Sustainability, emergence and the graduate attribute of global citizenship

Universities have an another valuable role in enabling sustainability besides their research capacity. We are interested in their role as risk taking institutions, because we see risk as a pre-condition for sustainability. This paper will explore the relationship between sustainability, emergence, universities and a high level graduate attribute – global citizenship. We will explore this relationship by proposing a model that frames the theory of sustainability as a quality that emerges from a system. Emergence occurs from unmanaged multiple actions at the local scale and is more likely to occur in environments with greater risk and diversity. Emergence is only identified from the scale above where actions are taking place, so an emergent model of sustainability emphasises the space and interaction between the scales of action and observation. Australian universities play an important role in this space between the scales. They are both actor and observer, and trainers of the present and future actors and observers. By choosing to have higher level graduate attributes like leadership and global citizenship, universities are taking a risk in selecting and advocating for the attributes they think our future thinkers and leaders should have. We present the research design and some preliminary data that aims to determine if the global citizenship graduate attribute can serve as an example of universities' engagement between the scales to help create a sustainable future

How Mangroves Story: On Being a Filter Feeder

The relationship between gravity, the moon and the ocean translates into the regular rhythm of tides, which provide a powerful energy, both productive and destructive, across intertidal zones. Mangroves, like other intertidal ecologies, negotiate the regularities and disturbances of tidal energies through many processes and build up complex worlds. One of these processes is filter feeding, which transforms incoming detritus into many kinds of bodies, while mucus covered faeces are excreted into the bacterial-rich mud, to be transformed again. Filter feeding stories the relationship between the moon and the sea into thick embodied mangrove narratives. This paper demonstrates and explores an account of relationality as narrative within a semiotic material ontology, as told in the storying of the relationship of the moon and the sea within the materiality of mangroves

Understanding Professional Service Delivery

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to apply concepts from organizational and social identity theories to theoretically consider different ways that professional service providers conceptualize their roles and deliver their knowledge. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is a conceptual discussion to advance the understanding of professional service delivery, within the realm of service-quality research. Findings: The field has yet to provide a clear understanding of what professional service delivery actually looks like. The paper offers propositions examining the process by which professionals identify with membership in their profession and firms that in turn, influence their expert-based self-concepts, the images they form of their clients as recipients of their knowledge, and ways they create the service exchange. The paper also considers the impact of professional and organizational identification on the types of clientele professionals may develop. Research limitations/implications: The paper adds depth to the understanding of the complex process of expert-based service delivery. The ideas presented in this paper have implications for research in service-quality, specifically in understanding how and why professionals approach their client-interactions. Practical implications: The ideas presented in this paper would be useful to professional service firms interested in understanding the role their firm’s identity plays in ways its professionals conduct their work and the types of clientele they wish to attract. Originality/value: The paper contributes to the service quality literature through conceptualizing professional service delivery. It represents a step in acknowledging the role of professional delivery in influencing service outcomes and in developing the theoretical rationale as to why different approaches exist

Natural language and programming: designing effective environments for novices

Given the current drive to teach computational concepts to all from an early age, we consider whether traditional programming languages are truly necessary, or whether natural language might be a suitable medium for program generation and comprehension, given its familiarity and ubiquity. We conducted an empirical study on the use of natural language for computation, and found that, although it provides support for understanding computational concepts, it introduces additional difficulties when used for coding. Following a design study with target users, we distilled our findings into a series of design guidelines for novice programming environments that incorporate natural language. These guidelines drove the design of Flip, a bimodal programming language for young people's game creation activities. Two empirical studies examined the extent to which these embodied design guidelines support ease of use and an understanding of computation. The guidelines have potential both for analysing the usability of existing novice programming environments, and for designing new ones

Screening for childhood adversity: the what and when of identifying individuals at risk for lifespan health disparities.

Existing research on childhood adversity and health risk across the lifespan lacks specificity regarding which types of exposures to assess and when. The purpose of this study was to contribute to an empirically-supported framework to guide practitioners interested in identifying youth who may be at greatest risk for a lifelong trajectory of health disparities. We also sought to identify the point in childhood at which screening for adversity exposure would capture the largest group of at risk individuals for triage to prevention and intervention services. Participants (n = 4036) collected as part of the Midlife in the United States study reported their medical status and history including physical (cardiovascular disease, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, cancer) and mental health (depression, substance use problems, sleep problems). Participants indicated whether they were exposed to 7 adversities at any point in childhood and their age of exposure to 19 additional lifetime adversities before the age of 18. Parent drug abuse, dropping out or failing out of school, being fired from a job, and sexual assault during childhood exhibited the largest effect sizes on health in adulthood, which were comparable to the effects of childhood maltreatment. Childhood adversity screening in early adolescence may identify the largest proportion of youth at risk for negative health trajectories. The results of this descriptive analysis provide an empirical framework to guide screening for childhood adversity in pediatric populations. We discuss the implications of these observations in the context of prevention science and practice

Open educational practices in Australia: a first-phase national audit of higher education

For fifteen years, Australian Higher Education has engaged with the openness agenda primarily through the lens of open-access research. Open educational practice (OEP), by contrast, has not been explicitly supported by federal government initiatives, funding, or policy. This has led to an environment that is disconnected, with isolated examples of good practice that have not been transferred beyond local contexts. This paper represents first-phase research in identifying the current state of OEP in Australian Higher Education. A structured desktop audit of all Australian universities was conducted, based on a range of indicators and criteria established by a review of the literature. The audit collected evidence of engagement with OEP using publicly accessible information via institutional websites. The criteria investigated were strategies and policies, open educational resources (OER), infrastructure tools/platforms, professional development and support, collaboration/partnerships, and funding. Initial findings suggest that the experience of OEP across the sector is diverse, but the underlying infrastructure to support the creation, (re)use, and dissemination of resources is present. Many Australian universities have experimented with, and continue to refine, massive open online course (MOOC) offerings, and there is increasing evidence that institutions now employ specialist positions to support OEP, and MOOCs. Professional development and staff initiatives require further work to build staff capacity sector-wide. This paper provides a contemporary view of sector-wide OEP engagement in Australia—a macro-view that is not well-represented in open research to date. It identifies core areas of capacity that could be further leveraged by a national OEP initiative or by national policy on OEP.</p

Comparing TUIs and GUIs for primary school programming

There is considerable interest in using tangible user interfaces (TUIs) to support teaching children programming, but evidence for the benefits is mixed, and their deployment in school environments presents more challenges than graphical user interfaces (GUIs). This study investigates the effect of GUIs and TUIs on learning outcomes, attitudes toward computing, and reported enjoyment in a computer-programming activity with primary-school students aged 6-7 in Saudi Arabia. Forty-two students engaged in a 45-minute learning activity using either a TUI or GUI programming environment. The study used a between-groups design, and quantitative data were collected, including pre-test and post-test results, and ratings on attitudinal and enjoyment surveys. Learning gains were significantly higher for the GUI group than the TUI group. However, post-activity increases in reported attitude toward computing were significantly higher for the TUI group. There was no difference in activity enjoyment scores, which were high for both groups

Mosquitoes and city mangroves: monsters of many margins

A mangrove lurks monster-like alongside the engineered embankments, walking paths and sports grounds of the Cooks River in Sydney’s southern suburbs. Its trees breath underwater, its ground is slimy, its creatures crawl sideways and peer through eyes that wave around on stalks, and it smells, at times, like the earth’s bad breath. This mangrove accumulates human rubbish and industrial toxins washed down from drains and settled into silt, roots, branches and burrows, emphasising its marginality. There are mangroves at the end of my street, and if I stop for a while and watch the crabs and tiny shrimps and little darting fish among the roots and mud and stinking human trash I feel I am disappearing into a gap in the world of the city where the strange pushes through. Monsters of considerable psychological, social and biological affect for humans emerge from this slimy place. Mosquitoes breed within mangroves in the puddles of brackish water left in the higher reaches of the mud banks after king tides. Some female mosquitoes pay particular attention to human skin and blood, and humans have become especially attentive to and knowledgeable about these. We pay close attention to each other such that not only the constitutions of our bodies but also our daily practices have become entangled. The female mosquito with a preference for human blood is surely an important companion species for humans, although we tend to respond towards her as our predator rather than our kin. She provides humans with cause for a predator-oriented wariness that is now rare and notable for us. We are likely to become acutely stimulated by her high-pitched sound and will move away or divert our attention towards her apparent threat. This paper explores human entanglement with the particularly intimate yet alien monsters of urban mangroves