Helen Farley

Demons, devils and witches: The occult in heavy metal music

Heavy Metal has developed from a British fringe genre of rock music in the late 1960s to a global mass market consumer-good in the early twenty-first century. Early proponents of the musical style, such as Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Judas Priest, Saxon, Uriah Heep and Iron Maiden, were mostly seeking to reach a young male audience. Songs were often filled with violent, sexist and nationalistic themes but were also speaking to the growing sense of deterioration in social and professional life. At the same time, however, Heavy Metal was seriously indebted to the legacies of blues and classical music as well as to larger literary and cultural themes. The genre also produced mythological concept albums and rewritings of classical poems. In other words, Heavy Metal tried from the beginning to locate itself in a liminal space between pedestrian mass culture and a rather elitist adherence to complexity and musical craftsmanship, speaking from a subaltern position against the hegemonic discourse. This collection of essays provides a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary look at British Heavy Metal from its beginning through The New Wave of British Heavy Metal up to the increasing internationalization and widespread acceptance in the late 1980s. The individual chapter authors approach British Heavy Metal from a textual perspective, providing critical analysis of the politics and ideology behind the lyrics, images and performances. Rather than focus on individual bands or songs, the essays collected here argue with the larger system of Heavy Metal music in mind, providing comprehensive analysis that relate directly to the larger context of British life and culture. The wide range of approaches should provide readers from various disciplines with new and original ideas about the study of this phenomenon of popular culture.

Virtual Worlds in Higher Education: The Challenges, Expectations and Delivery

Virtual worlds (VWs) are providing welcome opportunities for the development of innovative curricula in higher education. These environments potentially allow educators to provide their students with more authentic learning experiences that more closely replicate real-life contexts through the provision of credible tasks and activities. In addition, virtual worlds can provide a learning venue for students learning to execute tasks that are too costly or hazardous to perform in the real world (Haptics-e 2(2):1–7, 2001). Carefully designed simulations deployed in virtual world environments can offer safe and economical simulations of real-world contexts that can enhance learning, especially when coupled with tactile precision and haptic feedback. This chapter, while acknowledging the enormous potential of virtual worlds for higher education, will investigate the range of challenges also associated with implementing these environments into curricula. These include the use of appropriate pedagogical models and the large learning curve for novice users. The chapter will conclude with a discussion of how these challenges can be mitigated, taking into account the latest technical developments in virtual worlds and associated hardware.

Providing Simulated Online and Mobile Learning Experiences in a Prison Education Setting: Lessons Learned from the PLEIADES Pilot Project

This article reports on the preliminary findings, design criteria and lessons learned while developing and piloting an alternative to traditional print-based education delivery within a prison environment. PLEIADES Portable Learning Environments for Incarcerated Distance Education Students, was designed to provide incarcerated students with access to internet-independent secure digital and mobile technologies. An internet-independent version of Moodle was developed to complement course readings deployed on eReaders. The aim of the project was to increase access to and participation in higher education courses that are increasingly offered exclusively online. The article begins with an overview of the current provision of education within prison environments and introduces the rationale for commencing the project. The research findings of the project trial are discussed and the paper concludes with the lessons learned and implications for further research, development and implementation.

Moving towards the effective evaluation of mobile learning initiatives in higher education institutions

Mobile learning is viewed by many institutional leaders as the solution for a student cohort that is demanding an increasing flexibility in study options. These students are fitting study around other aspects of their lives including work and caring responsibilities, or they are studying at a geographical location far removed from the university campus. With ubiquitous connectivity available in many parts of the world and with the incremental improvements in design and affordability of mobile devices, many students are using mobile technologies to access course materials and activities. Even so, there are relatively few formal mobile learning initiatives underway and even fewer evaluations of those initiatives. This is significant because without a rigorous evaluation of mobile learning, it is impossible to determine whether it provides a viable and cost-effective way of accessing courses for both the student and the institution. This chapter examines the broad groupings of uses for mobile devices for learning, before considering the evaluation frameworks that are currently in use. The characteristics, affordances, and issues of these Q1 frameworks are briefly discussed. A project to develop a Mobile Learning Evaluation Framework is introduced, which will consider evaluation from four aspects: (1) pedagogical learning, (2) pedagogical teaching, (3) technical, and (4) organizational.

The Development of Virtual World Tools to Enhance Learning and Real World Decision Making in the Australian Sugar Farming Industry

In farming, the outcome of critical decisions to enhance productivity and profitability and so ensure the viability of farming enterprises is often influenced by seasonal conditions and weather events over the growing season. This paper reports on a project that uses cutting-edge advances in digital technologies and their application in learning environments to develop and evaluate a web-based virtual ‘discussion-support’ system for improved climate risk management in Australian sugar farming systems. Customized scripted video clips (machinima) are created in the Second Life virtual world environment. The videos use contextualized settings and lifelike avatar actors to model conversations about climate risk and key farm operational decisions relevant to the real-world lives and practices of sugarcane farmers. The tools generate new cognitive schema for farmers to access and provide stimuli for discussions around how to incorporate an understanding of climate risk into operational decision-making. They also have potential to provide cost-effective agricultural extension which simulates real world face-to-face extension services but is accessible anytime anywhere.

Mobile Learning in Higher Education in the Asia-Pacific Region

If mobile technologies are to be effectively used in education, how do we best implement sustainable mobile solutions for teaching and learning? The aim of this handbook is to support educators and policy makers who are investing in innovations in digital education to develop effective and sustainable mobile learning solutions for higher education environments. Authors from sixteen countries across the Asia-Pacific region have collaborated to share their experiences with developing and implementing mobile learning initiatives. These projects focus on a variety of aspects of mobile learning innovation, from the trial adoption of existing social media platforms on mobile devices and the development of specialised applications or mobile learning systems, to the large-scale, interuniversity implementation of technologies and pedagogies to support mobile learning. Each chapter addresses challenges and solutions at one or more levels of mobile learning innovation within the education system, encompassing the student perspective, the educator perspective, technical processes, policies and organisational strategy, and leadership. The book also offers a unique perspective on the integration of mobile learning innovations within the educational, political and cultural environments of Asia-Pacific countries.

Introduction: Supporting the Sustainable Implementation of Mobile Learning for Higher Education in the Asia-Pacific Region

The Asia-Pacific region has become a growth centre for digital innovation and economic prosperity, with innovations in mobile technologies and applications acting as a vehicle for disparate populations to gain greater access to education and other essential services. The successful integration of innovations that leverage the potential of mobile technologies for learning is therefore high on the agenda for higher education leaders from the Asia-Pacific. This book brings together discussion papers and case studies from authors in 16 countries within the Asia-Pacific region including China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Laos PDR, Cambodia, Singapore, Vietnam, Pakistan, Russia, Australia (including regional and remote areas), New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Fiji. Each chapter highlights the personal experiences or insights obtained from pioneers who are developing and implementing mobile learning initiatives as either pilot projects or as part of a cross-institutional strategy within learning institutions or Asia-Pacific communities. The chapters also address the implications of mobile learning for the four levels of stakeholders within higher education institutions. This introductory chapter provides an overview of each of these levels that form a framework to guide the implementation of sustainable mobile learning solutions for teaching and learning in the Asia-Pacific region.

Tackling Indigenous Incarceration Through Promoting Engagement with Higher Education

Amnesty International has identified soaring Indigenous incarceration rates as one of the most significant social justice and policy issues facing Australia. Indigenous Australians are twelve times more likely to be incarcerated than other Australians, mostly due to high recidivism rates. While a higher education qualification can significantly decrease reoffending rates post-release, accessing this type of education in correctional centres is becoming ever more difficult as providers move their program offerings online. As a result, prisoners are progressively excluded from higher education. This is particularly the case for Indigenous prisoners who often have lower levels of educational attainment than their non-Indigenous counterparts, further marginalising them. The University of Southern Queensland is leading a project, Making the Connection, aimed at facilitating increased participation of prisoners, particularly Indigenous prisoners, in digital higher education. In this way, the project aims to assist incarcerated students to develop critical thinking skills, digital literacies and the capacity for self-reflection. In addition, it seeks to enhance the prospects for employment on release and promote positive connection to families and communities. Such outcomes are expected to reduce the risk of reoffending upon release, by equipping people with the cognitive tools needed to engage constructively with families, communities and an increasingly digital society.

Academic domains as political battlegrounds : a global enquiry by 99 academics in the fields of education and technology

This article theorizes the functional relationship between the human components (i.e., scholars) and non-human components (i.e., structural configurations) of academic domains. It is organized around the following question: in what ways have scholars formed and been formed by the structural configurations of their academic domain? The article uses as a case study the academic domain of education and technology to examine this question. Its authorship approach is innovative, with a worldwide collection of academics (99 authors) collaborating to address the proposed question based on their reflections on daily social and academic practices. This collaboration followed a three-round process of contributions via email. Analysis of these scholars’ reflective accounts was carried out, and a theoretical proposition was established from this analysis. The proposition is of a mutual (yet not necessarily balanced) power (and therefore political) relationship between the human and non-human constituents of an academic realm, with the two shaping one another. One implication of this proposition is that these non-human elements exist as political ‘actors’, just like their human counterparts, having ‘agency’ – which they exercise over humans. This turns academic domains into political (functional or dysfunctional) ‘battlefields’ wherein both humans and non-humans engage in political activities and actions that form the identity of the academic domain.

Virtual Worlds as Restorative Environments

The overpopulation of our planet creates pressures, not only upon natural and human-created environments, but also upon human well-being. Responding to the Australian government’s focus upon education as a means for improved health, well-being and economic competitiveness, schools and universities strive to embed environmental sustainability and creativity in a crowded curriculum. The use of virtual worlds as restorative environments may help to realise this vision, which is shared by other nations with technologically rich, but time-poor and urbanised societies. This chapter draws upon the final stage of a three-stage study into pre-service teachers’ perceptions of personal well-being, sense of belonging, social connectedness and personal creativity and engagement. It considers how these senses were impacted by participants’ immersive experiences in a natural-seeming virtual world environment in Second Life and in their comparative experience in a formal garden setting. Findings suggest that Second Life may serve as a restorative environment if participants are sufficiently familiar with the user interface and virtual world environment.