Learning Information Engineering Subjects Through the Internet

In the first semester of 1997, once again, we taught our introductory Database Management (CS230) course to around 350 students on our two main campuses. On this occasion, we used the e-mail, NewsGroups, Telnet and the World Wide Web capabilities extensively to support access to teaching and learning materials, for promulgation and submission of assignments and for staff-staff-student-student communication. In this context, students encountered challenging difficulties arising out of what might be described as ‘problems with socio-technical systems’. This paper describes the several elements of the teaching programme the curriculum elements, the teaching staff and the technology intended to support each of these. With most of these elements, we encountered a number of ‘small’ problems. Taken in conjunction, these several difficulties presented students with considerable impediments to successful learning in this subject. The paper concludes with observations concerning conditions which must be in place for Internet-augmented teaching and learning to be successful and enjoyable and reports some performance data which indicate a positive—although not strong—benefit from the use of the WebTests upon the final examination results. We include a ‘pre-fiight checklist’ for each element in the programme and each linkage between them. The prediction is that the need for checklists of this kind will increase as we increase the number and remoteness of links in the teaching chain, the number and experience of sources of communication contained in those links and increasingly challenge the technical reliability of the linkages, and as each of those multi-faceted links is subject to rapid evolution.     

Lockean Puzzles

In analytic moral philosophy it is standard to use unrealistic puzzles to set up moral dilemmas of a sort that I will call Lockean Puzzles. This paper will try to pinpoint just what is and what is not problematic about their use as a teaching tool or component part of philosophical arguments. I will try to flesh out the claim that what may be lost sight of in such Lockean puzzling is the personal dimension of moral deliberation—for example, moral problems differ from technical problems in the sense that they are non-transferable, we cannot hand them over to others for solution.     

Leadership Succession in New South Wales Catholic Schools: Identifying potential principals

This article reports research conducted on leadership succession in New South Wales Catholic schools. Using a specially developed instrument, the Impediments to Leadership Succession Inventory (ILSI), hierarchical cluster analysis was conducted using data collected from 943 middle management and senior management staff located in Catholic schools throughout New South Wales. A four cluster solution was accepted. One cluster consisted of 182 respondents who did not see major impediments to becoming a principal in the future. While short-term targeting of this subpopulation could be an effective strategy in the recruitment of principals, it is necessary to address the underlying impediments to leadership succession in New South Wales Catholic schools.     

Visioning New Modes of Integrated and Shared Schooling in Northern Ireland

Planning for shared schooling in Northern Ireland requires a re-consideration of the decision-making processes that underpin the choices made by parents and a re-thinking of the nature and purpose of alternative modes of educating young people from the different communities together. The article provides evidence that demand for existing integrated schools in Northern Ireland is growing at a rapid rate and that there is a need to ensure that school places are provided where demand exists. Given recent developments in Scotland, however, in relation to shared schools, it is suggested that new approaches may involve examining the application of this policy to Northern Ireland and, also, opening debate concerning the potential for further development of new forms of shared schooling. These new possibilities offer opportunities to enable young people to encounter a broader range of peers and experience more diverse cultures while retaining the support of the current Controlled (Protestant) and Maintained (Catholic) sectors. The fraught journey towards integrated education in a divided society has implications for European societies where religious belief, intertwined with ethnicity, has been implicated in communal discord and conflict.