future of Universities as Organizations. (Symposium 1): Research on Healthy Universities: Methodology, Tools and Future Theoretical Implications

In recent years, many important transformations have affected academic communities, changing individual and collective behaviors related to work. Within this scenario, the issue of healthy universities emerged not simply as related to physical health and safety, but rather as the effort to create sustainable contexts and environments addressed to improve wellbeing for all members of the community (teachers, administrative staff, and students). Accordingly, the most recent organizational and technological changes faced by many European and non-European universities are heavily challenging teachers and administrative staff, impacting on their perceptions about job insecurity, financial cuts, increased administrative demands, pressure at work, difficulties in academic career advancement and tough competition. In this vein, the present symposium aims to provide a contribution to the discussion about the features of healthy universities from a multicultural perspective. Yet the symposium is part of a wider proposal about the quality of life at work in the academic environments, considered as a specific type of organization; this proposal was launched by an Italian research group composed by W/O Psychologists and Psychometrics coming from different Universities and interested in investigating the issue of healthy universities in a cross-national perspective developing a common protocol for the assessment of individual and organizational wellbeing in academic contexts, both from a theoretical point of view (sharing theoretical perspectives) and from a methodological point of view (developing tools and a research model aimed at validating standardized assessment protocols). The aim of this first symposium is to explore the present and the future of the research on the topic of Healthy Universities. Theoretical future implications, tools, and methods used to measure psychosocial risks and wellbeing indicators in Universities will be discussed. Contributions based on research carried out in Europe and in Australia will provide crucial international implications for future research. Based on data collected through different preliminary studies, some contributions carried out in Europe and in Australia will be presented, to share and enrich the perspectives on tools, methodologies and good practices in progress for the improvement of working conditions and well-being

Neural substrates of episodic memory dysfunction in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia with and without C9ORF72 expansions

The recently discovered hexanucleotide repeat expansion, C9ORF72, has been shown to be among the most common cause of familial behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and to be present in a significant minority of apparently sporadic cases. While mounting evidence points to prominent episodic memory dysfunction in bvFTD cases, recent reports have also suggested an amnestic profile in C9ORF72 mutation carriers. No study to date, however, has formally characterised the extent to which episodic memory is impaired in C9ORF72 mutation versus sporadic cases, or the underlying neural substrates of such deficits. We conducted a comparison of C9ORF72 (n = 8) and sporadic (n = 15) bvFTD cases using a battery of verbal and visual episodic memory tasks, and contrasted their performance with that of Alzheimer's disease (AD, n = 15) and healthy older control (n = 15) participants. Behaviourally, the two bvFTD groups displayed comparable episodic memory profiles, irrespective of task administered, with prominent impairments evident relative to Controls. Whole-brain voxel-based morphometry analyses revealed distinct neural correlates of episodic memory dysfunction in each patient group. Widespread atrophy in medial prefrontal, medial and lateral temporal cortices correlated robustly with episodic memory dysfunction in sporadic bvFTD cases. In contrast, atrophy in a distributed set of regions in the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes including the posterior cingulate cortex, was implicated in episodic memory dysfunction in C9ORF72 cases. Our results demonstrate that while episodic memory is disrupted to the same extent irrespective of genetic predisposition in bvFTD, distinct neural changes specific to each patient group are evident. The involvement of medial and lateral parietal regions in episodic memory dysfunction in C9ORF72 cases is of particular significance and represents an avenue of considerable interest for future studies