BU4061: Presentation Questions

Overview of items looked at today during the final seminar for BU4061

Questions asked during biography presentations.

• What is DBA? Like MBA, but higher. Worth 120k and not claimable on HECS
• Autism - High Functioning Autism: Did Temple Grandin have many issues with her disability? Issues of bullying while in school. As an adult, had issues with harassment in workplace, though in academia is respected.
• Conferences? Conferences not common in early career, though in later stages, larger volume of conferences presented, and is also now lecturing.
• Noted as being very observant - how did she make her discoveries? Re: Stressed Animals Could relate to cattle because of autism. Felt there were similarities.
• Grandin: How many publications with other academics? Very few
• Kaplan: At 17 years old, enrolling in university - US, normally 18 years? Unsure
• Conferences? Presentations, not many - teaches at the school. Done a lot of course work.
• By 1st, 2nd and 3rd author - in what sense does that apply? Alphabetical order or something else?

Conclusion of subject:

Paradigms, Disciplines, Tribes, Individuals

• Looking at the concepts, of what they mean and how they work in research
• Methods of data collection
• Methodology - recruiting people, researcher position, form of analysis
• Paradigms - what type of paradigm are you working within

Cultures of Research Beyond University

1. Business Research and the Consulting Culture
2. Government Research and Policy Culture
3. Academic Culture

Business:

• Developing Profitability
• Protect and build a case against regulations and perceived problems and deal with change
• Paradigms: often positivist or post positivist
• Methods: dependent on consultants, surveys, plus archival data
• Developing systems, eg, HR, which are sold and promoted, eg. future business forecasts
• Time and timing - strict timelines
• Payment - variable
• Not open to refutation - limited circulation of reports

Government:

• Assist in development of policy and regulation
• Respond to problems arising in the community
• Paradigms: Post Positivist (can also be interpretative)
• Methods: eclectic, largely review and profiling, surveys
• Development: inter-government referencing, some academic use
• Payment - good generally, reliable
• Time frames - varied, including desirable delay
• Open to refutation - acceptable, public

Clash of worlds

• Topics allocated, not selected
• Answers are generally 'desired' = client satisfaction
• Big occasions of presenting work - presentations big issue

Relevant De-constructed

• Time - when
• Sector - agriculture, manufacturing, service, etc
• Scale - local, regional, state, national
• Focus - hotel, all hotels, all accommodation
• Domain - economic, socio-cultural, environmental, administrative
• Style - generating facts or ideas or new perspectives: emancipactory or functional

Knowledge Management

• Is about 3 or 4 steps in the process about deciding what you are doing
• Knowledge Capture - understanding what people know and aligning research objects with that knowledge
• Knowledge Codification - translating findings into decision rules or systems
• Knowledge Diffusion - sytles of delivery as well as roles of intermediaries

Wicked problems

• Many business problems are wicked problems-complex multi-faceted, difficult to define a clear answer

Academy of Hope

• Critical theory and an emancipatory paradigm turn attention to the possibilities of research and education to change the modes of education and build richer personal and public lives
• When do we know enough? Enduring learning e.g. 'You're ready to graduate when the professor says so'

Subject Summary: Aim and hopefully partial achievement - to make explicit what we assume when undertaking research, to locate our research in a context of types of research to better understand our topic, the research of others and each other.

BU4061: Interesting Points

Some interesting points made by Philip in the lecture last week.

"When being a researcher, look at generic stuff as things can be subject to change.

Avoid anticipated regulations, (ie, politians)

E.g. Looking at tourism, two countries/areas going to war, tourism obviously declines

[Post to be updated at later stage]

Speech Writing and Photography

Was just trying to transcribe my speech earlier but battery is out on my livescribe pen and can't seem to find my cradle to charge it again. Got to really figure out where I put that...

I went out earlier and took some pictures of the area that I'm going to do the rough model of, they're 7MP photos so I'm hoping they will be high enough resolution.

On a side note, I was looking at the HX5 at work and really like the camera. 10MP but the lens quality looks fantastic and I really like the idea of intelligent panaroma as well as having in built GPS and compass feature where you can upload images directly into google earth.

Back to the photos... So I think I have a good amount there to do up some plane setup senarios, it's just finding the time to do it.

For this week, I've got my speech to hand in, gotta get my thesis proposal signed off (still), literature review, biography presentation as well as the other items which have begun piling up. So much work...

Thankfully I've only got work on the weekend so I have today free (where I've been working on BU4061) and Wednesday free, so using those days to catch up. Thursday morning to read the assigned paper (though may have to read more earlier as it is 28 pages).

AND when I get a chance... catch up on missed entries for this blog.

Discipline Analysis

Currently been sitting around finishing off the discipline analysis for presentation tomorrow.

I'm still stuck on this idea of writing an actual speech. Looking at the criteria we do have to hand in notes, so I may have to do a LiveScribe recording of my speech then transcribe them later. The actual notes for what I've used in reference for actually putting together my PowerPoint is easy enough though.

I find that with writing a speech I don't tend to follow them word for word. Rather picking out key words from the speech then talking about those related points... which is where the PowerPoint come in handy as they work as my palm cards.

I have to get around to uploading resources and what not on my google code page as well as I'm really not making use of the sources there. And also get the storage area set up for my thesis work/backups as Ian mentioned in the meeting on Friday.

Won't have a paper presentation for CP5080 this week, but will next week.

Tomorrow got to start with doing the modelling prototype-thing and also gotta finalise/check/sign off the thesis proposal as well. Ideally I would like to throw up some screenshots from the play-around-modelling concept in the proposal so that the reader can actually see what the modelling concept is rather then me trying to describe it in words. One of the ideas/concepts behind the actual project for business/development proposals anyway.

So, back to assignment now.

Bibliographies - Formatting Options

So here is an interesting thing to share today.

http://bibword.codeplex.com

What is BibWord and why is it so cool?

Simply put, BibWord is a little extension or plugin of sorts that you can install into the root directory of Microsoft Word, giving that little nifty auto-bibliography list you have all the more functionality.

Above is an example from an assignment that I did last month for BU4061, the debate and rebuttal. The way the document is set out is that all bibliography items are all referenced within the document, clicking a section of the debate (E.g. CERN), "Physicists wanted to replicate the conditions that existed a fraction after the big bang by using a Large Hadron Collider (CERN, 2008) to collide particles at speeds just shy of the speed of light" will take you to the citation in the bibliography, then clicking the citation item in the bibliography will then open a website. Easy enough.

The two windows you see there are Source Manager and Edit Source. Source Manager tracks and records every single source you have ever placed into Microsoft Word, giving you a full reference list that you can look up at any time. The Edit/Add Source allows users to simply fill in the fields and Word will take care of formatting for you.

While Word can format your bibliography to change it to styles APA, sort by name, etc etc, the list is in all honestly... rather small.

And this is where BibWord comes in!

As you can see here, I'm using Microsoft Word 2007 with BibWord. In about the time of 5 minutes, all it takes is a simple download then installing the files to the Word directory. For instructions see here: http://bibword.codeplex.com/releases/view/15852

There are a few areas of BibWord that require a little bit of working out. I noticed that ACM referencing doesn't appreciate web references - whether that is an formatting standard for ACM or a Style limitation I'm not sure, though users can edit/add to the style lists as the developers provide the source code.

Editing on a average user scale though may just be a bit difficult at this stage:

Quick flick through one of the Havard source files revealed some 3100+ lines of code. There was another plugin I'm sure of that allowed users to specify format requirements, OpenSource naturally, though I can't find it. I'll have to go looking again.

Lastly. Before people beat me to it...

Another thing to mention as well as a good program is EndNote.

Provided free to staff and students at JCU. http://www-public.jcu.edu.au/libcomp/resources/endnote/index.htm

And download instructions: http://www-public.jcu.edu.au/libcomp/resources/endnote/JCUPRD_021073

Haven't had a full play around with EndNote as of yet, though when I do, I'll post thoughts and feedback on it.

Thesis Proposal

Been working on the thesis proposal today... There's a lot more information in there that I need that I really don't have, so will be emailing Ian after this to get some info.

I've decided to format it as per the IT Honours Guide guidelines as it makes more sense to me in terms of data flow and I'll email a copy to Philip to check to see if he is happy to keep it the same or if he wants it to stay strictly with the Business format.

Coming up with all the information in a cohesive manner is.. well, I wouldn't say 'difficult', but not something you can exactly whip up very quickly. I keep going back over things and changing them simply because I'm not satisfied with the level of work/information in there.

The title though... I keep changing the title. Currently I have "Examination of Computer Visualisation Techniques in Tourism and Development Scenarios" but earlier I had "3D Modelling of the Paluma Range for Tourism and Development"... I like the second one more, but I have to run it by my supervisor first. Titles always get me though. Even when writing stories, I take ages when picking titles.

I seriously have to find out what is happening with BU4061 with regards to assessment and Brisbane. I did mention to Philip that I'd be in Brisbane in April, and I've emailed him today about it but still haven't heard back from him. Just a bit worried about the assessment which is due anyway.

Waiting on Bruce to get back to me about Thursday for the presentations as well, so as of yet, I have no idea if I'm presenting or not... Or even where.

I think I may try and get an early night now... Have had a headache all day and either there's something wrong with my screen or I'm seeing double with the text... Doubt it's the screen.

Will have to finish off the proposal tomorrow. *was hoping to get it done today*

BU4061: Thesis Proposal Document

Thesis Proposal Document

This document should be a maximum of 6 pages in length. (excluding references) It should consist of:

Page 1

Title page with your name, subject, and proposed thesis title.

To make your title effective as a communication tool please try and link the major independent variable with the key dependent variables and possibly add the context. eg

The influence of colour image enhanced maps on visitor satisfaction for rainforest long walks. OR

Effects of temperature and vegetation on visitor mood in major tourist attractions in X’ian, China.

Page 2 & 3

The next two pages should be a succinct statement of the key references and ideas which shape the project. These references and ideas should be organised hierarchically, that is from the most general concerns and issues to the specific focussed references bearing most directly on your thesis. At this stage 10-20 core references should be shaping your project. For the thesis itself a longer, more expansive discussion of points will be needed. An example of how to present your references is given below, first for a general background reference and secondly for a reference close to and pertinent to your actual study.

Zube (1980) considered the techniques and methods for exploring how people reacted to their immediate physical environment. He pioneered the use of photographic simulation of altered environments to assess people’s attitudes. This work is part of an environmental tradition in studying people and their settings.

Moscardo (2000) explored visitor reactions to a specific tourist environment, the floating pontoon. She found visitors were concerned with safety and temperature of surfaces. Some of the questions about surfaces and physical comfort will be employed in the present research on visitors’ comfort at Chinese tourist attractions.

Page 4

At the end of the 2 pages of references and related comments as above, you should proceed to a fourth page which clearly states the aims or objectives of the project. If you are able to state clear hypotheses then please do so at this point.

An example of page 4 would be:

Aim 1: To explore the preferences and comfort levels of all visitors to well vegetated and less well vegetated major tourist attractions in X’ian, China

Aim 2: To test for preferences and comfort level differences between Chinese and Western visitors to attractions which are well vegetated versus less well vegetated.

Aim 3: To relate physical comfort levels of both Western and Chinese visitors at tourist attractions to overall satisfaction with the attractions.

You should probably have no more than 5 major aims. A detailed set of aims for each demographic or visitor profile variable, would for example, be excessive at this stage.

Page 5

On page 5 you should attempt to specify the measurement or operationalisation of the key variables in your study.

What will you measure and how will you measure it (examples follow the case).

“comfort level” will be defined by a) visitor’s rating of their physical comfort on a 9 point scale and b) by taking measures with a wet bulb thermometer of temperature and relative humidity scores and scoring these measures from thermal comfort charts

“preference” will be operationalised as visitors’ choosing one of four digitally altered photographs of the 2 tourist sites which differ in the amount of vegetation in the waiting and plaza areas of the site.

“Chinese” will be defined as people who state their residence as mainland China

“Western” will refer to people with residence in UK, Europe, United States and Australia.

Page 6

On page 6 you should write a 1 page brief of your proposed procedure. Who will you study, where, how many people or businesses, what will you ask them to do. The page 6 statement should finish with a brief timetable of your planned work. A Gantt chart would be appropriate; that is a grid of activities by the time you will work on each activity.

You should expect to receive feedback on your document within 1 week of submission. Clearly you will need to work with your supervisor to achieve these targets. Good luck with the work.

A statement saying whether or not you will have to complete an Ethics form is a required final item for this document.

Debate Wrap-Up

The debate was interesting today. I must say though, I had no idea what to expect but none-the-less, I really enjoyed it. It was good fun.

The different view points and stands that people took were rather interesting. My personal view point? Neither is more important than the other - both are required to achieve optimal and improve living standards of today's society. There were a few arguments that were missed though that I think either side could have used to further strengthen their argument (IT I noticed lacked fire power and I feel as though they had the opportunity to put forth much stronger arguments).

It was an interesting exercise for me none the less. I'm still a bit iffy about public speaking (have yet to go back and listen to the playback of the audio) and I know at the end of it my hand was shaking a bit, but it's a learning experience. I can talk in front of people fine, it's just afterwards that I feel the nerves. Just a skill I need to practice. Plus, although I may have come across as rather aggressive and confrontational in the debate, in reality I really don't like doing that. Not a fan of arguing.

Watching people's responses and actions though was rather curious. It made me rather amused to see people get worked up or vehemently deny the opposing arguments. Plus, in conjunction to nerves as stated earlier, I don't feel so left out. I noticed another person on the other side who's hands were shaking so badly you could see the paper shaking as well, in addition to their arm. *takes deep breath* Main thing is to learn, keep calm. It's just normal speaking, but to a larger audience.

I feel a bit bad about the arguments I did throw in. The games and violence one, although the media may advertise it to be so, I don't believe games cause violence. Rather violent people play violent games.

I'm not sure who won the debate, but hopefully should get an update from the lecturer anyway. Really would've been good to see the final arguments from the Captains.

Good fun all in all.

BU4061: Debate

Script for Debate

[Rebuttal]

Now, I'm an IT student and although I make use of technology, the importance of Information Technology and Science is arguable. In the past, we were able to live without our little technology toys and our science, now when the power goes out - Oh no! It's the end of the world! What will I do tame my Facebook addiction??

Is it really that important?

Think about it. Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Without it, there would be boundaries between people, languages - lack of communication! And don't sit there and tell me that communication isn't important. Take the Tenerife Airport Disaster - it was a technical fault that caused the death of 583 people. Think about that. 583. Look at the size of the HLT - that alone seats 500. The whole room; gone. Is that excusable? Where was the system administrator? Who was the system tester to actually check to make sure there were no communication errors for clearance with take off? Two incoming messages came in simultaneously and the pilots got a whistle. A whistle. Hey, congratulations - you just crashed because technology turned your command into a whistle.

How many other times has technology killed, injured or even cripple businesses and organisations? 1995 - the dot com crash. $5 TRILLION in market value - lost - with only half of the businesses barely surviving the crash.

Now, looking at the way we are now. Let's take a lecturer for an example. Look at the Cairns campus - yes, you may say without technology this video link lecture is possible, but it's already a step towards replacing people and their jobs. What happens when the lecture is recorded? How would you, as a student, like to watch a video of a lecture without any interaction? Or the actual lecturer? Being replaced by a video? Did you know that online there are bots, AI systems which you can interact with, ask questions of and get answers? How long will it take before we are replaced by a machine? Sure it can increase business profit, but really, what would you prefer? Talking to technology or humanity?

Now something else to think about.

Games? Addiction? Re-enactments? 2004 - Chinese boy dies after playing World of Warcraft - dies after jumping from a 24 storey building trying to re-enact a scene. 2005, Korean Man dies after playing StarCraft straight for 49 hours. 2008 - Swedish boy collapses after playing World of Warcraft for 24 hours. And just how many acts of violence have been recorded from people 're-enacting' actions they see in games? School shootings, theft, violence. The solution here isn't "more technology" - it's educating our people. Using the work of humanities and social sciences.

Now, I've talked a lot about technology, but what about science? Isn't it wonderful how we now have all these immunisations to protect against diseases? Isn't it wonderful to know that science is progressing and that it doesn't stop in the pursuit of knowledge for anything? Not even humanity?

2008. Physicists wanted to replicate the the conditions that existed a fraction after the big bang by using a Large Hadron Collider to collide particles at speeds just shy of the speed of light. Scientists, Chemists, Physicists all argued with each other about the LHC and whether it should have been used, claims that there was a chance of creating a black hole that could destroy the Earth. Despite the debates and protests, the project went ahead. Science doesn't stop for anything, even if there is a 'chance' of something going wrong, they persist anyway. Who is science to toy around with the fate of humanity?

During World War II. 1942 t 1945 - The Nazi's used people. Human beings. Normal, every day people, like you and I, in human experimentations. Do you agree to that? Where are the ethics of that?

And continuing with the war, 1945. 6th of August. An atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima killing 90'000 people. 9th of August. Nagasaki. 60'000 people.

Tell me. How is does the death of all those people signify importance?

Science may have caused Japan to surrender, but it's not like America didn't try to communicate. They gave them an ultimatum. America attempted to communicate, but it fell upon deaf ears and their people paid the price.

Just why does science create these weapons to kill people? It seems with the growth of technology and science we are now able to kill in mass amounts, faster times and greater distances. Remember when I mentioned that humanities allows for communication? Negotiations, communication and social sciences are essential. Without it, we simply loose our humanity as we fail to communicate to each other and in the end lash out and attack.

Science and technology has both the power to create and destroy, but a single operation could wipe out humanity. Only through communication and learning can we prevent it.

In the words of R. Buckminster Fuller; "Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons."

Debating deliberations at Maccas

So interesting Maccas trip earlier.

And wonderful results!

I has a debate!

Luckily we're able to hand in our notes a week later, so seeing as I don't generally write speeches, I'll have to record myself talking and transcribe it at a later stage.

Anyway, that's my random update for the day.

On a side note: Working through papers, reading through XML paper for critical review. Still no idea how to do a good presentation on a paper though.

Lastly, I got my acceptance letter. Hurray~!

404. Debate Not Found

*head desk*

Been sitting around trying to figure out how to construct my debate properly for BU4061.

So far, issues with the Science/IT 'Paradigm' (still not sure if I should really throw that word in or not)

• dot com crash
• Human's reliant on technology - when it fails, people unable to fend for themselves
• Technology resulting in unhealthy adults/children
• Psychological issues resulting from technology (addition, suicide, death)
• Under-developed social skills, reading/writing skills
• Human Testing - Ethics
• Animal Testing - See above
• Want to put something in about planes or traffic and when the air traffic controls or traffic lights fault out, accidents occurring but can't think of anything

Gonna have to finish it all off tomorrow.

BU4061 Debate and Proposal

Today we had the practice on the debate topics for BU4061.

Everything went via video link which was rather convenient, though not really helping in trying to pick apart at IT and Science (I'm in the Humanities and Social Sciences group) when they can argue that without IT the debate wouldn't even be possible via long distance.

It is rather interesting though to see IT from an outsiders perspective. It is always viewed as being the 'saviour' per say of making our lives more convenient, though looking at going against it, there are so many flaws within IT. People become reliant upon it and when it fails, it can even cause casualties (railway accidents, aircraft disasters, Chernobyl, etc).

So we have that to present on Tuesday. I'm going to have to sit down and watch some previous debates as I've never done a debate before so I'm not entirely sure on etiquette. I'm looking at going for an informal/comical approach, but shall see how that pans out.

In another topic, I'm going to start this Project Proposal. Didn't get a meeting yesterday, couldn't find Ian, plus I'll need to do some catch up with Gianna seeing as a meeting was missed last week as well. Ethics I think I have an idea of, had a good chat with Murray on Thursday regarding ethics so got some lead in that. The Proposal I'm going to have to complete ASAP as looking at the date, I'm running out of time very quickly.

I may also need to contact the JCU Brisbane regarding video conferencing between campuses so that I can see if it's possible so I don't miss my Thursday or Tuesday class. Not sure if it can happen, but either way, my lecturers know that I'll be missing and I've arranged to do things either in advance or during lecture recess.

Plan for this afternoon:

• Catch up on blog entries
• Start Project Proposal

Catch Up and Papers

Currently playing catch up on my readings.

Going through at the moment and reading through the OS paper we've been assigned from CP5080 and also looking at papers to read for the assignment.

Found two so far, haven't read into them but the titles caught by attention. Will look at them later in more detail though.

Image Plan Interaction Techniques in 3D Immersive Environments:

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=253284.253303

Virtual Reality on a WIM

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=223938

The debate topics for BU4061 are well underway now. We're into constructing our arguments to prepare for presentation. Got a practice session tomorrow via VideoLink.

I'm going to have to start looking at piecing together my proposal in time for Easter so that I can get it finished in time, so will have to look at that - not to forget, the papers as well to read for my presentations in Week 7, 8 and 9.

Anyway, back to reading this paper now.

BU4061: Lecture Notes 2nd Mar 10

Reviewing Paradigms

Gatekeepers - Methods of doing actions

Paradigm -> research sense

• Approach to how to see the world
• Approach to knowledge
• Approach to methods

Review words in glossary

Ontology - what we think reality is

(Think of the phrase: Are you a tourist?)

Trees VS Management

Naive Realist - Yes, there are trees, good management and tourists

Critical Realist - Argue what a tourist is: home is 6km away? 60km? 600km?

Looking at different notions of reality - if what others say exists, and the general public believes it, is it true?

- Ghosts at Malaysian Campus

- Campus was a battleground located near the Thai border.

Epistemology

• How we get to know 'stuff'
• summary device of objective reality
• argument of what is going on

View of reality and how we know things

Properties of the major paradigms

Powerpoints shades of interpretation?

Why are paradigms important?

--> Research Masteries

Note that business has external markers for honours project - inquire of IT the same

Positivist --> Naive Realists

• Have many simulations to create "the world"
• Have a view that they are independent of what they are studying and what they have mistakenly done is value-free
• e.g. Nuclear Bomb --> It's not value free, this point can be argued
• "We just create, what people do is not our responsibility"

Sometimes, we may be given a false reality

E.g. Book in anthropology

--> Don't believe everything you hear

Interpretation of reality, people believing that research is done in a controlled environment

e.g. Previous study

--> Shocking people

View that the subjects were not being harmed because experiment was controlled

Post-Positivist - 'modified' version of positivism

Performance VS 'Not so good performance'

Arguing employment figures - don't always trust the data

e.g. A town has a set amount of people, some of these people may have an income through crime, such as theft, drug dealing; although that is how they make an income, that is not a subject a person would list as employment, rather they see themselves as unemployed, thus data incorrect.

Interpretative, constructed reality.

Missed the rest of the lecture for a meeting.

BU4061: Brief Notes

BU4061: Research Paradigms in Business

https://secure.jcu.edu.au/app/studyfinder/?subject=BU4061

Attended my first lecture of this subject today and must say, very confusing, and yet at the same time, makes sense (strangely enough) and is rather interesting.

I'm not going to write up too much tonight as I don't have enough time to get everything up, but just some terminology that was thrown around for the subject:

• Gatekeepers
• Paradigm
• Ontology
• Realists - Naive VS Critical
• Epistemology
• Positivist
• Post Positivist
• Interpretative

There were a few more, but I have to go through my livescribe notes to get all the details. Most amount of notes I've taken in a 50 minute class though. Was a bit put out that I had to leave early as I really did find it all very interesting.

Hopefully tomorrow I can get out an entry and explain/summarise notes from the subject.