World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, International Journal of Social, Behavioral, Educational, Economic, Business and Industrial Engineering, 2010
This paper presents a large scale, quantitative investigation of the impact of discipline differe... more This paper presents a large scale, quantitative investigation of the impact of discipline differences on the student experience of using an online learning environment (OLE). Based on a representative sample of 2526 respondents, a number of significant differences in the mean rating by broad discipline area of the importance of, and satisfaction with, a range of elements of an OLE were found. Broadly speaking, the Arts and Science and Technology discipline areas reported the lowest importance and satisfaction ratings for the OLE, while the Health and Behavioural Sciences area was the most satisfied with the OLE. A number of specific, systematic discipline differences are reported and discussed. Compared to the observed significant differences in mean importance ratings, there were fewer significant differences in mean satisfaction ratings, and those that were observed were less systematic than for importance ratings.
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Papers by Stuart Palmer
It is argued that ‘design' is an essential characteristic of engineering practice, and hence, an essential theme of engineering education. It is suggested that first-year design courses enhance commencing student motivation and retention, and introduce engineering application content and basic design experience early in the curriculum. The research literature indicates that engineering design practice is a deeply social process, with collaboration and group interactions required at almost every stage. This chapter documents the evaluation of the initial and subsequent second offerings of a first-year engineering design unit at Griffith University in Australia. The unit 1006ENG Design and Professional Skills aims to provide an introduction to engineering design and professional practice through a project-based approach to problem solving. The unit learning design incorporates student group work, and uses self-and-peer-assessment to incorporate aspects of the design process into the unit assessment and to provide a mechanism for individualization of student marks.
Student evaluation of teaching is commonplace in many universities and may be the predominant input into the performance evaluation of staff and organisational units. This article used publicly available student evaluation of teaching data to present examples of where institutional responses to evaluation processes appeared to be educationally ineffective and where the pursuit of the ‘right’ student evaluation results appears to have been mistakenly equated with the aim of improved teaching and learning. If the vast resources devoted to student evaluation of teaching are to be effective, then the data produced by student evaluation systems must lead to real and sustainable improvements in teaching quality and student learning, rather than becoming an end in itself.
The rapid development of nonwoven apparels in recent years has added a new dimension to the perennial problem of fabric pilling. The aperiodic structure of nonwoven fabrics limits traditional frequency domain analysis approaches. However, the scale-based approach inherent in wavelet analysis offers approaches for the objective measurement of pilling intensity in nonwoven sample images that are analogous to those proposed for knitted fabrics.
The two wavelet-based analysis methods described here employ different, but complementary, aspects of the discrete wavelet transform - the detail coefficients for knitted fabrics, and, the approximation coefficients for nonwoven fabrics. Current research is leading toward a more sophisticated analysis that combines wavelet data from multiple scales and orientations (possibly with other image data), such as wavelet texture analysis. This approach has been reported in metal surface finish applications (Bharati & MacGregor 2004) and textile seam pucker applications (Miou Chraïbi et al. 2005). Preliminary work by the authors indicates that this approach may provide a unified analysis approach for both woven and nonwoven fabrics.
• First, the growth of the University from a one-campus regional operation to a multi-campus/multi-city organisation underpinned by a unitary merger model and shaped by national government policy interventions which demanded larger scale operations.
• Second, the explosive growth of information and communications technologies (ICT) throughout the 1990s and the new millennium of relevance and value to all student cohorts both on- and off-campus.
• Third, the increasing diversity and spread of student cohorts studying on-campus, cross-campus, nationally and through partners internationally, much of which is driven by the University’s need to generate student fee income directly and all of which needs to be carefully managed to ensure quality learning opportunities and outcomes. Over time there has been a proportionately larger number of school-leaver, on-campus students studying across Deakin’s major teaching campuses compared with off-campus undergraduate and postgraduate student enrolments.
• A growing recognition that a common set of attributes of excellent teaching and student-centred learning approaches could be enacted which would benefit the education of all students, and that the newer technologies could allow students enrolled in different modes of delivery to interact as one community of learners in mutually beneficial ways.
These four forces have reshaped the University’s strategic commitments to on-campus, online, flexible and distance education, along with associated approaches to quality practices. Before presenting the details of Deakin’s strategic and operational responses to quality we provide some background information on quality in higher education, Deakin’s historical development and some aspects of the Australian national higher education environment which form the context that influences Deakin’s operations.
Several different models for crowdfunding research such as Microryza, RocketHub and GeekFunder have recently emerged. Deakin's partnership with Pozible was explicitly intended to boost the long tail research community, in particular to provide a funding avenue for early career researchers and/or for projects requiring only modest investment. Project size ranged between $5,000 and $20,000 and the participants were fully supported by the University’s marketing, public relations and social media divisions. Participants were however expected to manage their campaigns on their own terms and using their own networks and communities of interest.
Research My World intended to:
● Provide a unique opportunity to promote research in terms of its meaning to communities and not just other academics (‘to bring research home’). Successful funding campaigns relied on clear communication of projects and high levels of social as well as traditionalmedia engagement.
● Shift the way universities promote research in an increasingly networked environment
● Provide an additional funding stream for researchers, particularly those at the start of their career
● Focus effort on communicating with the public rather than labour-intensive, highly competitive, blind reviewed funding applications with diminishing success rates
● Provide ‘discipline-neutral’ opportunity; both science and humanities-creative arts were able togenerate funds if community relevance was demonstrated
More broadly Research My World saw benefit in:
● Disintermediation of research funding
● Reduction of “compliance burden” for researchers (and universities)
● Digital “presence building” for the researchers and their work including capacity building in digital culture/skills for the researchers
This paper will provide an evaluation of Research My World using a combination of detailed data analytics, public feedback, media coverage and participant interviews. Explanations for both success and failure will be considered. Particular challenges will be identified including;
● the ‘digital capacity’ of individual academics
● the ‘digital capacity’ of academic institutions
● the difference between existing campaigns for crowdfunding and those specific to a projects with ‘research’ focus
● the public’s response to projects from different research disciplines
CONTEXT
University graduate employment outcomes are a topic of international importance. In Australia, in recent years, employment rates for engineering graduates have declined significantly. What has not been clear is what type of jobs those graduates in work have been obtaining. A clearer understanding of the occupational outcomes, both short- and long-term, are needed for the rational design of university engineering curricula.
PURPOSE
The research presented here seeks to understand the nature of the occupational outcomes for Australian engineering bachelor graduates. Of particular interest is the proportion of graduates working outside the discipline and how curricula prepare graduates for this.
APPROACH
Australian national census data from 2006, 2011 and 2016 were examined to identify the occupational outcomes for engineering bachelor graduates. This was combined with complementary census data identifying who works in a professional engineering role. The influence of student diversity is also considered.
RESULTS
Over the period 2006-2016, the percentage of engineering bachelor graduates in employment has declined across most age ranges, but the decline has been particularly stark for those in the typical new graduate age range. The proportion of engineering bachelor graduates working in a professional engineering role has also declined, and for new graduates this proportion reached very low levels in 2016. In Australia, engineering bachelor qualified people make up a minority of those reporting working in a professional engineering role.
CONCLUSIONS
The Australian national census data over the period 2006-2016 reveal the complexity/diversity of occupational outcomes for engineering bachelor graduates – many will work out of a professional engineering role if they wish to work at all, and the Australian professional engineering workforce is very diverse, including many people without an engineering bachelor qualification. These results have important implications for those with the responsibility for the design of undergraduate engineering curricula to best prepare students for the future work environment that they will graduate into, which are discussed in this paper. The analysis of three cycles of census data establishes a benchmark time series that will be useful for future research.
CONTEXT In the context of engineering education, the potential of social media to open new modes of communication, interaction and experimentation between students and teachers has been identified. Facebook (facebook.com) is a popular social network system, with hundreds of millions of users, and examples of its use in engineering education can be found documented in the literature. A systems view of engineering education would typically position social media as a communication space that is either: i) controlled by the university for academic purposes; or, ii) controlled by students for social purposes. An emerging area of social media research is the investigation of student-created Facebook groups as a ‘third space’, between the institutional space of teacher-managed Facebook groups and the non-institutional, student personal space of the Facebook network.
PURPOSE This paper investigates and characterises public Facebook pages and groups relating to engineering at Deakin University to determine if they exhibit the distinctive characteristics proposed in the literature for student-created ‘third space’ Facebook groups.
APPROACH A search was undertaken to locate public Facebook pages and groups relating to engineering at Deakin University, and the posts and comments from those pages were captured. The Facebook data were graphed to visualise the frequency of posts and comments over time. The text content from the posts and comments was analysed using text analytics and the results visualised to show major themes present.
RESULTS Five Facebook pages and six Facebook groups where identified, containing 1484 posts and comments, and more than 51,400 words. Visualising the frequency of posts and comments showed highly variable levels of online activity between the different pages and groups. Text analytics visualisations of the post and comment content showed the distinctive characteristics proposed in the literature for student-created ‘third space’ Facebook groups.
CONCLUSIONS The public Facebook pages and groups relating to engineering at Deakin University were largely student-created, and exhibited the distinctive characteristics proposed in the literature for student-created ‘third space’ Facebook groups. For engineering educators, the pilot investigation documented in this paper offers another method for analysing and understanding the content of online discussion spaces, including student-created Facebook groups relating to their studies, and discusses implications for engineering educators of the emergence of student-created social media third spaces for learning.
Electronic health records (EHRs) are an important e-health technology and have the potential to greatly improve the efficiency and quality of health services. However, the implementation of EHRs has had mixed success internationally. Increasingly, governments, health service providers and the public are turning to social networking systems (SNSs) for communicating about EHRs. Social media, including Twitter (twitter.com), have also been used in relation to EHR implementation. Thus, Twitter provides a useful case example for an exploration of the ways that SNSs are being used to communicate information about EHRs. The Australian personally controlled electronic health record, My Health Record (MyHR), is a repository of summary health information about patients which is stored online, and which patients can choose to share with their health providers. In this paper, an investigation of the representation of Australia’s MyHR on Twitter via a data set of 6191 tweets associated with three specific hashtags related to the EHR and reflecting its official names since 2012 (i.e., #PCEHR, #MyHealthRecord and #MyHR) is reported. Time sequence analysis, text analytics and network visualisation were employed to characterise the Twitter activity and content, and to identify influential users and their relationships. The text content of tweets using these hashtags spanned positive/supportive, neutral/factual and negative/opposing themes regarding EHRs. Text visualisation highlighted six accounts that were active and also mentioned frequently in tweets. In particular, three of these accounts were always ranked in the top ten on several measures of activity and interactivity, so could be considered highly influential. Network visualisation of the connections between accounts, represented by tweets from senders to those mentioned, revealed associations between some prominent accounts and their publicly-stated stance on EHRs. This information could be used to inform future use of SNSs, and optimal use of Twitter in particular, in the propagation and distribution of information relating to EHRs and their implementation.
Online social media systems have created new ways for professional associations to communicate and interact with their stakeholders. The research literature on the use of social media by professional associations is currently limited. A widely-used social media tool employed by organizations is Twitter. The Australian Computer Society is the professional association for Australia's Information and Communication Technology sector. The work presented here shows how one professional association, the Australian Computer Society, interacts on the Twitter social media platform. The dataset used was nearly 15,000 tweets and retweets from, and mentions of, the @ACSnewsfeed Twitter account over a period of seven and a half years. The analysis methods employed were descriptive statistics tabulation, time sequence visualization and network visualization.
Attending university can assist students to make informed and realistic choices regarding their career. However developing a student’s career aspirations, goals, and expectations is a complex and discipline-specific process. In Information Technology (IT) no clear career development pathway is evident in the literature despite recent efforts by employers, educators and professional societies to help students improve their career expectations and employability upon graduation. This study aims to better understand the career aspirations and expectations of tertiary IT students, so that future curriculum and career development activities are better aligned with their beliefs and needs. An exploratory mixed method study captured students’ career aspirations and skills expectations over two phases. A qualitative inquiry in 2014 (n = 306 students) followed by a quantitative study in 2015 (n = 159 students) delved into the aspirations of IT students. Across both phases students reported similar skills they expect to build during their time at university, as well as comparable ways in which they plan to progress towards career and skill building. Overall, the results indicate that students have varied career aspirations and while realistic, the criteria they have regarding achievement of their career goals are not clear. This may highlight issues with students setting realistic expectations in the career development process.
A common outcome of recent investigations internationally into graduate employability has been a list of desired (particularly by business) generic skills and attitudes that university graduates should have when they complete their undergraduate studies in order to maximise their employment opportunities. However, there is evidence that a ‘degree plus a list of key skills’ model does not fully explain the observed variability in graduate employability, and that other factors external to a student’s experience of university study contribute to graduate employment status. For engineering graduates, employment outcomes, as measured by the national Graduate Destination Survey, vary significantly depending on the institution that a student studied at. Simple employability models that focus on employment status immediately post-graduation and lists of ‘employability skills’ fail to fully characterise graduate employability, or account for the variability of graduate outcomes between institutions, even in the time when there is essentially a universal focus on graduate employability skills in higher education curricula. Internationally, it has been identified that geography plays a role in engineering employment opportunities. The research presented here investigates the impact of geography on professional and graduate engineering employment opportunities in Australia, and identifies implications for undergraduate engineering curricula. While the specific context and findings here relate to engineering, the analysis methods employed are likely to provide useful insights in many disciplines.
In March-April 2016, 3288 original tweets tagged with #MND #ALS and other minor related tags (e.g., #cureALS #cureMND) were analysed using mixed quantitative and qualitative methods on tweet data and content. In this paper we outline the technical methods used in gathering and selecting relevant tweets for analysis, and present the results including inductive coding of content themes. The findings will inform (a) future social media research in relation to MND/ALS, (b) improved supports for people with MND/ALS and their families to use Twitter for information exchange, advocacy, and as a non-verbal form of communication, and (c) knowledge for MND/ALS service providers and philanthropic organisations on ways to engage with adults with MND/ALS in Twitter.
Dysphagia affects many people worldwide. Modifying foods to standard consistencies, and manual design and assembly of foods for the daily requirements of people with dysphagia is challenging. People with dysphagia may develop a dislike for pureed foods due to the unattractiveness of the appearance of the foods, the lack of variety in daily meals, and the diluted taste of meals. Three-dimensional (3D) food printing is emerging as a method for making foods for people with special mealtime needs. Very few efforts have been made to apply 3D food printing to improving the lives of people with special mealtime needs such as those with dysphagia. This paper presents the design and 3D printing of visually appetizing pureed foods for people with dysphagia with high consistency and repeatability. A tuna fish involving pureed tuna (protein), pureed pumpkin (fruit), and pureed beetroot (vegetable) is designed and then 3D printed. The steps involved in the design of tuna fish, preparation of purees, and printing of tuna fish are described. The obtained results are presented, and the findings of this research work are discussed.
The paper explores the relationships between countries in the exchange of movies and measures the reciprocal nature of these relationships. This investigation represents an innovative way to explore international exchanges of digital cinema analysed at the national level. Rather than focus on the market dominance of particular cinemas (e.g. the US or Indian cinemas) we examine the relative strength of two-way relationships in order to understand cultural reciprocity. The dynamics of shared cultural exchange are explored in terms of the volume of transactions between cinema nations expressed in the form of dyadic networks which is contrasted with raw transfers between nations to present a different and more nuanced level of understanding.