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Higher education institutions (HEIs), including universities, adult and vocational institutes, and technical and further education (TAFE) centres, faced the challenge of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic with limited data on how best to protect their communities and to continue educating their students. HEIs implemented various measures and adaptations by prioritizing the safety and well-being of students, staff, and the broader community while ensuring uninterrupted educational delivery. The pandemic presented a global educational challenge, requiring institutions to address complex organizational issues. These challenges encompassed topics such as information access, equity, diverse communication infrastructures, collaboration, logistics, the use of digital platforms, decentralization, redundancy, variation in virtual rituals and communication protocols, unstructured digital proxemics, Zoom fatigue, the absence of remote feedback loop models, and COVID-19 management protocols. Among the critical questions posed by the pandemic in the higher education sector in Australia and Canada, whether at universities, technical institutes, or education centres, was how faculty enhanced the learning experience and fostered symbiosis among co-located/on-shore and remote/off-shore students. To gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between HEIs and COVID-19 educational mitigation, we analysed the actions taken by three HEIs in Australia and one in Canada during the crisis years of 2021–2022. This analysis was based on the personal reflections of the authors (academics from various HEIs), a synthesis of which is presented in this chapter.

This paper has two aims: to investigate the relationship of self‐efficacy beliefs in terms of research on publication output; and, to identify the relationship of self‐efficacy beliefs about research to the publishing outputs of neophyte lecturers.

A questionnaire was utilised to obtain responses from lecturers working full‐time at two large Australian universities (n=343). The data from this sample were analysed using factor analysis, correlation, and multiple regression analysis. Data from two sub‐samples of neophyte lecturer (n₁=47; n₂=78) were then subjected to a multivariate analysis of variance.

Four research self‐efficacy subscales were derived from a factor analysis. These subscales were positively and significantly related and accounted for 46 percent of the total variance in total publications accrued. Significant differences were found between two groups of neophyte lecturer on nearly all items forming the respective research self‐efficacy subscales. And, group membership accounted for 45.4 percent of the total variance.

The findings have implications both theoretically and practically. Theoretically, the research self‐efficacy construct was shown to have four underlying dimensions and to be highly predictive of a measure of publication output. From a practical perspective, the items forming the research self‐efficacy subscales could be a useful tool to promote discussion about the tasks a lecturer may need to perform during an academic career. Further, the items could be ranked in terms of their discriminative capacity and, as a result, be used as the basis for researcher development and interventions to promote improved research self‐efficacy and therefore increased publication output.

There has been little research about incident management decision making within real-life, dynamic emergencies such as urban fire settings. So this research addresses the research problem: how do incident managers make decisions in urban fire settings? These decision behaviours cover five areas: assessment of the fireground situation, selection of a decision strategy, determination of incident objectives, deployment and management of firefighting resources and ongoing review of the incident. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Case research was used to examine management of different types of fires, through in-depth interviews with a range of incident managers.

This research identified five key behavioural elements associated with incident management in urban fire settings such as their application of a mix of recognition-primed, value based, procedural and formal decision strategies throughout the course of an incident rather than a single style.

The in-depth framework of decision making could provide foundations for later research about other emergency settings. And this research is limited to analytic generalisation (Yin, 2009); so quantitative research such as surveys and large scale interviews could be done to further extend the research for statistical generalisation.

The decision procedures uncovered in this research will assist incident managers in many emergencies, assist policy making and foster the development of future incident managers.

The findings expand the knowledge of how incident managers develop situation awareness, make decisions and plans, implement them, and review the incident as it evolves. Another contribution is the comprehensive framework of decision making developed from these findings.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the air movement operations planning heuristic in the literature to generate better solutions in a shorter time period.

Through a rigorous design of experiments (DOEs), we make significant heuristic improvements by evaluating alternative modular methodologies and tuning heuristic parameters for two scenarios. This includes a new approach to considering refueling operations.

We find the fine-tuned heuristic averages a 33% objective improvement and 70% reduction in computation time over the heuristic with original parameters for one of the scenarios. Additionally, we analyze the heuristic's quality of solution over time.

Further analysis is required to generalize heuristic settings, which would require significant access to operational data or a portfolio of scenarios of interest.

Tuned heuristic parameters reduce the computation time from hours to minutes. This also makes it practically feasible to adjust parameters in the objective function to generate multiple courses of action (COAs) for a given instance.

This research provides novel vehicle assignment and routing heuristic improvement alternatives and demonstrates a DOEs-based heuristic tuning procedure.

Building on relational inequality theory, this paper incorporates social capital as a device to trace the flow of resources through relationships originating within and beyond organizations. I draw on a survey of over 1,700 lawyers to evaluate key dynamics of social capital that shape earnings: bridging and bonding, reciprocity exchanges and sponsorship, and boundary maintenance. The findings show social capital lends a lift to law graduates through bridges to professional careers and sponsorship following job entry. Racial minorities, however, suffer a shortfall of personal networks to facilitate job searches, and once having secured jobs, minorities experience social closure practices by clients and colleagues that disadvantage them in their professional work. A sizeable earnings gap remains between racial minority and white lawyers after controlling for human and social capitals, social closure practices, and organizational context. This earnings gap is particularly large among racial minorities with more years of experience and those working in large law firms. The findings demonstrate the importance of identifying the interrelations that connect social network and organizational context to impact social inequality.

The prevalence of psychiatric disorders in children and young people is increasing, leading to recommendations that medical schools re-consider their curriculum content and teaching practices for child and adolescent psychiatry (CAP). The purpose of this paper is to seek guidance for undergraduate curriculum development from the wider literature on CAP curriculum content and teaching practices.

A comprehensive search of the literature was conducted, focussing on studies that examined undergraduate teaching of CAP. In an attempt to establish whether there is an agreed level of curriculum content and teaching practices, literature from all over the world was included.

Findings suggest that curriculum content and teaching practices are varied, therefore it was difficult to identify best practice upon which recommendations can be made. In addition, despite previous calls for curriculum improvements and expansion of learning objectives, recent studies suggest that there has been little change.

A common theme emerging was the importance of making the CAP curriculum relevant to all future doctors rather than only those who plan to specialise in CAP. Further research to determine what CAP knowledge, skills and attitudes non-psychiatrists think that medical students need to be taught is warranted.

This paper reviewed the literature on undergraduate CAP teaching, highlighting common themes from the wider literature on medical curriculum development to inform how CAP curricula content can be developed to equip future doctors.

This list of 41 “Stupid Things that Libraries Do” was largely culled from public library practitioners’ postings on the PUBLIB electronic discussion list. Libraries must take action to ensure that their operations, and particularly their public services, are unhampered by these common bad practices. By identifying possible failings in advance, librarians can better place themselves to meet the expectations of their users, and provide the professional service expected of them.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a hybrid additive/subtractive manufacturing platform for the production of high density ceramic components.

Fabrication of near-net shape components is achieved using 96 per cent Al3O2 ceramic paste extrusion and a planarizing machining operations. Sacrificial polymer support can be used to aid the creation of overhanging or internal features. Post-processing using a variety of machining operations improves tolerances and fidelity between the component and CAD model while reducing defects.

This resultant three-dimensional monolithic ceramic components demonstrated post sintering tolerances of ±100 µm, surface roughness’s of ∼1 µm Ra, densities in excess of 99.7 per cent and three-point bending strength of 221 MPa.

This method represents a novel approach for the digital fabrication of ceramic components, which provides improved manufacturing tolerances, part quality and capability over existing additive manufacturing approaches.

This paper aims to demonstrate the improved functionality of additive manufacturing technology provided by combining multiple processes for the fabrication of packaged electronics.

This research is focused on the improvement in resolution of conductor deposition methods through experimentation with build parameters. Material dispensing with two different low temperature curing isotropic conductive adhesive materials was characterised for their application in printing each of three different conductor designs, traces, z-axis connections and fine pitch flip chip interconnects. Once optimised, demonstrator size can be minimised within the limitations of the chosen processes and materials.

The proposed method of printing z-axis through layer connections was successful with pillars 2 mm in height and 550 µm in width produced. Dispensing characterisation also resulted in tracks 134 µm in width and 38 µm in height allowing surface mount assembly of 0603 components and thin-shrink small outline packaged integrated circuits. Small 149-µm flip chip interconnects deposited at a 457-µm pitch have also been used for packaging silicon bare die.

This paper presents an improved multifunctional additive manufacturing method to produce fully packaged multilayer electronic systems. It discusses the development of new 3D printed, through layer z-axis connections and the use of a single electrically conductive adhesive material to produce all conductors. This facilitates the surface mount assembly of components directly onto these conductors before stereolithography is used to fully package multiple layers of circuitry in a photopolymer.