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This paper presents an empirical study undertaken to develop a typology of international student community engagement activities that incorporates the perceptions of three key stakeholder groups--the international students, the community and the university. Framed by the notion of value co-creation, our exploratory study was undertaken at a rapidly growing, regional Australian university. Qualitative data was collected via interviews with community members (n = 5) and university staff members (n = 4) and focus groups with international students (N = 22). Our resulting typology comprises three clusters of engagement activity--highly unstructured, semi-structured and highly structured--with two engagement types in each cluster. Thus, the six major types of international student university-community engagement activities are: spontaneous occurrences and daily interactions (highly unstructured), informal social gatherings and casual employment (semi-structured) and formal social organisation participation and professional work experience (highly structured). Our typology offers a useful platform for strategic endeavours related to international student university-community engagement.

Existing research and practice in software development environments shows no clear consensus on the most appropriate development tools to use; these may range from simple text editors through teaching-oriented examples to full commercial integrated development environments (IDEs). This study addresses this gap by examining student perceptions of two development environments at opposite ends of the complexity spectrum. The results, gathered over several years using students at a range of experience levels, suggest that complex commercial IDEs are appropriate for programming education, even for entry-level students. Indeed, they offer a range of features that may improve the understanding and productivity of students. However, given the greater simplicity of simple text editors and potential for students to become overly dependent upon the support mechanisms provided by IDEs, teaching IDEs in combination with simple text editors appears to offer an ideal combination to maximize learning opportunities and student employability.

Providing students with high quality feedback is important and can be achieved using computer-based systems. While student and educator perspectives of such systems have been investigated, a comprehensive multidisciplinary study has not yet been undertaken. This study examines student and educator perspectives of a computer-based assessment and feedback system at undergraduate and postgraduate levels across a range of disciplines, course sizes and educator experience levels. The results suggest that students and educators may enjoy quality, efficiency and quantity benefits from such an approach, without the drawbacks of low personalisation and specificity identified within the literature. Time and effort are, however, required by educators for training and installation. Thus, workload and training allowances are recommended for practitioners, particularly for large courses where group assignments require highly personalised feedback.

Increased competition for the international student market has motivated universities to modernize their marketing strategies. Community engagement is an important component of students' international university experience and represents a potential point of competitive advantage. Developing marketing strategies around university-student-community engagement (U-S-CE) requires an understanding of the perspectives of international students, the university and the community. We anchored our study in value co-creation which is a principle of the service dominant logic framework found in the marketing literature. With limited research in the area, a qualitative approach was appropriate. Interviews were undertaken with key university members (n?=?4) and community members (n?=?5) concurrently with focus groups of international students (n?=?22) at a single university. Based on the degree of co-creation by international students in U-S-CE, three groups emerged: "consumers," "collaborators" and "co-designers." This study offers theoretical and practical insight, providing a platform for further research into U-S-CE.

Universities globally are showing increased interest in the potential of social media as a marketing recruitment tool. This paper explores how and why potential postgraduate business students looking to study internationally use social media in their educational decision-making process. Due to a lack of existing research, this study adopted an exploratory approach, gathering data through in-depth interviews with 12 postgraduate international students at an Australian university. The findings indicate that besides Facebook and YouTube, students are using blogs in their study search. The two most common reasons for social media usage are finding out about student life and reading reviews from former students. In the decision-making process, social media is mostly used in the information search and evaluation stages. Students' use of social media also varies across source countries. Our findings are a good information source for education marketers who need to engage more actively with social media.

The sponsorship of junior sport is a contentious issue with community concerns raised about the appropriateness of some marketing targetted at children. Parents and coaches are guardians of junior sports players and often faced with a moral dilemma. On the one hand they know sponsors, who are trying to generate goodwill through providing financial or in-kind support, are crucial to the affordability of junior sports when competition for securing sponsorships is intense. On the other hand, they hold concerns that some sponsors may exploit their access to these young, vulnerable players. Guardians are caught at a crossroads with equally undesirable alternatives—financially unviable junior sports without sponsors or junior sports with potentially exploitative sponsors. Our study fills a gap in the literature where the tensions of commercial sponsorship agendas and moral concerns in sponsorship has not been well explored with our study being the first to apply the construct of moral judgements in a sponsorship model. Mixed methodology is used to examine the role that moral judgements play in determining sponsor goodwill. A qualitative study (n = 18) informed an online survey (n = 306) of Australian junior sports guardians. Structural equation modelling revealed that guardians' moral judgements mediated the relationships between sponsor fit, perceived sponsor altruism and the outcome variable, sponsorship goodwill. The findings of this study extend scholarly understanding of consumers' appraisal of sponsorships and provide useful insights to guide practitioners in sponsorship decision making, particularly in contexts that stimulate community interest or concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Timely, constructive feedback on assessment is critically important to students and yet is increasingly difficult for time-poor academics to consistently provide. Marketing educators also face pressure to incorporate sustainability into both the curriculum and practices such as assessment. This article outlines the development of an innovative computer-based marking tool, SuperMarkIt (SMI), which promotes sustainability. Using an action research method, this article reports the results of the sixth cycle of review and improvement with data gathered from both educators and students. Results support the improvements in sustainability achieved by using SMI. Educationally, students report improved feedback quality in areas such as timeliness, legibility, constructiveness, personalization, and detail. Economically, academics report major increases in feedback quantity, and students report reductions in time and cost. Environmentally, SMI reduces reliance on paper as well as reducing travel required to submit and collect hard copy assessments. Continued development of SMI focuses on improving aspects related to technology adoption by educators. (Contains 2 figures and 2 tables.)

In recent times distinctions between the economic and political imperatives of international education and its cultural and educational aspects have become conveniently aligned. This alignment is troubling because it allows the pursuit of profit to fit neatly and without apparent controversy into the pursuit of more lofty political cultural and educational goals. Measures of student satisfaction with international education do little to challenge this comfortable affiliation. Indeed, they appear to reinforce the view that international education as currently pursued is travelling well and yielding maximum profits and benefits for all. The discussion in this article is based on the results of a pilot study that examined international student satisfaction with a teacher education internship program in Australia. Our findings showed that students were satisfied with their international education experience and that the internship/work integrated learning experience enhanced their satisfaction. Importantly however, our pre-departure study showed that students expected study abroad to make a difference to their lives even before they left home. The study led us to consider the meaning of student satisfaction and whether assessments of satisfaction might simply confirm what students already expect. If this is the case, it is not altogether clear what student satisfaction with international education means or measures.

This study investigates the application of voice recognition technology to online lectures focusing on the efficacy of the text component of a multimedia presentation. Specifically, participants were provided with online access to multimedia instructional packages comprising an image of the lecturer with accompanying computer slides, plus simultaneous scrolling text of the words spoken during the lecture. Participants' knowledge was measured before and after the lecture presentation. Contrary to cognitive load theory, the results did not show a negative redundancy effect, that is, there were no differences in learning efficacy between the conditions with and without on-screen text. Further, participants found no difference between text edited for semantic breaks compared to unedited text. The implications for online instructional design are that resources are better spent providing a combination of audio and slides rather than text and slides, and that if text is provided then editing for semantic line breaks is not warranted. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

Assessment of student learning is a core function of educators. Ideally students should be provided with timely, constructive feedback to facilitate learning. However, provision of high quality feedback becomes more complex as class sizes increase, modes of study expand and academic workloads increase. ICT solutions are being developed to facilitate quality feedback, whilst not impacting adversely upon staff workloads. Hence the research question of this study is "How do academic staff perceive the usefulness of an automated feedback system in terms of impact on workloads and quality of feedback?" This study used an automated feedback generator (AFG) across multiple tutors and assessment items within an MBA course delivered in a variety of modes. All academics marking in the course completed a survey based on an adaptation of the "unified theory of acceptance and use of technology" (UTAUT) model. Results indicated that while the workload impact was generally positive with savings in both cost and time, improvements and modifications to the system could further reduce workloads. Furthermore, results indicated that AFG improves quality in terms of timeliness, greater consistency between markers and an increase in the amount of feedback provided. (Contains 3 figures and 1 table.)

This paper studies how the ability of a consumer to recall various communication channel materials relates to differences in purchase frequency in the early lifecycle stages of a brand. It provides insight into the strategic decisions which marketers should make relating to marketing communication channels over time. Results indicate that in the introductory and early growth lifecycle stages, online communication channels are not sufficient alone in producing high brand purchase frequency and should be supplemented by integrated communication channels including traditional and instore communications. However, in the later growth stage, online communications can be employed alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research introduces the notion of sponsor acceptance and examines its role in an emerging sport, the Australian Big Bash League T20 cricket. Sports sponsors want to achieve consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) outcomes. However, the achievement of CBBE outcomes depends on sponsor acceptance. Using quantitative survey data from BBL television viewers, we developed and tested a model of sponsor acceptance. We compared fan in-group and out-group perceptions, finding that both groups viewed the sponsorship positively. There were no significant differences between the groups in terms of our model of sponsor acceptance. Commercial outcomes of the financial services sponsor validated findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effectiveness of shopper marketing strategies on influencing unplanned discretionary purchases. This is achieved through a real-world exploratory field study of a retail product, oysters, promoted through a shopper marketing campaign over 10 weeks. In-store demonstrations, presentation trays, information leaflets and posters are employed to influence shopper behavior instore. Data is collected through a triangulation approach from sales reports, consumer responses and retailer interviews. Results indicate that shopper marketing is effective at influencing sales with in-store demonstrations creating the greatest influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer satisfaction is of paramount importance to operators of tourism businesses. This research investigated the influence of individual visitor characteristics on satisfaction with built tourist attractions. The visitor characteristics investigated were derived from an exploratory study and then tested with data collected from a sample of 412 local and non-local visitors of differing ages and gender at four built tourist attractions from one of Australia's major regional tourist destinations. Key findings showed that significant differences exist between satisfaction levels experienced by visitors of different origins, genders, and between certain age groups. However there was no significant difference in satisfaction in visitors with differing levels of knowledge and experience. This study highlights the importance for attraction management of developing strategic marketing mixes for their different market segments.

Consumers are increasingly relying on quality assurance indicators when purchasing agriproducts like fish, where they lack the confidence and ability to judge quality. Any industry quality scheme should start with an understanding of the product attributes consumers value. This paper explores Australian consumers' perceptions of quality in relation to fish in general and barramundi specifically, using data from a national online survey of 2,061 consumers. Analysis of two open-ended questions and a perceptual mapping exercise indicate consumers value both intrinsic attributes such as freshness, color and smell, and extrinsic attributes such as origin and price. These results present the Australian barramundi industry with a starting point to develop a consumer-based quality framework and ensure consistent quality as valued by consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]