University student views about Government expectations of young people in receipt of Youth Allowance while engaged in job search
- Authors: Blaskett, Beverley
- Date: 2001
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: , Lismore : 25th September 2001
- Full Text: false
- Description: This paper reports some preliminary results of a small pilot survey of University of Ballarat students' knowledge of Youth Allowance rates and eligibility criteria and of their attitudes towards the appropriateness of some of the obligations currently placed on young people in receipt of Youth Allowance. Thus it was asked, do students, who may themselves be experiencing poverty, agree with the current range of government imposed obligations on young job seekers?
- Description: 2003002900
Building a digital business network : ICT partnering in regional Australia
- Authors: Braun, Patrice
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at the Electronic Networking 2002 - Building Community Conference, Melbourne : 3rd - 5th July, 2002
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003000253
A study of drug-reaction relationships in Australian drug safety data
- Authors: Mammadov, Musa , Saunders, Gary , Dekker, Evan
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at the 2nd Australian Data Mining Workshop, Sydney, New South Wales : 8th December, 2003
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: The sparse nature of voluntarily reported drug safety data benefits from a system that consolidates the massive amount of data into a manageable format for analysis. This has been done for Australian drug safety data by the Australian Adverse Drug Reaction Advisory Committee (ADRAC) for reactions using the systems organ class (SOC) ontology. There has long been a need for a similar kind of grouping to apply to drugs in this type of data. In ADRAC, drugs are currently listed by trade-name, where only some of these trade-names were assigned anatomical-therapeutic-chemical classification (ATC) codes. We assigned an ATC code for each ADRAC trade-name and show that this ontology facilitates the detection of drug class / reaction class associations at various levels of specificity. This allows different views of these associations (even very rare ones) and their significance measured for the development of more sensitive signal detection methods. We report that this ATC classification enables both the grouping of association rule approach that is useful for studying rare associations, and the development of an adverse reaction signal detection method.
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003000340
Analysis of the Australian credit database
- Authors: Rubinov, Alex , Sukhorukova, Nadezda , Yearwood, John
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at the Symposium on Industrial Optimisation and the 9th Australian Optimisation Day, Perth : 30th September, 2002
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003000353
Accounting's chaotic margins : Financial reporting of the library collections of Australia's public universities
- Authors: West, Brian , Carnegie, Garry
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at the Fourth Asia Pacific Interdisciplinary Research in Accounting Conference, Singapore : 4th - 6th July, 2004
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: This paper explores the circumstances and implications of an episode of accounting change arising from the extended use of accrual accounting within the Australian public sector. The matter under scrutiny is the financial reporting of the library collections of Australia's public universities. Accounting standards applying within the Australian public sector imply that such collections should generally be accounted for as assets in the statements of financial position of the entities that manage them. A survey reveals considerable diversity and subjectivity in the accounting practices adopted in seeking to satisfy this requirement. This raises questions about the reliability and usefulness of the information reported, and renders problematic the technical propriety of attempting to express and account for non-financial resources in financial terms. The financial reporting of library collections is posited as a 'chaotic margin' of accounting and consideration is given to possible explanations for the disorderly state of practice observed.
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003000769
Intermarket influence analysis using asymmetrical dependence test and an application for Australia and G7 industrial countries
- Authors: Pan, Heping , Tilakaratne, Chandima , Yearwood, John
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at the First International Workshop on Intelligent Finance, IWIF 2004, Melbourne : 13th December, 2004
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003000916
Relationships between different Australian interest rate swap markets
- Authors: Mammadov, Musa , Yearwood, John
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at ICOTA6: 6th International Conference on Optimization - Techniques and Applications, Ballarat, Victoria : 9th December, 2004
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003000893
Relationships between different term structures of Australian interest rate swap markets
- Authors: Mammadov, Musa , Yearwood, John
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at the First International Workshop on Intelligent Finance, IWIF 2004, Melbourne : 13th December, 2004
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003000894
The applicability of networks in Australian adult and vocational learning research
- Authors: Golding, Barry
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at Learns and Practitioners: The Heart of the Matter, Canberra : 17th March, 2004
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Networks have increasingly been recognised by educators as important in adult and vocational learning contexts, in that they have the capacity to help potential learners engage and become better connected with a wide range of learning organisations through their families, jobs and communities and also with opportunities for future learning and work. The importance of ‘being connected’, including through networks to and between learning organisations, has come into higher relief with a recent increase in theorising about aspects of social capital including learning networks, the growth of lifelong learning and an identification of the particular penalties associated with several forms of disengagement from learning for people of all ages. This paper begins with a scan of research literature on networks in adult and vocational learning. The paper identifies some new techniques involving networks, found by experience to assist in the process of adult and vocational learning research: particularly for identifying potential research interviewees within learning organisations and communities, strengthening relationships between learning organisations and identifying opportunities for future collaboration. It also provides some insights from new data on organisational networks derived from a number of recent research studies about learning networks in TAFE, adult and community education and public safety organisations in small and remote towns. The paper finally provides a number of tentative, general findings about the broader applicability of network theory to research and theories about learning in such contexts.
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003000774
Developing policy for Australia's small towns : From anthropology to sustainability
- Authors: Courvisanos, Jerry , Martin, John
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at the Centre for Sustainable Regional Communities (CSRC) 2nd National Conference on the future of Australia's Country Towns, Latrobe, Bendigo : 11th February, 2005
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Over the last three decades the way in which public policy analysts learn about the structure and function of Australia’s small towns has shifted from the intensive, in-depth analysis provided by the anthropologist living in the community (called “community studies”) to a more empirically oriented, demographic-based research carried out at a distance from these places (called “sustainability studies”). Rather than just understanding the functioning of small towns through case studies, recent research emphasis has centred on the more “aggregative” question of small town sustainability in all it forms. This alters the way in which small towns are viewed and complicates the current policy approaches to small town development and change. This paper identifies the two different methodologies implied by these divergent approaches and examines what this means to understanding of small towns and the policy implications that emerge. By reviewing the community studies approach to learning about small towns popular in the 1960s and 1970s, and contrasting this approach with recent, more aggregative approaches to learning about the sustainability of towns; this paper aims to find points of alignment and suggest a broader research framework that incorporates both approaches. This provides a comprehensive understanding of small towns, leading to a more effective development of public policies for these communities.
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003001308
Discursive Australia : Public discussion of refugees in the early twenty-first century
- Authors: Rodan, Debbie , Mummery, Jane
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at the 2nd Annual Conference of the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, Sydney : 27th - 28th September, 2004
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: This paper interrogates recurring discourses in Australia’s public domain with regards to the issue of refugees and Australianness, and how they have been used to ratify notions of inclusion and exclusion with regards to what being Australian - or indeed being un-Australian - does and should mean. The unpacking of these primary discursive positions will be based on an analysis of the letters to the editor published in both The Australian (Australia’s national newspaper) and The West Australian, covering one key period from 22 January to 28 February 2002 (a period encompassing the Woomera hunger strike).
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003001231
Men's lifelong learning in Australian rural towns
- Authors: Golding, Barry
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at Diversity and Difference in Lifelong Learning, Brighton, United Kingdom : 5th July, 2006
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003001323
The accessibility/remoteness index of Australia (ARIA) and lifeline Australia's calls
- Authors: Watson, Robert , McDonald, John , Pearce, Dora
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at the 8th National Rural Health Conference, Alice Springs : 10th - 13th March, 2005
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Nationally there are more than 50 member centres and sub-centres of Lifeline Australia’s telephone counselling and referral service, providing an equitable, free, anonymous, and highly accessible primary health resource. The accessibility of this service may mean that it has a particularly important role to play in contributing to the health and well-being of rural and remote Australians. The trained volunteer counsellors of the service receive more than 400 000 calls annually. Information on many of these calls is recorded by telephone counsellors in Lifeline’s Client Service Management Information System (CSMIS). The purpose of this study was to establish if a relationship between the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA) and calls to Lifeline Australia could be found. Population standardised areal call rates to Lifeline Ballarat were compiled using Telstra exchange service area to test the hypothesis that a positive relationship between the call rates to the service and the ARIA would be found. 90 128 CSMIS cases from 2003 were examined to explore if any linear relationship between caller characteristics and a centre’s ARIA score were apparent. A number of significant associations with the ARIA scores and CSMIS call variables were observed. However, the hypothesis that a positive relationship between call rates to the service and the ARIA would be found was not supported. An important implication of this exploratory study is that Lifeline’s telephone counselling and referral service may need to be promoted more widely to rural clients and health care providers.
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003001236
The impact of complex social processes, observation and reflective thinking on teacher learning and practice
- Authors: McGraw, Amanda
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at NIE International Conference 2005: Redesigning Pedagogy: Research, Policy, Practice, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore : 30th May - 1st June 2005
- Full Text:
- Description: In an educational climate sharply focused on school improvement, a large Australian multi-campus secondary college has developed a formal and ongoing partnership with the School of Education at their regional university. This paper examines one of the initiatives they developed together; an approach aptly called Collaborative Learning Partnerships that aims to enable teachers to learn more deeply in the context of their work through critical reflection, self-analysis, collaborative planning processes, substantive conversation and the testing of new ideas and approaches. The initial concept was inspired by the growing body of research that indicates that teachers make the fundamental difference to students' learning. If teacher learning became a real priority in the college it was felt that students'; learning would subsequently be enhanced. How then could the classroom, the space where teachers spend most of their working time, be used as a context in which teachers too could learn deeply about their role and the complexity of their work? This paper points to the influence of complex social processes that are at play when teachers work together in this way and to the understandings about learning itself that are surfaced through such processes.
A profile of men's sheds in Australia: Patterns, purposes, profiles and experiences of participants: Some implications for ACE and VET about engaging older men
- Authors: Golding, Barry
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at Global VET: Challenges at the global, national and local levels Conference 2006, Wollongong, New South Wales : 19th April, 2006
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: This paper uses literature and survey results to explore several issues associated with the emergence and development of community-based men’s sheds in Australia and their relationship to both community and further education and the training system. It develops a series of questions about these developments and their relationship to the development of men as learners as well as the nature of education and voluntary organisations. The confirms for the first time, using compelling and rigorously collected survey data from participants, the critical value of men’s sheds in community settings in Australia to older men’s well being: particularly to their health, social enjoyment, ongoing learning capacity and ability to contribute to the community. The sheds, relatively recently created, now provide a valuable and critically important place for a wide range of mainly older men within safe, supervised settings in where approximately 150 such sheds are now found in southern Australia. They allow men to regularly meet and happily socialise, mainly with other men with tools, in a safe, familiar, shared workspace in a wide range of communities, situations and organisational types. The men who use men’s sheds respond positively to environments that allow them to feel at home and learn by doing, in practical, group situations with other men. This paper confirms the high potential of men’s sheds, if carefully configured and managed, to include and support men experiencing issues associated with retirement, health, social isolation, aging and significant change.
- Description: E1
- Description: 2003002043
Mathematics education in rural schools
- Authors: Mousley, Judith , Marks, Genee
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at 30th Conference of the International Group for Psychology in Mathematics Education, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic : 16th-21st July 2006 p. 411
- Full Text: false
Old dogs, new shed tricks : An exploration of innovative, workshop-based learning practice in Australia
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Brown, Michael , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at AVETRA 2007 Conference, Victoria University, Footscray, Victoria: 11th-13th April 2007
- Full Text:
- Description: Our paper explores some recent innovations in workshop-based learning practice that come out of community-based men's sheds in Australia. It deliberately goes beyond an exploration of the typical community-based men's shed, already explored in our recent NCVER research report and looks at some new and productive interactions between sheds and other informal learning organisations. We go to the margins of rapidly evolving shed practice and single out three types of shed-based organisations that work with school resisters, Vietnam Veterans and older men in aged care. Our aim is to illustrate, using new Australian narrative data, some theoretical and practical implications and benefits of reciprocal, workshop-based mentoring relationships involving men of different ages. Our focus is on ways in which men with a skill or trade are able, in a situated and authentic learning context, to informally weave magic for and with other men, and in some cases with young people. Our paper provides pointers to some of the principles underpinning successful informal and community-based learning practice for older men: particularly the need for a high level of engagement; the choice of an appropriate and safe setting; and to account for the differences associated with age and gender. We articulate an imperative for bringing more blokes into all forms of learning in Australia including through more informal, community-based learning as well as through adult and community education. Our paper and its conclusions have implications for other workshop and shed-based learning practice in vocational education and training as well as informal and community-based learning by volunteers in the quintessential and ubiquitous Australian fire and football sheds.
- Description: 2003005537
Older men's lifelong learning : Common threads/sheds
- Authors: Golding, Barry
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at CRLL 4th International Conference: The times they are a-changin': Researching transitions in life long learning, University of Stirling, Scotland : 22nd-24th June 2007
- Full Text: false
- Description: This paper is based primarily on a suite of completed research in Australia into informal learning by older men in community contexts. Based on extensive survey and interviews, this suite forms part of the first prong of a proposed, new international comparative study of older men's(defined as over 45 years) informal learning across countries and cultures. The research into older men's lifelong learning was originally motivated by knowledge of the relatively low proportion of older men involved in adult and community education (ACE) settings in Australia. It was widely believed that older men were not interested and therefore not involved in learning. A number of research projects since 2002 in rural and remote Australian communities sought to look beyond what are conventionally regarded as education providers and closely examine whether and what learning takes place informally by older men who participate in community-based organisations. The research began with studies of men's learning in volunteer rural fire brigades, football and senior citizens clubs, land care as well as adult and community education providers. It led to as study of the learning role and function of rural fire brigades and emergency service organisations in small and remote towns across Australia. The research has most recently focussed on informal learning through men's sheds in community contexts. These workshops specifically for older men have recently sprung up and proliferated across much of southern Australia. What has emerged from the research is a picture of older men with a strong desire to socialise and learn, particularly with other men, in productive, informal contexts, wherever possible outside. Older men's experiences of learning as well as their lives generally have often been adversely affected over a lifetime by negative experiences of formal learning, starting with school. This paper takes what has been learnt from this suite of studies, pulls together some of the common threads, and places the findings against what is known from the wider international research literature about older men's learning. These include an examination of common motivations for older men to learn, common barriers, preferred pedagogies as well as some common valued outcomes. It seeks to determine whether what has been found from this research in Australian community contexts is similar to or different in what has been found other countries and cultural settings. Part of the paper includes consideration of issues associated with men's identities as they age as well as gender issues associated with learning. It also critically examines the role and legitimacy of creating learning spaces and organisations for men and older men in particular.
- Description: 2003007969
- Description: 2003005534
Shedding some new light on gender : Evidence about men's informal learning preferences from Australian men's sheds in community contexts
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Foley, Annette , Brown, Michael
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at the 37th Annual SCUTREA Conference, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland : 3rd-5th July 2007 p. 169-176
- Full Text:
- Description: Our research identifies some gender-related implications of men gathering, learning and sharing skills in shed-based community contexts with a raft of positive outcomes. (author abstract)
- Description: 2003005528
Student perceptions of podcasting to enhance learning and teaching in an information systems course
- Authors: Miller, Charlynn , Newnham, Leon
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Paper presented at 14th International Conference ALT-C 2007: Beyond Control. Learning Technology for the social network generation, Nottingham University EMCC, Nottingham, England, UK : 4th-6th September 2007 p. 104-115
- Full Text:
- Description: Universities are challenged to seek methods to improve student learning. Leading edge technologies, such as podcasts, that put the focus on learner-chosen activities may be one way to accomplish this. This study explored student perceptions of podcasting as a learning and teaching tool in a first semester information systems course within an Australian university. Students were provided with a short podcast to supplement face-to-face lectures. Students were then surveyed to determine their perceptions of the impact of this podcast on their learning. A high number of respondents agreed that they used the podcast, that it increased their understanding of the lecture material and that it assisted their learning in the unit overall. The findings in this preliminary study lend support to the concept that podcasting can enhance learning when used as a supplement to traditional teaching methods.
- Description: 2003002687