Facilitating the development of lifelong learners through e-communication tools
- Authors: Firmin, Sally , Miller, Charlynn
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at ASCILITE 2005, 4-7 December 2005, QUT, Brisbane, Queensland, Brisbane : 4th December, 2005
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- Description: Computer mediated communication (CMC) skills are essential in todays rapidly changing, technologically focused environment. This study reports student perceptions towards using CMC to improve learning. Twenty-two Tertiary and Further Education students participated in a pilot study that measured student preferences and perceptions of e-communication tools via a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. Three units of varying levels and complexities of e-communication tools were used in the study, which provided perceptions influenced through varying levels of exposure and usage. The research indicated that students perceived most tools as being useful, but not all preferred to use them. A most important finding was students indicated a shared perception and preference for combinations of e-communication tools, and that by promoting the use of these tools, teachers help encourage students to develop as lifelong learners.
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003001356
CWDM: A case-based diabetes management web system
- Authors: Nguyen, Linh Hoang , Sun, Zhaohao , Stranieri, Andrew , Firmin, Sally
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: 24th Australasian Conference on Information Systems, 4-6th December, 2013 p. 1-10
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- Description: Treatment refers to the therapy to treat a disease or a health issue. Treatment in this situation is similar to medical treatment which mainly uses medicines in an attempt to relieve the pain or even stop the disease. However, medicines themselves could not entirely cure the disease (in this case, diabetes), the patients will need more intervention which will be introduced in the next section. In most of documents for diabetic treatment, insulin therapy may be the main factor, however it would seem that diabetic patient needs more than just insulin. Therefore, TCM – traditional Chinese medicine – is recommended in the diabetic treatment as a lot of its remedies not only adjust insulin but also maintain good health for the patients. This section presents some of the TCM remedies to treat diabetes. As mentioned, diabetic patients are treated by lifestyle intervention and insulin therapy according to their diabetic status. The prevalence of diabetes and its complications leads to the requirement of treatment and care plan. Guidelines for T2D treatment indicated the following primary areas: lifestyle improvement which involves at least two and half hours of physical operations every week, dietary plan which decreases the fat intake, and weight management which requires weight loss approximately 7% of the baseline weight; cardiovascular risk factor reduction by managing blood pressure, cholesterol level, control smoking status, hypertension; and blood glucose management such as mono-therapy methods using oral medications to reduce A1c levels (Ripsin, Kang, & Urban, 2009). Self-monitoring of blood glucose levels for T2D treatment is also suggested. The self-monitoring of blood glucose method is recommended because it could enhance the patients’ self-consciousness of managing their diabetic status and require greater behaviours, responsibilities and efforts. Besides, this method is cost-effective in long term for diabetic complications treatment (Szymborska-Kajaneka, Psureka, Heseb, & Strojek, 2009). Another related study recommended that for T2D patients who are using insulin, self-monitoring of blood glucose should be carried out daily at least three times; and for patients without insulin usage the frequency of blood glucose self-monitoring should be adjusted individually (Varanauskiene, 2008). Both studies indicate that there have been controversies whether self-monitoring of blood glucose is useful for T2D patients without insulin treatment. We recommend traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as the major medicine for treating diabetes according to a report of natural Chinese medicines (Li, Zheng, Bukuru, & Kimpe, 2004) which indicates the results from many cases in various research and medical activities.
A technique for ranking friendship closeness in social networking services
- Authors: Sun, Zhaohao , Yearwood, John , Firmin, Sally
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: 24th Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) p. 1-9
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- Description: The concept of friend and friendship are critical to both theoretical and empirical studies of social relations, social media and social networks. Measuring the closeness among friends is a big issue for developing online social networking services (SNS) such as Facebook. This paper will address this issue by proposing a technique for ranking friendship closeness in SNS. The technique consists of an algorithm for ranking need-driven friendship closeness and an algorithm for behaviour-based friendship closeness in online social networking sites. The former is based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, while the latter is based on behaviours of users on Facebook and TOPSIS. Examples provided illustrate the viability of the proposed algorithms. The research in this paper shows that ranking friendship closeness will facilitate understanding of needs and behaviours of friends and of friendships in SNS. The proposed approach will facilitate research and development of social media, social commerce, social networks, and SN
Understanding victims of identity theft: A grounded theory approach
- Authors: Turville, Kylie , Firmin, Sally , Yearwood, John , Miller, Charlynn
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: 5th International Conference on Qualitative Research in IT and IT in Qualitative Research, QualIT 2010
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- Description: Being a victim of identity theft can be a devastating and life-changing event. Once the victim discovers the misuse they need to begin the process of recovery. For the "lucky" victims this may take only a couple of phone calls and a small amount of time; however, some victims may experience difficulties for many year. In order to recover, victims of crime require support and assistance; however, within Australia this support is sadly lacking. In order to identify the issues currently faced by victims of identity theft as they work through the recovery process, a Grounded Theory methodology was identified as most appropriate. This paper provides a brief overview of the history of the research project; a brief introduction of grounded theory with a focus on preconceived ideas and their implications; and a description of the research project currently being undertaken. A discussion of some issues experienced when using grounded theory within an IT department with very little experience of qualitative research will be provided, along with some preliminary results.
- Description: E1
Human-aligned artificial intelligence is a multiobjective problem
- Authors: Vamplew, Peter , Dazeley, Richard , Foale, Cameron , Firmin, Sally , Mummery, Jane
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Ethics and Information Technology Vol. 20, no. 1 (2018), p. 27-40
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- Description: As the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) systems improve, it becomes important to constrain their actions to ensure their behaviour remains beneficial to humanity. A variety of ethical, legal and safety-based frameworks have been proposed as a basis for designing these constraints. Despite their variations, these frameworks share the common characteristic that decision-making must consider multiple potentially conflicting factors. We demonstrate that these alignment frameworks can be represented as utility functions, but that the widely used Maximum Expected Utility (MEU) paradigm provides insufficient support for such multiobjective decision-making. We show that a Multiobjective Maximum Expected Utility paradigm based on the combination of vector utilities and non-linear action–selection can overcome many of the issues which limit MEU’s effectiveness in implementing aligned AI. We examine existing approaches to multiobjective AI, and identify how these can contribute to the development of human-aligned intelligent agents. © 2017, Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
“Undoing” Gender: how the School of Science, Engineering and Information Technology SEIT Women’s group works across university and community lines to promote inclusive STEM
- Authors: Goriss-Hunter, Anitra , Echter, Adele , Firmin, Sally , Oseni, Taiwa
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Studies in Adult Education Vol. 24, no. 3 (2018), p. 3-9
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- Description: Research on gender and education in industrialised and developing countries suggests that schools and universities are sites of ‘doing’ rather than ‘undoing’ gender. Deutsch (2007) contends that ‘doing gender’ refers to social interactions that reproduce conventional and limiting notions of gender construction and that ‘undoing gender’ refers to social interactions that reduce gender difference and open up other possibilities. In this paper we consider how educational institutions can be strategic sites of influence in undoing gender and we investigate some ways that gender is ‘undone’ through the example of the work of the Science, Engineering and Information Technology Women’s Group (SEITWG) located in the Faculty of Science and Technology at Federation University Australia. For this purpose, a self-study methodology understood as a professional reflection was used. The paper explores how the informal coalition of SEITWG works as ‘wilful subjects’, on the one hand, coming up against some of the ‘brick walls’ of dominant discourse that attempt to limit women’s participation in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine). On the other hand, SEITWG attempts to move beyond the restrictions of conventional gender narratives to encourage more women to participate in STEMM by foregrounding the presence of women already active in the area; mentoring women students and staff; supporting a range of their colleagues’ endeavours to research and teach for inclusion; embedding gender analysis into the curriculum; and promoting workplace cultural change.
Business analytics-based enterprise information systems
- Authors: Sun, Zhaohao , Strang, Kenneth , Firmin, Sally
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Computer Information Systems Vol. 57, no. 2 (2017), p. 169-178
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- Description: Big data analytics and business analytics are a disruptive technology and innovative solution for enterprise development. However, what is the relationship between business analytics, big data analytics, and enterprise information systems (EIS)? How can business analytics enhance the development of EIS? How can analytics be incorporated into EIS? These are still big issues. This article addresses these three issues by proposing ontology of business analytics, presenting an analytics service-oriented architecture (ASOA) and applying ASOA to EIS, where our surveyed data analysis showed that the proposed ASOA is viable for developing EIS. This article then examines incorporation of business analytics into EIS through proposing a model for business analytics service-based EIS, or ASEIS for short. The proposed approach in this article might facilitate the research and development of EIS, business analytics, big data analytics, and business intelligence.
Discovery of small group interactions and performance from project emails
- Authors: Ivkovic, Sasha , Oseni, Taiwo , Chadhar, Mehmood , Firmin, Sally
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: 24th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems: Information Systems (IS) for the Future, PACIS 2020
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- Description: Despite latest advances in small group research, discovery of group interactions and performance from analysis of small group communication, such as project emails, is still minimally represented. This paper presents a novel approach of studying small groups through analysis of the participants' emails sent to the project manager. We examined 1,105 email messages from managers' email in-boxes across five distinct ICT projects from the personal, social, collaborative, and engaging perspective of the email senders and link the findings to group performance. The study provides theoretical evidence that analysis of incoming communication from project managers' email in-box can be used to measure a group's success. For project managers the approach has the potential to be highly beneficial for monitoring of indicators for the state of project health. © Proceedings of the 24th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems: Information Systems (IS) for the Future, PACIS 2020. All rights reserved.
Organisational learning with SaaS CRM – A case study of higher education
- Authors: Oseni, Taiwo , Chadhar, Mehmood , Ivkovic, Sasha , Firmin, Sally
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
- Relation: Australasian Conference on Information Systems ; Sydney ; 2018 published in Australasian Conference on Information Systems 2018.
- Relation: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
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- Description: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) generally has a reputation as a technology that does not live up to its over-inflated expectations. Yet, implementations in higher education remain on the rise. Higher Education institutions (HEIs) are embracing cloud-based CRM systems to upsurge performance, encourage better management practices, and enhance their relationship with staff and students. CRM success however relies heavily on an adaptive organisational learning (OL) process upon which proactive decisions can be made. This paper emphasises that committed learning in post-implementation use is paramount to attaining further understanding of the capabilities, features and functionality of the CRM. Investigating how SaaS CRM usage reflect an organisation’s learning in a Higher Education context, the paper presents theoretical and practical contributions in a framework for effective SaaS CRM utilisation, and recommends a continuous cycle of exploration-exploitation-exploration. Yet the reality is that organisations explore, exploit, and then stop exploring.
Integrating online social networks with e-Commerce : A CBR approach
- Authors: Sun, Zhaohao , Firmin, Sally , Yearwood, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Conference proceedings
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- Description: Integrating online social networks (OSN) with e-commerce is a part of Enterprise 2.0 and social media and is of significance for development of e-commerce and online social networking services. However, how to integrate online social networks including Facebook with e-commerce is still a big issue for companies. Case based reasoning (CBR) has a number of successful applications in e-commerce and web services. This article examines how to integrate OSN with e-commerce, how to integrate CBR with e-commerce and how to integrate CBR with OSN. This article also proposes a CBR architecture for integrating online social networks with e-commerce using CBR as an intelligent intermediary. One of the research findings indicates that the principle of CBR is a useful marketing strategy for integrating e-commerce and OSN. The approach proposed in this research will facilitate the development of e-commerce, Enterprise 3.0 and online social networking services. Sun, Firmin, & Yearwood © 2012.
- Description: 2003010901
Emerging point of care devices and artificial intelligence : prospects and challenges for public health
- Authors: Stranieri, Andrew , Venkatraman, Sitalakshmi , Minicz, John , Zarnegar, Armita , Firmin, Sally , Balasubramanian, Venki , Jelinek, Herbert
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Smart Health Vol. 24, no. (2022), p.
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- Description: Risk assessments for numerous conditions can now be performed cost-effectively and accurately using emerging point of care devices coupled with machine learning algorithms. In this article, the case is advanced that point of care testing in combination with risk assessments generated with artificial intelligence algorithms, applied to the universal screening of the general public for multiple conditions at one session, represents a new kind of in-expensive screening that can lead to the early detection of disease and other public health benefits. A case study of a diabetes screening clinic in a rural area of Australia is presented to illustrate its benefits. Universal, poly-aetiological screening is shown to meet the ten World Health Organisation criteria for screening programmes. © Elsevier Inc.
The role of actors in blockchain adoption decisions – an innovation translation perspective
- Authors: Chhina, Shipra , Chadhar, Mehmood , Firmin, Sally , Tatnall, Arthur
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australasian journal of information systems Vol. 27, no. (2023), p.
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- Description: An overview of challenges around blockchain adoption has revealed that there is little understanding of the process of blockchain adoption decisions, including who needs to be involved and consulted at various stages. When systems are designed to intentionally protect privacy or to obscure actors, such as blockchain platforms, it can be challenging to identify them and to understand their roles. To do this we used an Innovation Translation approach from Actor-Network Theory (Latour, 2007) which looks at the roles of both human and non-human actors. To understand the interactions among the actors involved, multiple rounds of interviews were conducted with Blockchain experts, utilising the qualitative Delphi method. The findings of this study propose a framework that provides insight into the decision-process by exploring the actors involved and their roles as they implement strategies to adopt blockchain and to convince other actors. The outcomes will assist blockchain practitioners and researchers to have an understanding of pre-adoption decisions and stakeholder involvement. Organisations considering implementing blockchain will benefit from this research as they will know where to start, who to engage, and which stakeholders are needed during the decision-making process.