Research seminars - Past presentations
Contact details
Seminar coordinator: Dr Yee Ling Boo.
Using eSimulations for developing professional skills
Date: Friday 23 March
Time: 1.00 - 2.30pm
Venue: Deakin University Melbourne City Centre (DUMCC)
Speaker: Associate Professor Jacob Cybulski
Abstract:
This seminar presents a project aimed at building organisational capacity to develop, deliver and evaluate digital simulations (eSimulations) to enhance professional learning in the Australian higher education sector. Three partner institutions were involved, i.e. Deakin University, RMIT University and Charles Sturt University. Investigation of the capacity building processes revealed both the potential and limits of practical knowledge transfer between the partner institutions.
Knowledge transfer and organisational capacity building is a multi-dimensional, complex process. It requires well articulated strategic and operational leadership, well developed capacities in teaching/learning design, IT infrastructure, media technology production, and discipline/professional expertise, all well aligned to create synergistic value. Leadership must balance the need to nurture such innovation gradually to maturity against the ever-present temptation to accelerate mainstreaming of developments to achieve economies of scale. The project not only revealed the nature of capacity building processes but also lead to the development and use of a broad range of educational eSimulations relevant to the local contexts of partner institutions.
The project won a 2008 competitive Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) grant and later in 2011 was awarded an ALTC National Award for Programs That Enhance Learning (Innovation in curricula learning and teaching).
About Jacob Cybulski
Associate Professor Jacob Cybulski is in the School of Information Systems at Deakin University. His research interests include information systems theory and strategy, as well as, experiential e-simulation. Jacob works as a consultant to organisations willing to investigate their business processes and align their IT with business practices. Jacob's past projects range from engineering and telecommunications applications to developing software productivity environments and toolkits. His recently commissioned work includes work on e-commerce, web development and contents managements. In his free time Jacob engages in competitive fencing and fine arts.
Prometheus Unbound: Critical Information Systems and the digital world: A work in progress
Date: Friday 9 March
Time: 2pm - 3pm
Venues: B - LB3.323, G - da2.014, W - j4.20
Speaker: Dr Darryl Coulthard
Abstract
Information systems are now ubiquitous. With the advent of cheap personal computing, the internet and mobile devices, information systems have moved from being almost exclusively within the domain of business and corporation to being a routine part of everyday lives.
Information Systems is faced with the prospect of remaining primarily a business oriented, instrumentalist discipline aimed at increasing efficiency and effectiveness or to follow information systems into daily life and problematise the relations between social practices and ubiquitous information systems. We recommend the latter approach, arguing that the rise of ubiquitous information systems are unprecedented and require examination. Moreover, ubiquitous information systems are often themselves a form of business system, such as Google. Business is a social practice and thus not neglected but incorporated in a more broadly conceived discipline.
To investigate the relationships between social (and business) practices and ubiquitous information systems is to engage in critical information systems. Its purpose is not the instrumentalism of much of contemporary Information Systems but is investigatory and revelatory. Its purpose is to reveal and to open to discourse the phenomena of ubiquitous information systems and human action. To this end the discipline must call on not only the research methodologies and paradigms that have been underutilised in Information Systems - critical theory and postmodernism - but also the newly emerging sociomaterial perspective where neither the human actor or the technology are privileged over the other.
Utilising illustrative examples, this paper demonstrates the need for Information Systems to examine the digital world in everyday life as well as in business. The outcome is a new sense of purpose and a maturation of IS theory that better reflects how information systems interact with, change and influence social practice and human endeavour, including traditional business related concerns. This will mean a broadening of our substantive concerns but also the development of our theory and methodology. This new sense of purpose will also provide the discipline with the opportunity to range more confidently across the digital world investigating our relationships to technology and information systems in day to day life as well as its application and effects in business and organisations.
Corporate Governance in India - Practices and Challenges
Date: 9 December 2011
Time: 11.30am to 12.30pm
Venue: lb2.308, Melbourne Burwood Campus
Speaker: Professor Bindi Mehta
Abstract
India regulatory measures pertaining to Corporate Governance compare well with many OECD countries and countries in Asia Pacific region. Norms for listed companies have been changed twice post 2002. Companies Act has been amended to address governance issues related to non-listed companies. Though most (if not all) listed companies are compliant with the Listing agreements (Clause 49); ground realities are very different and tell another story.
Major challenges Indian regulators face pertain to family ownership of many listed companies and public ownership of large companies, which is in the process of being divested. Challenge of protecting the interests of minority shareholders is super imposed on the usual 'Agency problems'. Regulator's handling of the case of "Satyam Computers" needs to be applauded in a number of respects.
About Bindi Mehta
Professor Bindi Mehta is currently the Chairperson of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship in NIRMA University, Ahmedabad, India. Earlier, she was the chairperson and Professor of Research & Publications in the School of Business Management, NMIMS University in Mumbai. She had worked as a Director Research with ICSI Centre for corporate research and training; and as an economist with major financial sector institutions such as IDBI and CRISIL before moving into an academic career. She teaches Corporate Social Responsibilty, Value and Ethics, Corporate Governance, Entrepreneurship andBusiness Environment Management. In addition to her academic work, she has been an active consultant/economist for varied industrial development banks/institutions in India including IDBI. Some of her research projects include Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives of National Stock Exchange (NSE) NIFTY companies, institutionalizing ethics in organizations, and impact assessment of livelihood interventions undertaken on behalf of SIDBI Micro Finance Initiative in Mumbai, India.
Theorising how Small and Medium enterprises describe their Corporate social responsibility practices online.
Date: 28 September 2011
Time: 2:00pm to 4:00pm
Venue: Burwood LB3.323, via video conference Geelong ib4.211.
Speaker: Dr Craig Parker
Abstract
This seminar will examine the potential of various theories as lenses for analysing how SME online CSR descriptions.
About Craig Parker
Dr Craig Parker is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Information Systems, Deakin University. He is associate editor for the Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations and Australasian Journal of Information Systems. He has spent over a decade conducting research on small business adoption and use of eBusiness. He also researches how to engage small business in corporate social responsibility.
In the pursuit of first person experience online: creating a web of interaction, engagement and emotion
Date: 14 September 2011
Time: 2:00pm to 4:00pm
Venue: Burwood LB3.323, via video conference Geelong ib4.211.
Speaker: Associate Prof Jacob Cybulski (with participation of Camberwell High School students Daniel Miltinan and Konrad Cybulski)
Abstract
The last few years witnessed accelerated innovation in information retrieval technologies, content management and support for business transactions. Social media sites have become the prime meeting place for the new generation of the Internet users and mobile communication has been established as the norm of inter-personal exchange. And yet, in this intense development, the richness of textual message, the nuance of meaning and emotion of verbal communication is routinely supported only with static images and non-interactive media, devoid of engagement and feeling.
This project aims at exploring means of injecting engagement and emotion into online content to create a first person experience of being connected to the presented media. By drawing on our prior work in developing educational e-simulations, our team seeks new means of creating online experience, which would be true to its intended intellectual contents but emotionally engaging in its form. We seek to create online experience that would appeal to the new generation of web users, who are also avid gamers, and thus, expect intense visual stimulation, demand rich interaction, and who are accustomed to being in control of digital media.
In this pursuit, we turn to well known Australian artists (nine so far) as masters of visual representation and emotional form, and we ask them how they envisage the future generations to experience their artistic output. Their answers commonly break our assumption as to the norms of online representation; they introduce richness of senses currently unsupported by the available technology; and, they hint on the essence of what it means for the visual form to be engaging and emotional - the future of online communication.
While these insights are immediately applicable to online business and social media management, in the first instance we deploy them in the creation of an online gallery of Fine Art, where the need for the new forms of online expression is greatest and the current means of installing art for online viewing is grossly inadequate. The gallery in development -Aristoberry.com -is an attempt to blend textual contents and digital art, as well as, the utilisation of metaphors for the future forms of online engagement. The gallery has been developed with the active involvement of Deakin University and High School students, whose contribution is not limited to sharing their video gaming experience but also included their input into the modelling of 3D virtual spaces and software development in support of art installation. The seminar will feature presentation of these installations.
Workshop 1 |
Workshop 2 |
Workshop 3 |
Publishing your work
A series of 3 consecutive seminars conducted in a workshop model to share some insights and experiences in getting papers published in peer- reviewed scholarly journals. The focus will be on evolving papers previously published at workshops/conferences towards journals outlets.
The seminars will address the following areas:
- What makes a journal paper different from a conference paper?
- How much extra goes into a journal publication?
- How do you select the 'right' journal for your paper?
- How do you think about your contribution?
- How is the review process different for journals?
- What are the useful approaches and the pitfalls to be aware of, in getting your papers published in the top journals?
These seminars are designed to appeal to a variety of researchers in the Faculty of Business and Law, as they are aimed at academics in the business disciplines generically, rather than specifically focusing on any particular discipline.
Date: Friday 10 June
Time: 2 - 4pm
Venue: Blue Room - B2.20 (B)
Speaker: Joanne Sullivan
Video conference: ib4.211 (G), B.3.18 (W)
Mobile Content Bonding
How can commercial content providers understand and tailor content for delivery to users of mobile devices, in ever-changing life contexts?
This research focuses on the fundamental research question of "How can content providers understand and tailor content for delivery to users of mobile devices, in ever-changing life contexts?" Three case study organizations were studied and a hermeneutic analysis conducted which indicates that: Mobile content is personal experience. People will bond with mobile content offerings that are tailored to suit their individual circumstances and quality of life expectations, in the moment of use. The more unpleasant, unhealthy, embarrassing or dangerous the predicament people find themselves in, the greater the urge to use available resources (such as mobile content offerings) to restore quality of life. Successful content bonding creates online presence, which providers can use to attract more users. And finally, that mobile content design is an intuitive process.
Joanne Sullivan is currently working as the Manager of the Monash Arts Online Presence Enhancement Program, Joanne Sullivan is a web and mobile content expert with extensive experience in managing design and development teams in the building of online presence. In the past, Joanne has also worked on the online presence for The University of Melbourne and the Department of Human Services and has lectured in Design at RMIT and Newcastle University.
Date: Friday 3 June
Time: 2 - 3pm
Venue: Blue Room - B2.20 (B)
Speaker: Associate Professor John Venable
Video conference: ib4.211 (G)
Design Science Research Post Hevner et al: Criteria, Standards, Guidelines, and Expectations
There is ongoing debate about how the quality (rigour and relevance) of Design Science Research (DSR) should be judged. This research investigates the state of the debate by surveying the opinions of IS scholars who write, review, edit, and publish DSR papers. The survey respondents rated the relative importance of the seven guidelines (often used as evaluation criteria) laid out in Hevner et al (2004), more specific criteria about the evaluation activity in DSR, criteria concerning IS Design Theories, and miscellaneous other criteria, and made general open-ended comments. The findings indicate a lack of consensus, with much variability in ratings. The Hevner et al (2004) guidelines are largely endorsed, but caution is also raised to apply them less mechanistically than at present. Some criteria/guidelines are seen to be less important at earlier stages of research. Caution is also urged not to expect single papers to fit all criteria/guidelines.
The above research was conducted in 2010 and presented at DESRIST 2010. There will also be opportunity to discuss other issues relating to Design Science Research in accordance with the audience's interests.
About John Venable
John Venable is Associate Professor and former Head of School at the School of Information Systems, Curtin University of Technology, in Perth, Western Australia, where he has held various positions since 1997. He is currently Co-Director of the Curtin University Centre for Organisational Analysis, within which he leads research groups in Organisational Culture and Change Management, Knowledge Management, Disaster Information Management, and Support for Not-for-Profit Organisations and is an active participant in research groups on Technology-Supported Assignment Assessment and Moderation and New Generation Logistics and Supply Chain Management. He holds a B.S. in History (Far East) from the United States Air Force Academy and an M.S. in Management Science, an M.S. in Advanced Technology, and a PhD in Advanced Technology (Information Systems) from Binghamton University, USA. He has taught and researched in IS at Binghamton University and Central Connecticut State University in the USA, Aalborg University in Denmark, the University of Waikato in New Zealand, and at Murdoch University and Curtin University in Australia. He is a frequent visitor at various universities in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
Associate Professor Venable has published in international conferences and journals including The Information Systems Journal, Journal of Information Technology, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, and Wirtschaftsinformatik. He recently was co-chair of the IFIP Working Groups 8.2 and 8.6 Joint International Working Conference on "Human Benefit through the Diffusion of Information Systems Design Science Research", held in Perth March 30-1 April 2010 and is co-editor of a special issue of Information Technology and People on "Design and Diffusion of Systems for Human Benefit". He has consulted on ICT and organisational change with large and small business organisations, government agencies and not-for-profit organisations.
Associate Professor Venable's research interests include research methods for information systems, especially design science research and critical research; IS planning and development methods and practice; organisational, IS and data modeling; problem solving methods; organisational change; knowledge management and organizational learning; Group Support Systems and collaborative work; digital library systems; and application and management of IS and IT to support not-for-profit organisations.
Date: Friday 27 May
Time: 2 - 3pm
Venue: Blue Room - B2.20 (B)
Speaker: Professor John Zeleznikow
Video conference: ib4.211 (G), B.3.18 (W)
Mentoring quality information systems research
Professor John Zeleznikow is an internationally recognized expert and has over 30 years of experience in research on developing support systems. His research is broadly focused upon using intelligent systems to support human decision-making in legal domains.
His best known examples are the use of such techniques to predict how marital property is distributed following divorce in Australia and support trade-offs resolving disputes. Over the last 15 years he has been working on negotiating decision support and machine learning in law.
In 2010, he established a project to mentor early career researchers in the School of Management and Information Systems at Victoria University. The project involves individual and group meetings as well as seminars and the joint development of plans for each of the researchers.
In this seminar focused on mentoring and coaching information systems research.
Date: Friday 29 April
Time: 2 - 4pm
Venue: Blue Room - B2.20 (B)
Speaker: John Lamp
Video conference: ib4.211 (G), B.3.18 (W)
Information Categorisation: emergence and dynamics
The explosion of information and of naive users on the Internet has highlighted problems of effective access to information. One response to the problem of effective access to information is to classify the information into categories based on the nature of the information being classified. Existing information classifications are typically developed by committees or imposed by organisations and have proved difficult to maintain. This investigation developed a two phase method to systematically determine and analyse information categories in a specific domain as perceived by domain experts.
The initial phase, the Term Extraction Phase, applied the librarianship approach of literary warrant guided by Ingarden's Ontology of Literature to research papers from a specific domain to discover what is studied in the domain. The second phase, the Term Categorisation Phase, used the librarianship approach of consensus to have domain experts form categories from the terms generated in the first phase. Boisot's Social Learning Cycle (SLC) was used as a model with which to explain category variations. The single performance of the Term Categorisation Phase undertaken in this investigation demonstrated the value of the SLC for explaining the variations between domain experts, and showed the potential for explaining category changes over time using the SLC and repeated performances of the Term Categorisation Phase.
This investigation makes a number of contributions. The investigation demonstrated that the two librarianship approaches of literary warrant and consensus are not necessarily mutually exclusive and that both have much to offer at different stages of the categorisation process. A method was devised which provides a more rigorous and systematic approach to analysing and categorising text. The method consists of two phases which are loosely coupled and could be used independently. A very significant aspect is the ability to view categorisation as a dynamic process. That enables the examination of categorisation and classification schemes and for the identification of areas within those schemes which require attention. The method is not a tool to develop a complete classification scheme, but seeks to contribute insights on how to progress the development of mature schemes.
Date: Friday 15 April
Time: 2:30 - 3:30pm
Venue: Blue Room - B2.20 (B)
Speaker: Professor Rens Scheepers
Video conference: ib4.211 (G), B.3.18 (W)
Reflecting on Your Personal Research Portfolio and Strategy
In many academic disciplines today, research quality is judged on an international scale, i.e., your performance as researcher is increasingly compared against those of peers in your discipline around the world. Increasingly appointments, promotions and other forms of recognition are tied to measures such as quality of publications and research grant income. Many countries around the world have adopted national frameworks (e.g. ERA in Australia) to assess researchers' and institutions' outputs in this regard.
From the perspective of the individual researcher, it becomes even more important to reflect on your personal research strategy, outputs, and overall health of your research portfolio. This discussion will explore how researchers could consider their research strategy, pitfalls to avoid, and suggestions for developing a healthy research portfolio. Issues discussed will include the benefits of associating with a specific international research community, the politics of journal rankings, research collaboration, and an approach to assess your individual publication strategy. The discussion will be illustrated with examples from Information Systems, but the essence of the arguments will likely apply to many other disciplines as well. The discussion should be helpful for academics are different stages in the careers, including early career researchers and RHD students.
Date: Friday 25 March
Time: 12 - 1pm
Venue: HD3.008 (B)
Speaker: Carmel McNaught
Video conference: jb2.107 (G)
Dilemmas and directions into research in the field of learning technologies
This seminar is based on a forthcoming book:
Phillips, R. A., McNaught, C., & Kennedy, G. E. (in press). Evaluating e-learning: Guiding research and practice. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge.
Studies of the relationship between the design of e-learning environments and students' learning involve a mixture of evaluation and research and I will use the term 'evaluation research'. I will discuss e-learning evaluation research in the context of different disciplinary and interdisciplinary research approaches, recognizing that there is no one 'right' way to do e-learning evaluation research. The design of evaluation-research studies should take into account the cyclical nature of e-learning development with various evaluation-research strategies being appropriate at each stage of the 'e-learning lifecycle'. We will explore the complexity of work in this field, noting that design-based research has much to offer to e-learning researchers.
Date: Wednesday 23 March
Time: 10 - 11am
Venue: Blue Room - B2.20 (B)
Speaker: Carmel McNaught
Video conference: jb2.107 (G)
Building a research profile: Negotiating the tensions in the Australian research scene
The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative has focused attention on the research profile of universities in Australia, and it is likely that the ramifications of ERA will be felt elsewhere. Indeed, world-wide there is a growing number of constraints and demands on research that can be described in terms of 'calls', emanating from government and societal quarters. In this seminar, I will explore the tensions inherent in four such popular calls.
- The call for research productivity: Does this mean quantity or quality?
- The call for research quality: Does this imply journal metrics or improving conceptual understanding?
- The call for research innovation: Does this mean seeking new funding models or new strategies to explore understanding?
- The call for research ethics: Does this imply focusing on curbing plagiarism or a desire to strengthen human values in research?
For each of these tensions (and others), should we use 'or' or 'and' or 'and/or'?
What do these tensions mean for researchers seeking to build a research profile?
I will seek to build up a set of core principles that can guide new (and old) researchers in maximizing the value of their research in: adding to the knowledge pool in society; fulfilling their own professional lives; and rejuvenating the educational institutions in which we work.
