QUT Central Administration 2 George Street Brisbane 4000 Telephone (07) 3864 2111 Registered by Australia Post – Publication No. QBF 4778
Study targets prevention of sexual abuse
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Juicy new play squeezes talent from teenagers
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QUT swimmer ready to test world’s best
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Q u e e n s l a n d U n i v e r s i t y o f T e c h n o l o g y N e w s p a p e r ■ I s s u e 170 ■ October 21, 1 9 9 7-February 16, 1998
by Carmen Myler
Some of Australia’s top casting and talent agents will have their chance to scrutinise new talent this week, when graduating actors from QUT present a showcase performance in Sydney.
The 10 Academy of the Arts’ actors
— who put on a show for agents in Brisbane last week — present the showcase for arts professionals in the hope of securing an all-important agent before entering the competitive industry.
One member of the ensemble, James Stewart, has already secured an agent, along with a leading role in a new television series, Breakers, which is being filmed in Sydney. Set at Bondi Beach, Breakers is produced by production companies ScreenTime and Chrysalis.
Mr Stewart plays 19-year-old Alex in the series, which also features Academy graduates Louise Crawford, Ling-Hsueh Tang and Ben Blaylock.
Two of Mr Stewart’s fellow acting students, Wayne Blair and Rebecca Clarke, said they were realistic about their futures after graduation and were willing to take acting work in whatever form it came.
“I’ve got a passion for live theatre,”
Ms Clarke explained, “but I haven’t had as much experience with film and television and maybe, with experience, comes that sort of relaxing into it and enjoying it.”
“Basically, I just want to be acting.
“We’ve been told that, normally, when you’re working as an actor, more work comes up,” she said.
It’s ‘showtime’ for acting graduates
Mr Blair said, like Ms Clarke, he was happy to work on stage or screen and was willing to move around for his career.
He said he didn’t have an immediate ambition but, as an indigenous Australian, would love to play an Aboriginal character.
“I’ve played Chinese, Puerto Rican, English and Russian people, but I haven’t played an Aboriginal person yet and I’d love to,” he said.
“In five years’ time, if I’m playing a lot of Aboriginal parts, I might feel differently, but I can’t wait to get into some really meaty roles.
“But I want to be diverse. I like colour-blind casting.”
Mr Blair said he was excited about the challenge of performing for industry and media professionals during the showcases.
For the production, the ensemble perform a program of excerpts from contemporary and classic plays including: Personals by David Crane;
Brilliant Traces by Cindy Lou Johnson; Big Time by Keith Reddin;
Table for One by Claire Haywood;
Crow by Louis Nowra; Wet and Dry by Janis Balodis; Lie of the Mind by Sam Shepard; and Sexual Perversity in Chicago by David Mamet.
One piece, Ring Ring, has been written by acting student Sally Strecker and will be performed by Ms Strecker and Wayne Blair.
Low-orbit Australian satellites expected to weigh less than 60kg and be around the size of a bar fridge are set to rocket Queensland into the new millennium.
And QUT and Griffith University will be part of a cutting-edge team developing the low-orbit Australian satellites which will be launched from the middle of 2001.
The news came earlier this month as the State Government approved $1.2 million over five years to support the project which will entail a satellite technology research and development centre being established at QUT.
Government funds boost venture
Drawing on expertise from QUT’s Space Centre for Satellite Navigation and from Griffith University’s Space Industry Development Centre for Microwave Technology, the new centre will be responsible for developing the nation’s first low-orbit satellite in three decades.
Announcing the State Government decision at QUT on October 8, the State Minister for Economic Development and Trade, Doug Slack, said the project’s first satellite would be called FedSat 1.
“The Brisbane research centre will develop and undertake satellite tracking
and provide state-of-the-art on-board computing systems to manage satellite functions,” Mr Slack said.
He said the project would build on the State’s already substantial space technology capabilities.
Information obtained from the on- board scientific instruments would be used for research and industry purposes, including meteorological measurement and advanced communications, he said.
Mr Slack pointed to commercial opportunities of around $13 million for Queensland industry in the fields
of computing and communications over the first three years of the project.
“The spin-off benefits of this project are sky-high,” Mr Slack said.
“It will also provide the infrastructure necessary for further space-related endeavours in Queensland and provide more ‘high- technology’ jobs for Queenslanders
“Foreign firms currently provide much of the advanced space products and technology used in Australia.
Graduating actors Wayne Blair and Rebecca Clarke prepare to launch into their careers
Continued Page 3
With total preferences for QUT courses running at more than 45,000, QUT will easily fill its 6,500 new undergraduate places in 1998.
By early October, first-preference applications from school leavers wanting to study at QUT had already risen 10 per cent over last year, with non-school leavers up 3 per cent.
The biggest increases in demand have been in the faculties of Science, Law and Information Technology, with applications for interfaculty double- degree courses also up significantly.
Department of Student Administration director Ray Morley said, given QUT’s large mid-year intake this year, “we are pleased to have maintained our market share of university first preferences for February entry”.
He said QUT expected to enrol a total of 5,900 postgraduate students — 1,700 of them full fee-paying — for 1998.
“Around 900 of these postgraduate students will be completing research degrees,” Mr Morley said.
He said despite a difficult economic climate in some South-East Asian
countries, international applications had risen slightly.
“To date, the majority of acceptances are from Singaporean students entering advanced standing programs in engineering and information technology.”
Mr Morley cautioned that currency fluctuations and low exchange rates could encourage some students to defer acceptance payment in the short term.
“But we’re expecting an increase in late acceptances closer to the beginning of semester one next year,” he said.“By F e b r u a r y , m o r e t h a n 2 , 3 0 0
international students will be enrolled in degree programs and a further 500 students will be joining English language and academic programs in the newly c r e a t e d Q U T I n t e r n a t i o n a l College early in 1998.”
In terms of overall student numbers in 1998, QUT will have m o r e t h a n 3 0 , 0 0 0 s t u d e n t s enrolled, making it the fourth or f i f t h l a r g e s t u n i v e r s i t y i n Australia.
— Trina McLellan
Demand continues to be strong for QUT courses
From the Inside… by Gaynor Cardew
(David Hawke is away)A word from the Vice-Chancellor
Thanks to some valuable work done throughout this year in response to student feedback, QUT has streamlined its enrolment procedures for the coming year, according to project co-ordinator Marion Hayes.
Ms Hayes said that, from October 24, students wanting to finalise their enrolment details for 1998 would have access to more useful information as well as an easier and faster process to deal with than in the past.
“The university’s new integrated enrolment guide has a totally new look, with a new section on course- related information as well as a useful, pull-out information directory,” Ms Hayes said.
“The new enrolment process is designed to help students check their study program and will provide a course summary sheet, course unit outlines and even a way to check their timetables before they finalise their enrolment form and submit these before the due date of November 7.
“Our new guide also has a checklist to remind students about any fees they have to meet as well as the essentials — such as the full-year study program, the class code for each unit, a reliable mailing address and their signatures.
“We’ve also included a survey form in the guide and an email address for comments on the changes so that students can tell us how they’re working.”
As in the past, Ms Hayes said, official timetables would be available on campus noticeboards. But, from October 24, the timetables would also be available via QUT’s home page (http://
www.qut.edu.au/) under “current students” or “prospective students”.
Similarly, she said, most course unit outlines would be accessible via the QUT home page and at various locations on campus (the Library, Student Enquiry Counters and at school/faculty offices) from October 24.
Ms Hayes said this year — for the first time — continuing students would be able to complete their 1998 enrolment forms on-line via QUT’s data warehouse.
“All that you’ll need to do is go to the data warehouse option on the home page, select your personal profile, enter your student user name and computer access password,” Ms Hayes said.
“From this site you’ll be able to complete both your 1998 enrolment form and your 1998 personal and statistical data form.
“You’ll also be able to access the 1998 Enrolment Guide, your timetable, course unit outlines and the QUT Handbook from the site.
“However, you will need to refer to the course summary sheet that’s sent to you with your enrolment package.”
Ms Hayes said many students were already used to checking their enrolment details through QUT’s on-line data warehouse.
However, she said, from mid- November — and allowing at least a 10-day buffer from when new details are fed into QUT’s system — students could dial 0055 71105 from a touchtone telephone and use the keypad to interact with QUT’s student information system to check their current enrolment status.
“A recorded voice will guide you through a series of steps to check your enrolment,”
Ms Hayes explained. “This service will be available 8am-11pm Sundays to Fridays and 10am-11pm Saturdays at a charge of 75 cents a minute.”
Summer school speeds study
While the summer vacation traditionally conjures up images of holidays and relaxing, for a growing number of people it is being seized as an opportunity to fast-track their university degree through study.
QUT’s Summer Program has rapidly grown to meet increasing demand from full-time and part-time students and, this summer, will offer more than 50 postgraduate and undergraduate subjects.
Members of the public, QUT students, international students and students enrolled at other universities can complete subjects in less than three months from December 1997.
QUT Vice-Chancellor Professor Dennis Gibson said there was an increasing awareness in the tertiary education sector of a growing market of students and professionals who saw summer study as a chance to speed up their course progression.
“We have recognised that many students also want to make up time lost because of mid-year entry, or undertake
a subject of personal interest to them,”
Professor Gibson said.
“The QUT Summer Program is most definitely part of the changing face of education — the days of university facilities lying idle outside the 28 weeks of semester are now over.”
New and existing students have been quick to embrace the idea of spending their summer studying, with student numbers enrolling in summer school subjects more than doubling to 450 last year.
Director of QUT’s Student Administration Department Ray Morley said students had recognised there were a number of advantages to enrolling to study during the vacation.
“Students find the experience of study is more focused — the campus is less crowded, the classes are generally smaller and there are fewer distractions which gives them a sense of greater concentration,” Mr Morley said.
“QUT also has a network of support services in place for summer program students, including extended library
opening hours and extended access to computer laboratories.
“Limited on-campus, user-pays car parking is also provided during the vacation and on-campus accommodation is available at Kelvin Grove campus.”
In the 1997-98 QUT Summer Program, a range of undergraduate subjects will be offered by the faculties of Arts, Built Environment and Engineering, Business and Science.
P o s t g r a d u a t e s u b j e c t s w i l l b e offered through the faculties of B u s i n e s s , L a w a n d S c i e n c e . A l l subjects will be taught at QUT’s Gardens Point campus. Full fees apply to some subjects.
A full list of subjects to be run is to appear in the Saturday edition of The Courier-Mail on October 25.
For more details about the 1997-98 Summer Program, subjects and lecture dates contact QUT Student Administration Enquiries at email:
qut.saenquiries@qut.edu.au or phone (07) 3864 5408.
‘Unitaste’
dates set
The annual Unitaste program — a three-day program offered to two dozen academically-able high school students with disabilities
— will again run at Gardens Point campus this year from December 9 to 12.
Faculty staff are invited to offer workshops of about an hour’s duration to participating students.
A principal goal of the program is to heighten these students’
interest in university and, by providing first-hand experiences, to help them understand and plan for future study in higher education.
In previous years, the program has proved to be the turning point in some students’ decisions on tertiary study. Faculty staff able to offer a workshop to these students, or wanting more information on the program, should contact Glenda Page on (07) 3864 4504.
Keeping the kids occupied during the summer holiday break is usually a challenge, but over the coming holidays, QUT’s Carseldine campus will come to the rescue with multi-sport adventure camps.
Open to all children aged from six to 13, the day camps offer a wide variety of sporting and outdoor activities, supervised by instructors drawn from QUT’s education, human movement or leisure management courses.
QUT Student Guild sports department manager Dr Don Gordon said the program was designed to provide all participants with an opportunity to try sports they may not have tried before.
“The activities allow for all types of sporting background and skills levels,”
he said.
“More than 15 sports are offered a t t h e t w o c a m p s , i n c l u d i n g volleyball, tennis, athletics, ropes courses, swimming, canoeing and football, to name some.
“The younger children participate in the modified Aussie sports versions.”
Dr Gordon said the camps would run from January 5 to 9 and January 19 to 23, 1997, with costs, including lunch and morning/afternoon teas, at $109 a child (with discounts for multiple attendees).
Contact Adam McNiven on (07) 3864 4716 or (07) 3359 3643.
QUT recently introduced new reporting rules for staff receiving gifts which will make the noting of gifts, their sources and their values important for all staff.
Gifts with a market value of $100 and over now must be reported to the Finance
Manager within 14 days of receipt, with reportable gifts including hospitality, travel and property. If a staff member accepts two or more gifts from the same donor in a 12- month period, and the value of those gifts in total exceeds $100, all gifts must be reported.
Carseldine to host kids’
sports adventure camps
New rules for receiving gifts
The last issue of Inside QUT for 1997 is a good occasion to reflect on the year past and to look forward to 1998.
Former Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs Senator Amanda Vanstone signalled the immediate future for higher education in Australia in her budget statement of August 1996 — greater private contribution to the costs of higher education, steady or falling public subsidy of the sector, and more financial and academic autonomy for universities.
I n 1 9 9 7 w e h a v e s e e n t h e c o n s e q u e n c e s o f t h i s n e w d i r e c t i o n ; i n 1 9 9 8 w e w i l l probably see these consequences even more sharply.
Next year, for example, will see the first intake of fee-paying undergraduate students at some universities and the impact of t h e s h a r p e s t a n n u a l c u t i n operating grants.
The Commonwealth Government’s West committee, which reports in February 1998, may bring further movement towards a decentralised funding model for universities.
For QUT, the challenge is to maintain quality at a time of shrinking public resources.
F o r s t u d e n t s , t h e n e w arrangements mean they now pay, either through HECS or tuition fees, an historically large
Looking back on the year
proportion of the cost of their courses.
More than ever in this user- pays environment students can expect quality in the teaching a n d n o n - a c a d e m i c s e r v i c e s universities provide.
I would like to thank both staff and students for helping QUT to cope with these changes over the past year.
This university has built up in a comparatively short time a solid intellectual and corporate i d e n t i t y w h i c h h a s s t o o d i t i n g o o d s t e a d t h r o u g h a c h a l l e n g i n g a n d s o m e t i m e s difficult year.
I look forward to working with you in the year ahead.
— Professor Dennis Gibson
QUT adopts streamlined
enrolment processes
TYNAN ROBB
15 x 3 P3
SPOT BLUE
From Page 1
“If Australia is to secure long-term benefits, both in intellectual and economic terms, we must foster space research and the development of an Australian space capability.”
Mr Slack said the Commonwealth Government was likely to provide a
further $4 million towards research and development in the lead-up to the launch of FedSat 1.
FedSat 1 is to be developed by the Brisbane Satellite Systems laboratory which is part of the Commonwealth Government’s recently announced Co- operative Research Centre for Satellite
Systems which, while based at the CSIRO in Canberra, has laboratories at QUT and at the University of South Australia. Other organisations involved in the CRC’s satellite programs include the University of Newcastle, Auspace, the ARIES consortium and VIPAC.
. . . Government funds boost venture
School of Electrical and Electronic Systems Engineering head Professor Miles Moody and State Minister for Economic Development and Trade Doug Slack with a model of a satellite similar to FedSat 1
Drug side-effects causing dilemmas for mental
health consumers
by Carmen Myler
P e o p l e w i t h m e n t a l i l l n e s s e s a r e cutting themselves off from society because the y a re em ba rra s se d by devastating side-effects from their medication, researchers at QUT have found.
Side-effects can lead to consumers n o t t a k i n g t h e i r m e d i c a t i o n a n d running the risk of hospitalisation, acting head of the Centre for Mental Health Nursing Research at QUT Associate Professor Paul Morrison said.
Professor Morrison said health professionals who looked after people with mental illnesses were often “not very good” at identifying, assessing and managing side-effects.
He said anti-psychotic medications c o u l d c a u s e a s m a n y a s 4 0 s i d e e f f e c t s , i n c l u d i n g d e p r e s s i o n , excessive salivation and restlessness.
Nurses and other case managers (such as social workers), he said, tended to focus on just three or four
“main” side-effects and often referred mental health consumers back to their doctors, rather than helping them manage their difficulties.
P r o f e s s o r M o r r i s o n h a s b e e n working with School of Nursing senior lecturers Thomas Meehan and Deanne Gaskill on a study which examines the impact of side-effects o n p e o p l e w i t h s e r i o u s m e n t a l illnesses such as schizophrenia.
“ T h e s e p e o p l e r e l y o n t h i s medication as maintenance medication, just to keep them ticking over and surviving in the community,” Professor Morrison said.
“Lots of professional staff often look to the medication trolley to give another medication to counteract the s i d e - e f f e c t s , b u t t h e r e a r e m a n y useful things people can do which are very effective.
Sedentary activities feed into childhood obesity
from physiological principals to clinical applications, Professor B a r - O r s a i d h e w o u l d b e incorporating some Australian data in the work.
Canada and becoming an issue i n A u s t r a l i a i s t h e s a f e t y o f children.
“Years ago, parents would let their children go down to the street, park or playground, but now there is a reluctance to do so (unaccompanied) and children h a v e l e s s o p p o r t u n i t y t o g e t active.”
O n t h e i s s u e o f f o o d consumption, Dr Bar-Or said there had been hardly any change in the total energy consumption in North America in the past 10 to 20 years.
But, he said, there had been a s u r p r i s i n g d e c r e a s e i n f a t consumption so it could be a combination of not eating the right types of food and not enough activity.
“Basically, it’s a balance of how many calories go into the body and how many calories are used by the body,” Dr Bar-Or said.
“ B u t , d a t a o n t h e g e n e r a l population suggest s that there has been little if any increase in calorie consumption, so it leaves u s w i t h t h e a s s u m p t i o n t h a t t h e r e m u s t b e a d e c r e a s e i n activities.”
Dr Bar-Or said he believed the problem should be tackled from the highest level, with discussions a n d p o l i c y i m p l e m e n t a t i o n between health and education authorities.
He said there was a dichotomy w h e r e , o n o n e h a n d , h e a l t h a u t h o r i t i e s r e c o g n i s e d t h e importance of increased juvenile activity while the education systems in various countries were phasing out physical education in schools.
H e a d d e d t h a t m o r e f u n d s should be directed towards the area of prevention as management of juvenile obesity had been very dissappointing.
by Noel Gentner
Juvenile obesity is a huge problem.
In fact, a QUT Visiting Fellow has described it as an epidemic.
A world-renowned researcher in paediatric exercise science, P r o f e s s o r O d e d B a r - O r i s i n Brisbane for two months as part of his sabbatical leave and data- gathering for a new book he is writing.
Professor of Paediatrics at the McMaster University in Canada and a director of the Children’s Exercise and Nutrition Centre in Hamilton, Ontario, Professor Bar- Or said childhood obesity was increasing at a very fast rate.
“We are now reaching the stage where about a quarter of our children can be considered obese,”
Dr Bar-Or said.
“You might say, ‘So what?’ but, if you look at the situation 10 to 20 years ago, the numbers were much smaller.
“And, if you extrapolate this curve, in another 10 years, maybe 30 or 35 per cent of kids will be overweight.
“You might say again, ‘So what?’
“The kids are a little chubby, but we have now data showing that if someone is obese as an adolescent, later in life they will have a much greater risk of developing a number of health problems, including c o r o n a r y h e a r t d i s e a s e a n d hypertension, even if they are not obese as adults.
“This data is relatively recent and it’s frightening, because these are diseases that increase mortality.”
Professor Bar-Or said there was data from North America and Australia which showed that, in the past decade, there had been an increase of about 25 per cent in the prevalence of juvenile obesity.
In the process of writing a book titled Paediatric exercise medicine
He said there were a number of factors contributing to the high incidence of juvenile obesity, one of which was attributed to the present technological age.
“ T h e r e i s a v e r y s t r o n g relationship between the number of hours a child watches television and the likelihood of that child becoming obese,” Professor Bar- Or said.
“ W h e t h e r i t b e t e l e v i s i o n viewing or computer games or other pursuits, generally speaking we are getting more incentives to be sedentary and fewer incentives to be active.
“ A n o t h e r p r o b l e m w h i c h i s acute in the United States and
Dr Bar-Or from McMaster University in Canada . . . juvenile obesity is an epidemic
with a quarter of our children considered to be obese, a number which could rise to as
much as 35 per cent in the next decade
“ F o r e x a m p l e , m a n y p e o p l e experience excessive salivation and drooling as side-effects.
“Now, if you’re out at a party and you’re drooling, it can be devastating to your social life — so many people don’t go out and they get isolated and lonely.
“It reinforces your view of yourself a s a d e v i a n t a n d y o u d o n ’ t g e t opportunities to mix with people — everybody knows that is a crucial aspect of rehabilitation.
“A simple solution is chewing gum w h i c h d i s g u i s e s t h e s a l i v a t i o n problem.”
Professor Morrison said the team’s one-year study, which was nearing completion, involved interviews with c o m m u n i t y c a s e m a n a g e r s a n d mental health consumers taking anti- psychotic drugs.
C o n s u m e r s w e r e r e q u i r e d t o undergo a self-assessment exercise, rating the frequency and intensity of side-effects.
The second phase of the study, w h i c h h a s b e e n f u n d e d b y t h e C o m m o n w e a l t h D e p a r t m e n t o f Health and Family Services, involved training case managers in assessment and management techniques through a series of workshops.
P r o f e s s o r M o r r i s o n s a i d t h e y h o p e d t o d e v e l o p t h e t r a i n i n g package for wider use in the mental health community, but needed to conduct a much larger, quantitative study before that would be feasible.
“This is a small-scale, exploratory study and one of the things we have on our agenda is to try to get funding to complete a State-wide survey,”
he said.
“ I f w e w e r e t o r e p l i c a t e t h e findings we got in our study, that w o u l d b e a p r e t t y s i g n i f i c a n t statement of the nature and extent of the problem.”
SUPERTECH COMPUTERS
7x2
NATIONAL MINI
STORAGE 10 X 2
by Carmen Myler
A study of the technological literacy levels of QUT students has shown that formal, integrated technology s t u d i e s h a v e a h u g e i m p a c t o n students’ skills levels.
The project, Foundation Resources for Technological Literacy (TechLit), — a co-operative venture between the faculties of Art and Education and the Division of Information Services — included a survey of 720 QUT students over two semesters.
Project team members Michael Ryan (a lecturer in the School of Maths, Science and Technology Education), Suellen Tapsall (an associate lecturer in the School of M e d i a a n d J o u r n a l i s m ) a n d educational media advisor Kerry Bagdon worked on the paper with higher education program evaluator D u n c a n N u l t y ( A c a d e m i c S t a f f Development Unit) and research assistant Jill Ryan.
The two lecturers said assuming that all students were ready to embrace notions of flexible delivery in the classroom was a mistake.
“The assumption has been ‘look at all the computers out there, of course students know how to use them’ and the reason this survey is so important is that it shows us, at least with these 720 students, that they’re not all coming in
Survey shows extent of student technology literacy
with some sort of knowledge — quite the opposite,” Mrs Tapsall said.
“Chances are, lecturers are going to be confronted in the one classroom at the same time with students who know nothing and students who know more than they do and, somehow, they have to meet the needs of all of those students.”
Mr Ryan said the survey showed significant differences in the skills levels of third-semester students who had completed formal, integrated training in information technology in first year and those who had not.
“For example, 76 per cent of students who had training had used a search program or web page to look up
references for an assignment, compared to only 30 per cent of other students,”
Mr Ryan said.
“Two thirds of those students had used e-mail to discuss work with their lecturers, compared to just 12 per cent of students who’d had no training.
“Also, even though all QUT students are given the opportunity to log onto a network with a password, only 51 per cent of students who had not had training did log on, compared to the 96 per cent who had studied technological skills in their course.”
Mr Ryan said the survey also raised questions about many common perceptions about age and gender determining who was technologically literate and who was not.
The project, which was funded by a $10,000 QUT teaching and learning grant, has culminated in the creation of a website which the project team is d e v e l o p i n g t o e n a b l e s t a f f a n d students to access technological l i t e r a c y t e a c h i n g a n d l e a r n i n g resources.
Mrs Tapsall said the LitKit site was a student interface which tried to address the problem for academic staff who either wanted to use, or were already using, technology in their teaching, but did not know if their students were ready.
“This site is where a student can come in and find out about communicating,
QUT radiography student Karla Strong finds it is no trouble to combine her studies with duties as an Army Reservist. Private Strong has been helping the Army Reserves use its newly- operational Parakeet satellite communications system to digitally transfer X-rays from casualties on the “battlefield” to specialists thousands of kilometres away for quick diagnosis. She helped test the system during the Army Reserves’ recent
“Vampire Bite” exercise at Wide Bay, near Maryborough.
(Photograph by Mal Lancaster, Defence PR)
Fieldwork appeals to reservist radiographer
Suellen Tapsall . . . we can’t assume students can use computers
using resources, finding things and using technology for study,” she said.
“We wanted to give lecturers some options if they were going to use technology so they did not have to work out for themselves how to teach t h e I n t e r n e t , o r h o w t o u s e a computer, because they’re not IT professionals,” Mrs Tapsall said.
“We were also aware that there’d be academics who didn’t want to incorporate technology in that way so we wanted to point them to a suite of resources which they could access t h e m s e l v e s o r d i r e c t s t u d e n t s towards.”
The TechLit team has applied for a large QUT teaching and learning grant for 1998 to develop a number of resources and pilot them.
“These are the results for 720 s t u d e n t s , w h i c h i s a f a i r l y significant sample, but we’d like to repeat the study and expand it if the project goes on in 1998,” Mrs Tapsall said.
“There are some really significant findings for us as a university and questions which we cannot answer on the basis of this study — such as, whether we should be concerned about building big computer labs o r w h e t h e r w e s h o u l d b e i n v e s t i g a t i n g w a y s t o e n a b l e students to have their own home computers.”
Singapore exchange turns a few heads
An overseas study exchange to Singapore by QUT Business student Peter Johnson has caused a surprising reaction with students at Nanyang Technological University.
According to the university’s n e w s p a p e r , T h e C h r o n i c l e, m a n y o f t h e s t u d e n t s f r o m NTU were astonished to find themselves studying alongside a man of Mr Johnson’s age.
Mr Johnson is 44 and, while it might be commonplace for classrooms at QUT to contain a mix of young and middle-aged, it is obviously far from the norm at NTU.
In an article by Goh Hui Kheng, students who attended an orientation camp admitted they were initially “scared and hesitant”, and felt “uneasy and weird” about studying with someone so senior.
Their fears, they discovered, were unfounded as Mr Johnson won them over by tackling camp activities with plenty of enthusiasm and zeal.
He also joined in the Inter-Block Games, coached a tug-of-war team, and joined the 4x100m relay, a rugby match and swimming competition.
The father of four has worked in the Royal Australian Army for 23 years and is now pursuing an
undergraduate business degree at QUT to enhance his opportunities in management.
Q U T s i g n e d a n e x c h a n g e agreement with NTU in 1994 and sent its first students there earlier this year.
Since the agreement was signed, QUT has hosted 13 exchange students from the Singapore university.
— Carmen Myler For international students who
have lived in Australia for several years, going home can often be a time of mixed feelings.
To help with the readjustment process, QUT’s International Student Services conducts Returning Home Workshops for graduating international students.
International student advisor and workshop co- ordinator, Rachael Andersen, said the half-day workshops were run twice-yearly, towards the end of each semester.
“We had over 90 registrations (at the most recent workshop), which was an excellent response,” Ms Andersen said.
“Speakers at the workshop were ISS advisors and Counselling and Careers advisors.
“We talked about what we call the ‘W curve of adjustment’. It’s kind of a reverse cultural shock when students go home.
“The first half of the ‘W’ is when the students come to Australia and confront the different lifestyle here, and the
second half is when, having adjusted to life in Australia, they return home and have to go through the process again in reverse.”
Ms Andersen said most of the students doubted they would go through this experience on their return home.
“It comes as quite a surprise to many of them that they do have a cultural and emotional adjustment to make when they get home,” Ms Andersen said.
“Mostly it’s just feeling a little unsettled and out of place. But this normally passes quickly, particularly once they start working.”
Other issues covered in the workshop included providing the students with job search techniques and strategies, immigration and visa issues and keeping in touch with QUT through Alumni chapters overseas.
For the first time this year, an ISS publication called Transitions was developed and would be circulated to all international graduating students, Ms Andersen said.
— Glenys Haalebos
Workshops help
prepare those
returning home
QUT’s School of Humanities has launched an eye-opening “man-in-hat” poster designed to entice students from other faculties to consider a humanities subject.
Acting Head of School Dr Wayne Hindsley said the distinctive poster —␣ with its large picture of a quizzical, world-weary man — was designed to capture students’ attention and their imagination.
“The poster invites students who have a couple of spare units in their QUT degree to use them to find out what the rest of the world is doing,” Dr Hindsley said.
“The man’s bemused look, askew hat and quirkiness seemed just the thing to remind students that QUT’s School of Humanities has an array of electives in things such as indigenous literature, ethnicity, foreign affairs, revolutions, conspiracies, ecological disasters and market ethics.
“The man-in-the hat seems to be saying
‘study me, find out what happens in my world, find out what happens to ordinary people caught in the maelstrom of late 20th century change’.”
The unusual photograph was taken by QUT Publications and Printing graphic designer Jason Tweedie during a trip through India in 1992.
NORTH QUAY HOTEL
25x2
Around 260 graduates from the Faculty of Business have been told that their careers in the 21st Century could be likened to Tarzan in the jungle.
The graduation ceremony for accountancy, economics and finance, and management students was addressed by Dr David Wyatt, the managing director of Brisbane-based company PanBio Pty Ltd and QUT’s Outstanding Alumni of the Year in 1996.
“You will have your little bag of skills and experience, and will survey the jungle before swinging across on your vine to what looks like an attractive position,” Dr Wyatt said.
“Attractive will be defined largely by how much this position can allow you to learn and develop new skills and experience.
“If that slows or stops, it will be time to swing out to another tree.”
Dr Wyatt said jobs and organisations were no longer for life.
At the Health and Business graduation ceremony on October 14, guest speaker Professor Michael Clinton was conferred with the title of Professor Emeritus.
Professor Clinton, pictured right, has been School of Nursing head for eight years and leaves QUT to become professor of clinical nursing at Ashford Community Hospital in Adelaide and Ashford professor of nursing at the University of South Australia in November.
During his time at QUT, Professor Clinton has developed the school’s academic profile and research base and established the successful Centre for Mental Health Nursing Research, of which he has been director.
Addressing 250 graduates, he said that, quality improvement in a cost-constrained environment would continue to be a major theme in the public or private health sectors.
“With the rationalisation of health care as a reality, it will be necessary for the rights of those who cannot advocate effectively on their own behalf to be protected,” he said.
“These are not matters that can be left to some vague notion of the wider community, members of the health professions and the business community.
“Those graduates who will take up positions in health services are graduating at a time of immense change in Australian health care.”
Emeritus professor bids farewell Alumnist urges grads to
‘swing’ in their careers
“I’m sure you realise that your degree is a bit like a credit card — you need to keep topping up the balance or it will be worthless,” Dr Wyatt said. “The content largely expires within about five years.”
Dr Wyatt’s formal academic studies have covered a wide range of disciplines over more than 20 years of entirely part-time studies.
He has a Bachelor of Applied Science (medical science), a Graduate Diploma of Education (Tertiary), a PhD in cancer immunology and an MBA.
However, Dr Wyatt said, taking risks and actually doing things in life would inevitably result in disappointments and failures.
“Developing the insight to learn from failure will be one of the most valuable life skills you can have,” Dr Wyatt said.
“Life wasn’t meant to be easy, it is a challenging journey and the bigger the challenges to overcome the more rewarding it is.”
— Noel Gentner Professor Clinton said the challenge to
graduates was to use their developing expertise to make a difference to health advancement, particularly for disadvantaged groups.
“Unfortunately, the health care sector shares with other large organisations the characteristic that its organisational structures always lag behind the challenges they are intended to address,” Professor Clinton said.
“In light of the struggle of the Australian health care sector to reform its organisational structures sufficiently to impact on health outcomes, it is likely health care reform will continue without demonstrable improvements in health status.”
Professor Clinton said business graduates would also be faced with challenges, with economic globalisation well established and business opportunities to be pursued, particularly in South-East Asia and China.
by Andrea Hammond
For QUT’s first Faculty of Law dean Tom Cain AM, this year’s graduation ceremony was not only a chance for him to speak to graduating students, but also to receive an honorary doctorate from the university.
While the former dean was official guest speaker at the combined graduation for students from the faculties of Law, Built E n v i r o n m e n t a n d E n g i n e e r i n g , a n d Information Technology on October 15, he was also acknowledged for his contribution to the university over many years.
QUT Vice-Chancellor Professor Dennis Gibson told a packed Concert Hall at the Queensland Performing Arts Complex that Mr Cain had founded a law school with a real commitment to meeting the needs of the legal profession.
“He joined the then QIT in 1976 as foundation head of our Law School which took its first students in 1977,” Professor Gibson said.
“This required recruiting staff, drafting the curriculum, negotiating with formal professional bodies for accreditation and liaising with the Law Society, Bar Association and judges over several years to ensure recognition of the undergraduate law course.
First law dean gets honorary doctorate
“Soon after, he added the one-year postgraduate Legal Practice Course which remains the only course offered in Queensland as an alternative to articles of clerkship.
“A Master of Arts and barrister, Mr Cain was awarded the Australian Medal for his services to education and law in 1988, before
his retirement as Dean of Law at QUT the following year.
“During this so-called retirement, he became Professor of Law at Bond University and taught in the Law Faculty at the University of Technology, Sydney.”
Professor Gibson said that, apart from his contribution to legal education in Queensland, Mr Cain was also a driving force in the establishment of the QUT Foundation.
Mr Cain told graduating students that a QUT degree was well regarded by the professions, business, government and other universities in Australia and overseas.
“You will find that the knowledge and skills which you acquired during your course will be very useful to you in your work and also a good basis for continuing education,” he said.
He reflected on the colourful history of QIT/
QUT — the decision to introduce traditional academic dress in the “Cambridge pattern” and the institution’s first 1970s’ graduation ceremonies which had no music, fanfare or academic processions.
He also told graduating students about the achievements of the QUT Law School (and later faculty), including its involvement in the introduction of double degree courses and the awarding of honours in four-year full-time degree courses.
Dr Hindsley said the School of Humanities offered single units which fitted the degree structure of most faculties and schools within QUT.
Some are offered in flexible delivery mode, including a new option of weekend workshops, where units are offered over three Saturdays
spread across the semester, instead of the normal 14-week delivery mode.
“For example, Classical World Greece is being offered on Saturdays at Gardens Point and Pacific Islands Since 1945 on Saturdays at Carseldine campus,” Dr Hindsley said.
“Other humanities units will be offered in 1998 in normal lecture-tutorial mode at Gardens Point, including Modern Japan, and Australian Politics and Pacific Islands Since 1945.
“Australian Society & Culture and Contemporary Moral Issues will be offered at Gardens Point and Kelvin Grove campuses.
“For the adventurous interested in the Pacific region, there is also a two-week overseas fieldwork and workshop option — Advanced Seminar in Asia-Pacific Studies (Pacific fieldwork) — which can be taken in the mid-year break.
“These new offerings at QUT offer an alternative pathway for students juggling week- day work commitments and study. They also offer a chance to pick up extra subjects on top of a normal four unit, 14-week delivery semester load,” Dr Hindsley said.
Details on humanities units being offered in 1998 can be found at the school’s website (htpp:/
/www.hum.qut.edu.au/), or by ringing the school office on (07) 3864 4563.
Inaugural Law dean Tom Cain AM acknowledged for contribution to QUT
Mystery man to lure people to humanities
By Noel Gentner
Sexually abused women are already benefiting from the findings of a recent pilot study conducted by QUT’s School of Public Health and Family Planning Queensland.
QUT PhD candidate Ms Margot Ffrench was invited to join the study last year and her doctoral project is calledThe health status and support needs of women who have been sexually abused.
Ms Ffrench, a research officer with the Criminal Justice Commission in Brisbane, said the study aimed to identify ways in which primary and s e c o n d a r y p r e v e n t i o n p r o g r a m s c o u l d b e b e s t d e v e l o p e d a n d implemented for women who had been sexually abused.
She said most of the current research on sexual assault was “American-based”
and, except for some recent publications, there was limited Australian epidemiological data.
The chief investigators for the study are Ms Ffrench’s supervisor, QUT senior lecturer Dr Michael Dunne, and Family Planning Queensland’s researchers Kelsey Powell and Leane Christie.
Ms Ffrench said Family Planning Queensland wanted to obtain a better understanding of the experiences clients had endure, as a means of improving services.
“Quite often we treat the symptoms instead of the cause,” Ms Ffrench said.
“There is a strong association between sexual assault and poor physical or psychological health.
“You can pick up the symptom and put a band-aid on it but, unless you address the cause, it might not overcome the problem.”
Ms Ffrench said there were a number of negative perceptions of sexual violence victims which, perpetuated by cultural myths, permeated institutions such as the legal system.
She said these myths all shifted the focus from the perpetrator to the victim.
Common myths included:
• sexual violence was most often committed by sexually aroused and violent strangers;
• only young and attractive women were sexually assaulted;
Study to support abused women
• if a sexually assaulted women was not physically harmed, she would not suffer any long-term effects;
• a woman impaired by drugs or alcohol
“deserved” to be sexually assaulted;
• even though a woman said “no” she actually meant “yes” and enjoyed being forced to have intercourse; and
• if a woman didn’t fight back she consented.
The pilot study involved 50 female volunteers from the Fortitude Valley and Mt Gravatt Family Planning Clinics.
All participants were aged between 18 and 35 years and the majority were either married or in a relationship.
“The pilot study findings revealed that 22 per cent of participants had been raped and a similar percentage had experienced attempted rape,” Ms Ffrench said.
“The majority of the perpetrators of the assault were known to the victim and alcohol misuse by the perpetrators appeared to be a significant factor associated with many assaults.
“There are a number of women who don’t tell anybody.
“In the pilot study we had 36 per cent of our respondents who had never told anybody of their experience.”
Ms Ffrench said this was not unusual.
She said she had found similarities with her experience as national co- ordinator for an epidemiological project with Vietnam veterans.
“We conducted very long interviews, and for a lot of those guys we were the first person they spoke to about their experiences in Vietnam, despite the fact that some had been back in Australia for 25 years or more,” she said.
“Already Family Planning Queensland has made some changes because it recognises that simply asking women about their experiences opens up a whole range of needs.”
Ms Ffrench said only 18 per cent of women interviewed had reported the incident to the police.
When asked if they were satisfied with the response, about 60 per cent replied that they were.
This lack of action on the part of women could be due to factors such as
feelings of guilt, shame, violation by someone they trusted and social stigma, Ms Ffrench said.
The public nature of legal proceedings and fear of reprisal by the perpetrator were also real barriers, she said.
W i t h t h e p i l o t s t u d y n o w complete, researchers have already entered into the next phase of their investigations.
“We have started a major study involving another 470 women recruited through Family Planning Queensland,”
Ms Ffrench said.
“A total of about 150 face-to-face interviews have already been carried out and we should finish by February next year.
“In July we propose to re-interview all previous study participants to detect any changes in their health and general outlook.”
Ms Ffrench said that, in the longer term, the project should enable the development of effective educational programs and provide information for policies to develop support services.
by Andrea Hammond
Young unemployed people are unfairly branded as likely criminals by the media and society at large, according to QUT corrective services lecturer Dr Tricia Fox.
There was an emerging social trend to believe that an unemployed person was lazy, prone to fraudulent activity and predisposed to criminal activity, Dr Fox said.
“The relationship between criminal behaviour and unemployment is, at best, doubtful and certainly not proven,” she said.
“We should reassess the perception of the unemployed and take in the reality that there are not enough jobs to go around and that just because people are unemployed doesn’t mean they are all bad or are going to be criminals.
“A small percentage, maybe 15 per cent, would be offenders and re-offenders. Yet the public perception of the number of crimes committed by unemployed young people would run to about 90 per cent.”
Dr Fox — who is studying the media and its role in stereotyping young people — said the media was largely to blame for the public image of young, unemployed people and was feeding off perceptions in the community.
“In the past 12 months I’ve looked at Melbourne Age, Courier-Mail and Sydney Morning Herald articles specifically related to young people and young people in conflict with the law,” she said.
“Over and over again, they use descriptors or adjectives that do not clearly state, but infer, that being unemployed equals criminal.”
Young and unemployed does not mean you are a criminal – social science researcher
Dr Fox said she believed young unemployed people often drew unfair criticism because they were “highly visible”
in community spaces such as malls and shopping centres.
“As a society, we have this propensity to align the unemployed label to criminal behaviour in the broader
sense and there is a feeling in society that our juveniles are out of control — and that’s just not right,” she said.
Dr Fox’s research has been published in Unemployment Policy and Practice, available from QUT’s School of Social Science and the Carseldine campus bookshop.
Global design council
elects academic
An international design council has elected QUT industrial design co-ordinator Associate Professor Vesna Popovic, pictured above, to be its Australian representative.
Professor Popovic will attend her first meetings as an executive board member of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) in Turin, Italy, from November 6 to 12.
The well-known industrial designer and educator said her new role with ICSID would give her an opportunity to be part of a body which contributed to the future of industrial design internationally.
ICSID is a world-wide, non- government organisation which attempts to enrich the vision and understanding of current issues in industrial design and to foster a deeper, more global understanding of design.
Founded in 1957, the ICSID has membership which includes more than 100 industrial design organisations from 40 different countries. Its core consists of promotional, professional and educational members.
Professor Popovic said the council had a core of promotional, professional and educational members and she hoped her portfolio would be education.
“I would like to try to integrate research with the industrial design profession on a global level as much as I can and I want to achieve this through education,” she said.
“I’d also like to look at what the profile of professional industrial designers might be in the future and what body of knowledge will be required to equip these professionals — which is very much in line with what we do at QUT.
“We need to assist industrial design professionals to learn how they can use research from educational institutions in their work to bring about a better quality of design and to bring design to a level that will be acceptable by users and better received by the community and industry,” she said.
Professor Popovic said she thought her election to the board would strengthen the profile of QUT’s industrial design course nationally and internationally.
— Carmen Myler
Ms Margot Ffrench . . . asking women about their experiences opened up a whole range of needs
Dr Tricia Fox . . . society unfairly believes unemployed people are predisposed to crime
by Andrea Hammond
Three QUT academics are investigating ways to clean up heavily polluted waters which are threatening the livelihood and health of families living in a small fishing village in Vietnam.
The trio — Dr Kathryn Gow from the School of Social Science and Dr Abdullah Shanableh and Dr John Liston from the School of Civil Engineering — hope a preliminary study of the Ben Suc village in southern Vietnam will be a catalyst for further grants.
QUT has already provided a $10,500 community service grant for the team to visit the village and prepare a report on sanitation, water, roads and methods for treating gross pollution of the waterways where the people fish.
Dr Kathryn Gow — who was profoundly shocked by the dire poverty, death and disease in the village when she visited it “by accident” earlier this year
Trio unite in search of real-world solutions for impoverished Vietnamese villagers
— said she hoped Ben Suc could become a model village.
“We are hoping this initial grant from QUT will lead to others that will enable us to implement our recommendations and help establish a basic level of living conditions that will help save lives,” she said.
“Until you visit these places, it is hard to image the poverty in which some people live.
“It (Ben Suc) is a village of dirt and mud walls where there is no drainage and the people fish from water which is polluted with effluent.
“Because there is no fresh water or no plumbing in any of the houses — and only one tap in the centre of the village that gives untreated water — the children frequently die of diseases such as black water fever. When the monsoons come, everything floods.”
About 1,400 people – or 260 families – live in the Ben Suc village in the Ba Ria-Vung Tau province.
by Noel Gentner
Researchers at QUT have had no problem attracting volunteers for a study investigating the learning experiences involved in playing video and computer games.
The study is investigating the e d u c a t i o n a l s i g n i f i c a n c e o f t h e cognitive processes teenagers engage in while playing video games.
A total of 25 sons and daughters of QUT staff are involved in the study b e i n g c o n d u c t e d b y S c h o o l o f Learning and Development lecturer Dr Hitendra Pillay and associate lecturer Joanne Brownlee.
Dr Pillay said the aim was to u n d e r s t a n d h o w c h i l d r e n a n d t e e n a g e r s a p p r o a c h e d c o m p u t e r g a m e i n f o r m a t i o n a n d t h e implications from this in addressing t h e e m e r g i n g m u l t i m e d i a educational environments.
He said five of the students had already completed the trials and further trials and interviews would be conducted this month.
“ L o o k i n g a t t h e e a r l y d a t a , p r e l i m i n a r y f i n d i n g s e m e r g i n g highlight two different approaches used by the students,” Dr Pillay said.
“One approach is purely trial and error, where a student will test all options to see if something works or doesn’t.
“Some players very often don’t look at the cues, they are so engrossed with just demolishing, breaking and doing other things that they don’t read the cues which are really part of the strategy of the game.
No shortage of young volunteers willing to play video, computer games for research
Dr Liston said the aim would be to investigate ways to find appropriate and easy solutions the Vietnamese people could implement themselves.
“What we’ve got to do is ensure whatever solutions we come up with are fairly adaptable and simple but will achieve the final result we are after,” he said.
Dr Shanableh, who has worked on water-treatment projects in Jordan, said the priority was to tackle the problem of polluted fishing waters which were killing fish and the livelihood of the villagers.
“Tackling the problem of public health and polluted waters is absolutely essential,” he said.
Dr Shanableh said QUT students would benefit from their lecturers’
participation in the project because it could be used as a teaching example in both engineering and organisational psychology lectures. The trio will travel to Ben Suc village in early January.
“Then there are others who are more ‘strategic’ and take more heed of cues presented on the screen — s u c h a s t i m e c o n s t r a i n t s , c u e directions and animated smiling faces
— which are all very important.
“We can then relate these strategies they are using (to play games) to what they would be required to have when
they are confronted with multimedia instructional devices.
“Both the games platform and some multimedia education systems operate on similar platforms, hence the potential for the transfer of knowledge.
“We may be able to develop ways of enhancing or linking the games skills to the school education system.”
D r P i l l a y s a i d a n u m b e r o f patterns were emerging in terms of how children interact ed with video games.
He said the next stage of the r e s e a r c h w o u l d i n v o l v e t h e complexities of categorising that interaction with other electronic tools and systems.
A report into the effects of politically motivated violence, e x i l e a n d r e s e t t l e m e n t o n refugee pre-school children w a s l a u n c h e d o n Q U T ’ s website as part of Refugee Week from October 12 to 18.
The AUSTCARE National Refugee Week involved five days of events, entertainment a n d g u e s t s p e a k e r s h e l d throughout Australia to focus on the plight of millions of children who make up more than half the world’s refugees.
Publishing on the WWW of the literature search and bibliography by Kris Bowpitt — a third-year Bachelor of Social Science (Psychology) student — was designed to raise awareness of refugee children’s needs.
It has been included in QUT’s site under pages operated by the Centre for Community and Cross-Cultural Studies, complementing a training kit and video produced by the Queensland Program of Assistance to Survivors of Torture and Trauma (QPASTT).
Independent Study: the effects of politically motivated violence, exile and resettlement on refugee school children can be found at http://www.qut.edu.au/pubs/
bsspsych_report/intro.html Right: Dr John Liston, Dr
Kathryn Gow and Dr Abdullah Shanableh discuss plans to
help solve chronic water pollution and public health problems in the village of Ben Suc . . . they hope to come up with solutions that will make the village a ‘model’ for other
communities in southern Vietnam
A strategic approach . . . study co-researcher Joanne Brownlee tests a computer game Left: Children playing in the
streets of Ben Suc . . . polluted fishing waters, unclean drinking water and annual
flooding in the monsoon season has left many children
at risk from deadly disease and infections
Plight of
refugee
children
examined
GAMSAT Preparation
courses 12x2
IC Technologies 10x3
Young people are not the uniform, homogenous group often referred to in marketing campaigns as “the youth market”, according to a QUT lecturer and director of a new play which attempts to redress this issue.
Co-ordinator of drama teaching studies at QUT Judith McLean is director of Juice, a QUT-Queensland Performing Arts Trust co- production running at the Cremorne Theatre from October 17 to 24.
Ms McLean said the play, which was designed for high school students, was an opportunity for young performers’ voices and talents to be heard and seen.
“In Juice, young people are not represented by adult actors playing stereotypes of teenagers, nor are they background ‘extras’,” Ms McLean said.
“In mainstream media, young people rarely get the chance to speak for themselves.
“Juice provides us with an opportunity to take a more in-depth look at the relationships young people have with their families and friends.”
Written by Stephen Davis, Juice was researched and workshopped with teachers, students and their parents from six Brisbane schools.
The story centres around a group of young people attempting to create their own “rite of passage” to celebrate the end of Year 10, but what begins as a small party turns into an event that has dire consequences
Ms McLean said Juice offered the audience a
“deeper connection” with the play because there would be extension work before and after the performances.
Young people have already warmed to the concept, with Juice sold out months ahead of its opening.
— Carmen Myler
Juicy production drips with talent
Prompted by rapid, significant and continual increases in network traffic since QUT’s campuses were first linked by microwave transmitters in 1993, the Computing Services Department has undertaken a massive upgrade of QUT’s network.
According to computing services associate director of communications, Ross Gorham, the recently completed three-year, $800,000 upgrade has concentrated on introducing cutting-edge technology to underpin the network for the whole university.
“In the middle of 1995, cross-network traffic at QUT averaged 79 gigabytes a day but, by May of this year, it was 224 gigabytes and rising,” Mr Gorham explained.
To give some idea of the size of the university’s network, he said, one only had to look at the number of machines it serviced.
“Our network now supports around 6,000 PCs, Macs and other workstations, 80 corporate systems
Upgrade makes for speedier network
and servers, and 120 distributed machines,” he said.
“We have 35,000 users in three locations and QUT is the first Australian site to implement a production ATM LANE (local area network emulation) network.
“As well as growth in the use of multimedia, Internet and email-attached material internally, up to 35 per cent of QUT’s 30,000+ students study part-time and many have remote access to the university.
“This created a situation where we had little control over what was happening on our network, but we knew it was under severe stress.”
Mr Gorham said that, under project leader Sidney Duffy, computing services staff analysed technology alternatives as well as similar sites on- and off-shore.
“The big gain is in the time it takes a packet (a bundle of electronic signals that comprise an email message, file, web page or whatever) to travel from point A to point B,” he said.
Left: Director Judith McLean, front right, and assistant director Jon Roberts, front left, with the cast from
the play Juice which will give high school students an opportunity for their voices and talent to be heard
“In our previous ethernet-based system, hundreds of users shared a single ethernet.
“Now it’s no more than 24, including dedicated LANs in some high-traffic sections.
“This means packets travel more directly to their destination and suffer much less network congestion.”
Mr Gorham said the new technology would enable QUT to scale up its network readily as usage increased and to handle other forms of traffic as well as data, such as telephone and videoconferencing traffic.
“This will be vital because all three technologies — and others like radio, facsimile and television — will converge into a single, global technology network early in the next century,” Mr Gorham said.
Further details about QUT’s compurter network upgrade are available at http://
www.net.qut.edu.au/atm or from computing services directly.
A survey of students and graduates of QUT’s Graduate Certificate in Education (Higher Education) has revealed that the course has influenced teaching practices in the higher education sector.
The course — one of only three outside of Britain which has been accredited by the United Kingdom’s Staff and Education Development Association — provides academic staff with formal teaching skills for higher education.
Head of QUT’s Academic Staff Development Unit Dr Patricia Weeks said survey participants identified several lasting benefits of the course — the ability to conduct action research, the opportunity for networking/collaboration, an accredited professional qualification, and an improvement in personal teaching skills and their attitude towards teaching.
Prospective students can attend an introductory session about the course — and its conversion to flexible delivery in 1998 — on Monday, November 3, 1pm- 2pm, in the Conference Room, Level 4, O Block Podium, Gardens Point campus. To register, phone Narelle Prior on (07) 3864 2715.
Course changes teaching habits
A gala dinner will be among several events planned to celebrate QUT’s Faculty of Law 20th Anniversary.
Justice Bruce McPherson — of the Court of Appeal, Supreme Court of Queensland —␣ will be guest speaker at the function which will be held at the Brisbane Convention Centre on October 25. Plans for a scholarship from the faculty for the “socio-economically disadvantaged” will be announced at the dinner.
Tickets for the event are available from Deborah Sheedy on (07) 3864 1003 at a cost of $70 each (students $50).
Law faculty celebrates its 20th anniversary
Professor John Evan, pictured right, has commenced duties as the founding director of QUT’s Centre for Rehabilitation Science and Engineering.
The new centre of innovation involves the faculties of Health, Science and Built Environment and Engineering, and is based in the School of Human Movement Studies in the Faculty of Health.
Professor Evans, who two decades ago headed a team of consultants who investigated musculo-skletal injuries at Mount Isa Mines, has most recently worked at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University where he establised a rehabilitation engineering centre and Strathclyde University where he was deputy director of the bioengineering unit.
With research interests also including tissue mechanics and rehabilitation technology, Professor Evans has special interests in the spine, skin and tendons, prosthetics and orthotics, body tolerance, bedsores, burn injuries, lasers in medicine and surgery, and wheeled mobility and seating.
In recent years, Professor Evans has become involved in issues of accessible transport and appropriate technology.
He is chairman of the International Commission on Technology and Accessibility for the Asia-Pacific region.
