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Digital innovation: addressing the teaching crisis in primary schools through enhanced literacy, teacher efficacy, and workload reduction
No full textAustralia's education system faces a significant challenge in teacher retention, driven by unsustainable workloads, declining literacy outcomes, and escalating attrition rates. Addressing this crisis through innovative solutions is critical for ensuring educational quality and teacher sustainability. This research investigates whether digital technology entrepreneurship, exemplified by the literacy-focused educational technology (EdTech) platform Scriibi, can effectively reduce teacher workload and enhance educational outcomes in Victorian primary schools.
Employing qualitative research methods, including in-depth interviews with primary school teachers and decision-makers using Scriibi, this study explored the platform’s usability, effectiveness, and impact on teacher practices, assessment processes, and professional satisfaction. The thematic analysis revealed several critical insights:
1.Teachers found Scriibi significantly improved literacy instruction through structured, curriculum-aligned resources, reducing the reliance on ad hoc, improvised teaching methods. Its user-friendly, integrated design facilitated consistent instructional practices across schools.
2.Scriibi streamlined assessment processes by offering automated, objective, and clear rubrics aligned with the Victorian curriculum and the Six Plus One traits of writing, greatly reducing the cumbersome and subjective manual assessment previously employed by teachers.
3.Participants reported notable increases in teacher confidence and professional satisfaction due to the structured support and embedded professional development opportunities offered by Scriibi. The platform’s consistent methodologies and collaborative design fostered a community of practice that enhanced both new and experienced teachers’ instructional capabilities.
4.Workload reduction was identified as a significant benefit of Scriibi, described by teachers as a "one-stop-shop" that consolidated planning, teaching, and assessment resources into a single accessible platform. However, some participants expressed uncertainty about the long-term workload implications, noting initial learning curves and concerns about potential increases in workload from additional expectations.
5.Despite the clear educational and workload benefits, Scriibi alone does not address broader systemic issues contributing to teacher attrition, such as administrative burdens, complex interactions with parents, and teacher morale. While the platform eased instructional workloads, these external pressures require comprehensive policy reforms alongside technological solutions.
Overall, Scriibi exemplifies how agile, human-centred digital entrepreneurship can effectively address specific educational challenges. The study concludes that while EdTech platforms like Scriibi can significantly streamline literacy instruction, improve teacher self-efficacy, and reduce instructional workload, their integration must be complemented by broader systemic support and policy reforms to comprehensively address teacher retention. Recommendations for implementation include targeted professional development, financial support for schools, continued human-centred iterative product design, and integration of EdTech solutions within broader policy initiatives.</p
Adaptive Automation and Defect Control in Forming Processes of Composite Materials: A Robust Parametrisation Approach to Improve Simulation Accuracy
No full textThis research improves the accuracy of forming processes for composite materials by reducing defects and ensuring consistency. Composite materials are used in industries like aerospace and automotive, but variations in material properties and production parameters can lead to defects. This research explores two key methods: optimising design parameters to make the forming process more reliable and using real-time scanning to identify and control defects. By enhancing simulation models and refining defect detection, this research helps create robust, more precise, and reliable composite parts, leading to safer and more efficient composite parts for industries.</p
Coupling Aerobic Composting with Anaerobic Digestion for Enhanced Sludge Treatment
No full textSludge treatment presents enormous challenges due to its large volume and potential environmental hazards. This study provides a novel aerobic composting-anaerobic digestion coupling technology for enhanced sludge treatment, offers insights into broad microbial community restructuring and function, highlights the positive effects of anaerobic regulation on resistance genes, reveals the regulation mechanism of resistance genes, and employs an integrated multi-omics approach to evaluate the performance of sludge treatment technologies. The findings have implications for developing more sustainable waste management practices and mitigating the spread of antibiotic resistance in the environment.</p
Strategies to increase women’s representation on community sporting club committees: FOR LOCAL COUNCILS
No full textLocal councils can support community sporting club committees to increase women's representation.invest in gender, diversity and inclusion trainingsupport knowledge sharing and leadership transitionencourage cross-sport collaborationprovide programs that engage women and girls as playersensure equal access to facilities and conduct safety audits</p
Influence of simple quantum corrections on the thermophysical properties of water
No full textThis research explores how quantum corrections can improve the accuracy of simulations used to study the physical properties of liquid water. By comparing two widely used water models, the study identifies key limitations in classical simulations and evaluates correction methods to improve agreement with experimental data. The findings help refine computational models, leading to better predictions of water’s behaviour under different conditions. This research benefits fields such as material science and climate modelling, where understanding water’s properties is essential for accurate simulations of natural and industrial processes.</p
Leveraging Machine Learning for Preliminary Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease Classification Using Cost-Effective Data Modalities
No full textThis research aims to utilizes cost-effective neuropsychological and demographic data modalities from the ADNI dataset to train machine learning models for the preliminary risk prediction of Alzheimer's disease related dementia. The conventional diagnostics often involve costly and invasive medical assessment procedures, hindering accessibility for socioeconomically disadvantaged populations. The findings of this study highlights the potential of low-cost and noninvasive machine learning approaches for preliminary risk assessment of Alzheimer's disease related dementia. This paper introduces the MiCi preprocessing method to enhance data quality and improve model performance. Among 15 evaluated classifiers, Random Forest demonstrated the highest accuracy, at 92.4% over 1,000 predictions.</p
Novel Cu-based Semiconducting Photocathode Configurations for Efficient Solar Harvesting and Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting
No full textThis thesis focuses on advancing photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting using Cu-based semiconducting materials for solar-driven hydrogen production. It incorporates strategies such as heterojunction formation, plasmonic enhancement, co-catalyst integration, doping, and cation substitution to enhance PEC performance. Emphasis is placed on studying and understanding the underlying charge transfer mechanisms and material behavior to gain insights that guide further improvements. The work demonstrates enhanced light absorption, charge separation, and catalytic efficiency, using earth-abundant materials. These findings support scalable PEC systems aligned with global goals for carbon neutrality and clean, sustainable hydrogen energy solutions.</p
Curriculum Development Framework: Reinforcing Construction and Civil Engineering Students' Digital Skills
No full textThis research examines the global digital skills gaps in construction education, with a specific focus on the developing country of Pakistan. By assessing current curricula and industry needs, and proposing a curriculum development framework that incorporates advanced digital tools and technologies, the study aims to enhance students' digital skills and industry readiness. The benefits to society include fostering a more skilled workforce capable of implementing digital solutions in construction projects, which can lead to improved project efficiency, reduced costs, and higher quality outcomes. Ultimately, these advancements contribute to the development of infrastructure, economic growth and societal progress.</p
Sound amplitude of discrete bubbles entrained by a breaking wave
No full textThe exchange of gases between the ocean and the atmosphere plays a major role in regulating global climate, influencing processes like carbon sequestration and the balance of atmospheric gases. This paper investigates the acoustic emissions generated from the bubbles produced by breaking waves and analyzes the relationship between bubble diameter and sound intensity. This relationship is important for estimating bubble size distributions and thus achieving a better understanding of the gas exchange between ocean and atmosphere. Experiments were conducted in a controlled laboratory setting, generating linear focused breaking waves. High-speed cameras and four hydrophones captured synchronised audio and video data from bubble formation and acoustic emission events. Results are characterized by a polynomial relationship between bubble size and acoustic emission, showing that larger bubbles produced louder sounds. This behaviour is consistent with underwater bubbles generated from other, more fundamental mechanisms, such as underwater nozzles and plunging water streams and jets.</p
Respect, reform and recovery: Alleviating the unrelenting demands placed on single mothers
No full textIn this report, we bring women’s experiences of caregiving and safety to the fore to identify how the Working for Women Strategy and the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-2032 can best support single mothers. Through a focus on unpaid care, we aim to identify systemic barriers to and policy opportunities for achieving gender equality. A total of 2590 single, separated or widowed parents participated in the survey. Our results describe the experience of time-poor, and often resource-poor single mothers who were trying to stitch together enough material and temporal resources to make it through the day, the next day, and the next. As many women and their children were victim-survivors of family violence, single mothers often tried to keep all the balls in the air while also recovering from trauma and supporting their children to recover from similarly traumatic experiences. Lifting financial support and reducing the demands placed on single mothers can support women to care for their families, recover from trauma and best place themselves to build a better life.</p