Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Building Online Essay Writing Support Tools, Cath Ellis, Alisa Percy

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

The English Studies Program at the University of Wollongong, with support from staff in the library and Learning Development, has linked together a series of learning support tools for use in their 100-level subjects. These tools — an online research and citation skills assessment task and an essay and quiz writing study guide — harness the world wide web as a means of augmenting and enhancing student learning at an undergraduate level. Each of these tools is flexibly delivered, student centred and curriculum integrated. This project is part of a broader initiative in the English Studies Program to develop an …

Flexible Learning At The Crossroads: Are Our Teachers Ready?, Sandra Wills

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

This paper reflects on managing technological change in teaching and learning, with particular emphasis on staff development. It draws on two national reports in Australia. One report team interviewed senior management in 50% of Australian universities (Wills and Yetton, 1997). The other reviewed 104 nationally funded IT based teaching projects (Alexander et al, 1998). Both make recommendations that have implications for staff development. A number of staff development case studies are described, most practising what they preach by adopting flexible learning techniques in order to teach teachers by example about flexible learning: Project LEAD, Teaching at a Distance, Flexible Delivery …

Subject Online Survey (Sos): An Online Tool To Support Improvement In Teaching And Learning, Robert M. Corderoy, Raymond J. Stace, Sandra Wills, Albert Ip

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

Traditionally, data relating to the conduct of subjects at the University of Wollongong has been collected for teachers with one main purpose in mind: to provide the teacher with supporting information as to their teaching ability for the purposes of promotion. SOS is a web based system which teachers can use to author customised surveys to collect information about the subject they teach. These surveys are completed anonymously by the students via the web (using randomly generated, survey specific numeric tokens) and the data is automatically collated and returned to the teacher. The teacher may also produce the surveys in …

Academic Standards Versus Disability Rights, Richard Gosden, Gregory R. Hampton

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

A simmering controversy has been running in the United states since 1995 over the perceived conflict between the maintenance of academic standards and the rights of disabled university students. Recent developments are set to raise the same issue in Australian universities. The first of these developments is the shift in the emphasis of academic standards with the implementation of the Generic Skills Assessment (GSA) program. The second is the release of draft disability standards for education to streamline enforcement of the Commonwealth's Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). The DDA protects disabled people against discrimination in education. Amongst the many types of …

Telling Stories: Text Analysis In A Museum, Emily Rose Purser

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

Museum texts tell interesting stories, and their role in public education makes them quite important. The exhibition discussed in this paper gives a message that interests, but also concerns me, as a teacher of language, communication and cultural studies. It is a case of one culture telling stories about another, and in such a delicate arena there is much potential to cause offence. The exhibition in question is about peoples of the Pacific, and is in a major European museum of the world's indigenous cultures (BerlinDahlem). I had visited it to see how Australian cultures are represented in image and …

Simulated Annealing With An Optimal Fixed Temperature, Mark James Fielding

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Contrary to conventional belief, it turns out that in some problem instances of moderate size, fixed temperature simulated annealing algorithms based on a heuristic formula for determining the optimal temperature can be superior to algorithms based on cooling. Such a heuristic formula, however, often seems elusive. In practical cases considered we include instances of traveling salesman, quadratic assignment, and graph partitioning problems, where we obtain results that compare favorably to the ones known in the literature.

Induced C*-Algebras, Coactions And Equivariance In The Symmetric Imprimitivity Theorem, Siegfried Echterhoff, Iain Raeburn

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

The symmetric imprimitivity theorem provides a Morita equivalence between two crossed products of induced C*-algebras and includes as special cases many other important Morita equivalences such as Green's imprimitivity theorem. We show that the symmetric imprimitivity theorem is compatible with various inflated actions and coactions on the crossed products.

Desperately Seeking Synergy: Interdisciplinary Research In Accounting And Business History, Simon Ville, G. Fleming

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

In responding to the recent call for interdisciplinary research where synergies can be gained and institutional knowledge broadened, it is argued that a particularly strong case exists for aligning work on business and accounting history. The greater breadth and context about the structure of firms and their operating environment provided by business history facilitates an enhanced understanding of the forces that have driven the changing provision of management accounting services. In turn, it might be argued that historians analyzing the success or failure of firms can learn much by studying more closely the appropriateness of the accounting systems that they …

The Development Of Large Scale Enterprise In Australia, 1910-64, Simon Ville, D. Merrett

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This study examines the evolution of large scale enterprise in Australia in the twentieth century. It applies a methodology common in the historical study of other nations, notably identifying and analysing the top firms by asset size for benchmarked years through the period. High concentration levels are identified among big businesses although they may have been slow to develop modern managerial systems

Powerful Friends: The Institutionalisation Of Corporate Accounting Practices In An Australian Religious/Charitable Organisation, H. J. Irvine

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The profile of accounting in the nonprofit sector has been raised substantially in recent years, due to profound changes in the institutional environment in which organizations in that sector operate. One of the factors that has resulted in the adoption of corporate-style financial management techniques, including accounting, in the nonprofit sector, has been the need for such organizations to achieve financial legitimacy. This can be achieved by means of their accounting practices, as they demonstrate a level of financial accountability that proves them to be legitimate recipients of funds from the public, from governments, and increasingly from the corporate sector. …

The Steel Leadership Program: Telling The Stories, Karin H. Garrety, Viviane Morrigan, Richard Badham, Michael Zanko

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Introduction

• Between October 1999 and June 2000 fifteen interviews were conducted with Springhill employees who had participated in the SLP course.
• The OD Team at Port Kembla intends using these stories to help build a new culture.

An analysis and representation of participants' stories of their experiences arising out of the BHP Steel Leadership Program (SLP) does not lend itself readily to executive summary and bullet points. However, we have been able to discern a number of key themes from the process of gathering these stories and, of course, from the stories themselves.

Cultural Tourism In Austria - Empirical Warning Signs Against Implicitly Setting Cultural Tourism And City Tourism Equal, Sara Dolnicar, Walter Ender

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Kulturlourismus beschaftigt tourism research and tourism development since many decades. Many concepts and classifications, surveys and studies have emerged, and yet it seems more stable einige'sehr prejudices ilber to give KultUltourismus. One of these, though hardly explicit. is pronounced, but usually implicitly but resonates is the fact and that Kulturlourismus Stadtetourismus are equated, or at least a broad vetfilgen ilber Oberschneidungsbereich. this impHzite Hypothesis is examined below, using an empirical data set. In the course of this debate kulturlouristische a priori Segments of the terms of their socio-demographic Qsterreichischen Sommerlourismus and behavioral variables characterized.

(Article written in German)

Costing The Earth: Equity, Sustainable Development And Environmental Economics, Sharon Beder

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

The ethical principle of equity, particularly intergenerational equity, is central to the concept of sustainable development. Yet governments all over the world are adopting sustainable development policies that reinforce existing inequities and create new ones. These policies have been strongly influenced by environmental economists of the neoclassical school. They involve monetary valuation of the environment and the use of financial incentives aimed at using market mechanisms to allocate scarce environmental resources. However these policies tend to remove decision-making power from the community and cause some sections of the community to bear more than their fair share of environmental burdens

The Role Of Technology In Sustainable Development, Sharon Beder

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

The Limits Of Feminist Political Intervention In Singapore, Lenore T. Lyons

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

In recent years increasing attention has focused on the Singapore government’s new attitude towards limited public participation in civil society. The women’s rights organisation the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) is one example of a nongovernment organisation (NGO) that is directly engaged in this newly emerging ‘civic’ society. AWARE’s activities are constrained, however, by a state demand that its objectives remain overtly ‘non-political’ and reformist in character. This has led some observers to comment that as a state-defined practice, feminism in Singapore is unable to address issues of structural inequality and difference.

Private Desires, Public Pleasures: Community And Identity In A Postmodern World, Anthony Ashbolt

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

As George Orwell, Herbert Marcuse and, more recently John Ralston Saul have argued, language can be a key mechanism whereby social reality is blurred, camouflaged or distorted (Orwell 1957: 143-57; MarcuseI972: 78-103; Saul 1997: 41-75). Slogans, buzzwords and words blatantly misused permeate contemporary discourse. Just as the advertising industry can take a word like 'freedom' and render it a commodity, so too politicians and journalists can take a word like 'reform; and strip it of meaning. We are told, for example, of the reforms of the Kennett government in Victoria. Closing hospitals and schools and wrecking the industrial relations system …

Not The M-Word Again: Rhetoric And Silence In Recent Multiculturalism Debates, Wenche Ommundsen

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of: Tracking King Kong: A Hollywood Icon In World Culture, Brian M. Yecies

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

No abstract provided.

International Trends In Evaluating University Research Outcomes: What Lessons For Australia, Samuel Garrett-Jones

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

An international study compared methods used to monitor and evaluate the outcomes of university research in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands and elsewhere. It aimed to provide a foundation for improving the evaluation of research and research training in Australian universities. Evaluation methods were considered in terms of their audience, the type of outputs, outcomes or impacts being measured, and the types of research funding support schemes to which they were applied. The study found that Australian research agencies are generally in line with ‘common practice’ in the countries studied, and in some cases in advance of it. The …

Some Recent Developments In The Evaluation Of University Research Outcomes In The United Kingdom, Samuel Garrett-Jones, David K. Aylward

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Three specific recent developments in the evaluation of UK university research—the Research Assessment Exercise, the common performance indicators for the research councils, and the ‘evaluation portfolio’ of the Economic and Social Research Council — are described, and how they work in practice is examined. As in other countries, we find some tension between the criteria of excellence and socioeconomic benefit in valuing research outcomes. Driven by government policy, the primacy of peer evaluation based on publications is being strongly augmented by methods and performance measures that attempt to capture the broader benefits and impacts of academic research within the context …

Celebrating The Past: Financial Management In The Third Sectore, Anne Abraham

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The centrality of the mission, as opposed to the importance of fmancial outcomes, created many problems in the early financial management of third sector organisations. Thus, it is important to celebrate the contribution made by these early managers as they struggled to guide their organisation in a fiscally responsible manner. This paper has two parts. First, it considers the need for accountability from an internal organisational perspective and also as a response to the external demand for accountability. Secondly, it provides a case study of an eighty year old organisation whose early leaders were responsible for putting in place procedures …

Management Consultant - Client Relationships: Their Impact On Consultancy Outcomes In Smes, Gary I. Noble

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper reports on the findings of an empirical study that examined aspects of the consultant - client relationship (CCR) that affect the adoption of a consultant's recommendations in the context of a small or medium enterprise (SME). In addition, this study found that a SNlE client's judgement of the success of a consultancy project was based on three key factors - the financial change in the business, the gaining of new knowledge on operating an SME learnt through the consultancy and any new perspective on the business gained as a result of the consultancy. These findings are drawn from …

The Effect Of Different Rotation Patterns On The Revisions Of Trend Estimates, David G. Steel, Craig H. Mclaren

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

The X11 and X11ARIMA procedures are widely used to produce seasonally adjusted and trend estimates from time series obtained from sample surveys. The surveys are often based on designs in which there is sample overlap between different periods. The degree of overlap is determined by the pattern of inclusion of selected units over time, i.e., the rotation pattern. An important issue in analysing the series is that trend estimates at the end of the series are revised as estimates for recent periods are added. This article considers the effects of different rotation patterns on the mean squared error of the …

Sos: A Subject Online Survey Engine To Support Improvement In Teaching And Learning, Robert M. Corderoy, Ray Stace, A. Ip, P. Macleod

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

Traditionally, data relating to the conduct of subjects at the University of Wollongong has been collected for academics with one main purpose in mind: to provide the academic with supporting information as to their teaching ability for the purposes of promotion. Currently this data is collected using ‘prescribed Teaching Surveys’. The process is a formal, highly regulated mechanism and is administered by the Centre for Educational Development and Interactive Resources (CEDIR) on request. The promotion process requires that the academic provide of not less than 4 and no more than 6 such survey reports in their application for promotion. These …

Maritime Internationalism, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

An account of the long records of internationalism of the Seamen's Union of Australia (SUA) and the Waterside Workers' Federation (WWF), and the way these records contributed to vital international support for the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) during the bitter Australian 'War on the Waterfront' (1998). The MUA was formed in 1993 following the amalgamation of the SUA and the WWF.

Thermoluminescence Evidence For The Deposition Of Coastal Sediments By Tsunami Wave Action, D. M. Price, Edward A. Bryant, R. W. Young

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

Changes in our coastline take on various forms and are the product of differing wave and aeolian processes. Of all these processes tsunami action surely represents the most rapid and violent agent wreaking devastation not only along the immediate shoreline but also extending many kilometres inland. Until now the main line of evidence supporting the deposition of sediments by this means has lain in the careful examination of the sedimentological record. This process is painstaking, costly and time consuming and then not necessarily conclusive. Thermoluminescence may offer an alternative line of evidence which may be taken as either confirmatory or, …

Do Migrants Rob Jobs?: New Evidence From Australia, Gary Gang Tian, Jordan Shan

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This study contributes to the recent debate on immigration and unemployment in Australia by investigating the causal linkage between immigration and unemployment. The question of whether `immigrants rob jobs' is examined by identifying the sources of unemployment through causal linkages between unemployment and other key variables such as immigration. The research finds no Granger causality between immigration and unemployment, but does run from industrial structural change to the high unemployment rate in Australia. This research also finds that both GDP growth and immigration inflow reinforce each other in the course of economic development in Australia.

Community Perceptions Of Reasons For Preference For Consanguineous Marriages In Pakistan, R. Hussain

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Although the recent Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) show that two-thirds of marriages in Pakistan are consanguineous, the sociocultural determinants of such marriages remain largely unexplored. This paper examines the relative importance of the three commonly perceived reasons for such marriages: religious, economic and cultural. The analysis is based on qualitative data collected in 1995 from multi-ethnic and multireligious communities in Karachi, the largest city of Pakistan. Results show that consanguineous marriages are preferred across all ethnic and religious groups to a varying degree, and that parents continue to be the prime decision-makers for marriages of both sons and …

Consanguineous Marriage And Differentials In Age At Marriage, Contraceptive Use And Fertility In Pakistan, R. Hussain, A. H. Bittles

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Fertility rates in Pakistan have remained consistently high over the past three decades. While numerous studies have examined sociodemographic determinants, the role of biological factors, and particularly consanguinity, has received little attention, even though marriage between close biological relatives continues to be the norm in Pakistan. Reproductive behaviour among women in consanguineous (first cousin) and non-consanguineous unions was compared, using data from a 1995 study of multi-ethnic communities in Karachi and the 1990–91 Pakistan Demographic & Health Survey (PDHS). The results show that, although female age at first marriage has been gradually rising in both study samples, women in consanguineous …

Analyzing Destination Images: A Perceptual Charting Approach, Sara Dolnicar, K. Grabler, J. A. Mazanec

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Heterogeneity of perceptions is a neglected issue in market segmentation studies. Only recently parametric approaches toward modeling segmented perception-preference structures such as combined MDS and Latent Class procedures have been introduced. A completely different nonparametric method is based on topology-sensitive vector quantization (VQ) for consumers-by-brands-by-attributes data. It maps the segment-specific perceptual structures into bar charts with multiple brand positions exhibiting perceptual distinctiveness or similarity. A brief introduction into the VQ methodology is followed by a sample study on three urban destinations competing on the world travel markets. City images serve as the underlying behavioral constructs. Preferential data are based on …