Research and Support Working Group
Aim
To enhance the research of member institutes and support the professional development of staff and students in member institutes.
Responsibilities
To facilitate research and publication by staff of member institutes by:
- Assisting staff to engage in research, presentation and publication.
- Producing NACCQ's bulletin, journal and newsletter.
- Liaising with the NACCQ Executive Committee to identify research projects to further the aims of NACCQ and appropriate researchers to undertake them.
- Identifying funding sources for research.
To support the professional development of staff and students in member institutes by:
- Identifying and arranging seminars and workshops covering new and emerging technologies and research activities.
- Organising the academic content of the NACCQ conference and publishing the proceedings.
- Arranging lecture tours.
To communicate about research and professional development activities to interested parties, including ITPNZ, staff and students of member institutes, and industry.
Membership
Alison Young (Chair), Unitec
Tony Clear, AUT
Sam Mann, Otago Polytechnic
Michael Verhaart, EIT
Malcolm Weick, CPIT
Clare Atkins, NMIT
Mike Lopez, MIT
Andrew Mason, Industry
John Ascroft, Industry
Colin Boswell, Industry
The RS working group has set up several “project groups”:
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CONFERENCE |
Project Coordinator: |
Alison Young Tony Clear Sam Mann Host nominees |
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RESEARCH |
Project Coordinator:
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Members: Sam Mann Alison Young Clare Atkins Tony Clear Malcolm Wieck
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PUBLICATIONS |
Project Coordinator: Clare Atkins (Journal) |
Donald Joyce Michael Verhaart Michael Verhaart Sam Mann |
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SEMINARS |
Project Coordinator: Tony Clear |
Colin Boswell |
Research
The CITRUS Charitable Trust has been formed and will operate as an overseeing board for the management of and approval to use the CITRUS brand. The CITRUS network, now referred to as the “New Zealand Centres for IT Research”, will contain autonomous hubs which are self-managing. Some notable early achievements are:
- The first hub, the Unitec New Zealand Centre for Information Technology Research was formally launched in May 2003.
- The CITRUS website is now live at www.citrus.ac.nz.
- The Unitec New Zealand Centre for IT Research has won its first external funding, is to carry out an evaluation of the Otara Digital Opportunities Project, a community ICT initiative based in Manukau City. The Centre’s second major project is currently at the final stages of funding approval. The Unitec New Zealand Centre’s website is at: citrus.unitec.ac.nz.
- CITRUS running the NZ “arm” of SODIS, studying the Social impact of Technology with Don Gotterbarn of ACM
With the establishment of CITRUS, the group itself is now focusing its attention on more general matters of research support. This includes consideration of establishing a formal publishing entity.
Publications
RS see the provision of a suite of vehicles for publication and discourse as a major role for the group. We have put considerable effort into reviewing the research support role of NACCQ. One outcome of this a recognition that we have a series of publications, each of which meets a different need:
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New Zealand Journal of Applied Computing and Information Technology |
Fully refereed journal with the aim of publishing articles, which report applications, development and research in the area of Computing and Information Technology. Published articles have New Zealand authors and/or content that relates to New Zealand. The Journal is published twice a year. |
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Newsletter |
Communicating what is going on, eg interesting conference outcomes. Timed to get reports from working groups, sent out by email, and also set up on website. |
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Bulletin of Information Technology Research |
This is a new vehicle for publishing material for which a refereed journal may not be appropriate. It is hoped that the Bulletin can develop to include a series of columns and invited opinion pieces from industry people. Published on web but formatted as a journal (issues, page numbers etc). Publication dates: Feb, May, Aug, Nov |
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Proceedings of the NACCQ Conference |
Conference proceedings serves dual role of promoting excellence in IT research and teaching, and supporting a developing research culture. Has three themes: computing education, computing research and computing practice. Has three levels of publication, fully refereed papers, reviewed papers and poster papers. The conference proceedings are a substantial document of around 500 pages |
Conferences
In July of each year the NACCQ holds an annual conference, the first of which was held in Wellington in 1988. Subsequent conferences have been held in various locations including Rotorua, Christchurch, Wanganui, New Plymouth, Nelson, Auckland, Dunedin, Napier, Hamilton, and Palmerston North, Christchurch, Tauranga, and Wellington. This year the conference was held in Nelson.
The conference delegates are predominantly computing and information technology lecturers and industry representatives from throughout New Zealand and next year the conference will be held in Auckland and we expect to have 170 delegates with an increasing participation from the international community. The 2009 Conference will be held at EIT, 2010 in Otago and 2011 in Waiariki.
Each year the conference attracts keynote and invited speakers of international renown. In 2007 we were privileged to have Dr Eli Cohen Informing Science Institute (ISI) an International organisation of over 500 members from 60 countries, Murray Brown, Ministry of Education, and Dr Clare Atkins, Senior Lecturer on the Bachelor of Information Technology Degree at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology.
As well as the three keynote speakers and three invited speakers there are also many high quality conference paper presentations. The standard of the submissions in 2007 was particularly high and 35 full papers an 27 poster papers, were selected from the 55 submissions received, with international interest from Australia and USA.