Dr Lukas Carey, a long-time educator, trainer, coach and research academic at Edith Cowan University, recently published an article about how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting incarnated learners, entitled ‘Education while imprisoned during the COVID-19 outbreak, the forgotten frontier’.

While Carey did concede that not all educational facilities or programs at jails have their prisoners’ education disrupted, enough inmates are angry about it, saying it perpetuates the stereotype that prisoners are irredeemable and not worthy of a full education.

The research academic was able ask detainees what they thought about the current state of education amid COVID-19. The responses were varied, poignant and underscore just how much more work needs to be done in this field.

“The officers won’t even let us use the computers. They have locked down the library for everyone and that’s where the computers are. It is really s***and makes the guys trying to learn really angry. They just don’t care,” one detainee said.

Another said: “My father comes home soon, we are counting down the days but he recently started an excavator course he paid for from his prison savings. He won’t be able to finish this course, can’t get a refund and is feeling very depressed that he can’t get things done.”

Campus Review interviewed Carey, whose special research interests include criminology and convict criminology, to discuss the largely forgotten learners behind bars.

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While some people may have been able to access Work from Home (WFH) policies in the past, the COVID-19 pandemic has seen anyone who can technically work from home do so. But how do people feel about this? And will WFH practices become the norm for many in the future. To discuss this topical issue, I interviewed Dr Sarah Bankins, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management at Macquarie Business School. She wrote about this issue recently for the university’s The Lighthouse publication, entitled ‘The coronavirus has changed work forever’.

Bankins contended that, while technologies such as Zoom, Google Hangouts and Skype have existed for some time and offer the workforce a way of communicating that is functional, they are far from perfect. Connectivity issues, slow internet speeds as well as technical glitches can impede businesses trying to communicate on a regular basis.

Because it is too early to empirically conclude what impacts WFH has had on employees’ productivity and wellbeing, the Macquarie University academic said social media has helped to identify three distinct types of people who look at WFH is vastly different ways. For instance, some prefer working form the office and having a clear demarcation between work and home, as well as fewer or no disruptions.

On the other hand, Bankins has identified another group of individuals who are enjoying the flexibility WFH gives them, and the opportunity to be productive outside of the normal 9 to 5 working tradition. Finally, there is the third group of individuals who “want the best of both worlds” and are probably in the majority.

Although many businesses will find it difficult, almost impossible, to move towards a WFH policy, Bankins warns that ongoing overheads such as rent and electricity may provoke more white-collar professions such as lawyers, accountants and office workers – to name just a few – to reconsider their operational models.

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When the COVID-19 pandemic initially took off in China, grave fears were held for Australia's university sector. This was primarily due to Australia's reliance on Chinese students and the travel bans that are still in place.

But now universities are facing another challenge. With the banning of large gatherings and recent social distancing protocols, on-campus students are now affected and a range of technologies are being relied upon like never before.

But as Michael Sankey, Deputy Director for Learning Transformations in the Learning Futures Group at Griffith University, explains, most Australian universities are adapting to the new "learning ecosystem", delivering on-campus students their content and assessment online. He stresses, however, that a lot of hard work has gone into the changes and there are some universities, who are no so experienced in online learning, "that are playing catch up".

Griffith University has also installed some 1500 VPN connections into Chinese students' computers who are still unable to return to Australia.

Sankey says Griffith is relying on their tried and tested technologies, such as Blackboard Learning and Microsoft Teams, and are trying "to keep things simple". He also warns that "predatory vendors" are trying to cash in on the new learning "ecosystems".

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In part three of our podcast series on the megafires that brought destruction to Australia this summer, Campus Review spoke to a world-authority in land management practices - Professor David Bowman from the University of Tasmania. This episode focuses on the the challenges of reducing fire loads, the ability of megafires to overcome fire containment lines, and a question that is leading to intense debate in the field: Will more fire burning lead to more carbon emissions in the atmosphere than intense bushfires or even megafires in the future? And what will be the implications of this?

One of the salient points Bowman makes is that Australia, as a landscape, is not an idealised environment that makes controlled burning easy. As he puts it, Australia "is not a frictionless surface" : it is full of mountainous streams, rivers, tributaries and a whole host of other complicating factors. He also warned that the scale of controlled burning required to establish fire breaks across the country would be "mind-boggling".

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Professor Zlatko Skrbis is the chief principal investigator of ARC-funded social futures project entitled, My Lives. With the support of various experts and research assistants, the project aims to investigate the challenges and milestones of young Australians as they transition from adolescence to adulthood.

Beginning in 2006 and inspired partly by the British documentary series 10 up, the longitudinal project tracks the shifting opinions of over 2000 Queenslanders on salient including job security, early partnering, home ownership, wellbeing and agency, social and environmental attitudes, and approaches to new technology.

The cohort was only 12 to 13 years of age when first surveyed; now they are in their mid twenties. One of the most interesting, and perhaps alarming findings stemming from the Our Lives project is that young adults have a less certain idea of their life trajectories and mental health issues are on the rise. These could have serious policy implications for the future.

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When English and Music teacher Michael Lawrence visited Finnish schools in 2017, many teachers asked him why Australia used a test like NAPLAN to assess students, particularly young ones.

That experience, plus the Finnish children's interest in learning, convinced Lawrence to write a book on the topic, entitled Testing 3, 2, 1: What Australia can learn from Finland's education system. It is supported by a bulk of personal observations and evidence, and is due for release in April.

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In part two of our series on Australia's megafires this summer, Campus Review talks to firefighter and PhD candidate at Edith Cowan University Greg Penney.

With his unique mix of academia and hands-on knowledge, Penney explains how unprecedented the bushfire season has been so far and the types of technology Australia already has, and needs to develop, to combat such fires in the future.

He also discusses his research project and warns that traditional models of volunteerism within the firefighting community are being stretched to the limit.

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Two of the most important points highlighted in Davis's interview was that the world is barrelling towards its limit of no more than a 2 degree Celsius temperature rise and drastic action will need to be undertaken to contain it. He also said the urban sprawl, seen in a large number of Australian cities, needs readdressing, as fuel loads around these areas tend to be abundant. He also said that when large fires join together, they produce there own - often deadly - weather systems.

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As concerns about the spread of coronavirus deepen in Australia, attention has turned to the effect it is having on Australia's billion-dollar education sector. As around 250,000 Chinese students bound for Australia wait for the travel bans to lift, universities are implementing a range of strategies to deal with the situation: tuition fee refunds, free deferrals of study, online study and adjustments to teaching calendars. However, for Chinese high school students, the situations is more difficult, with the academic year well and truly away.

CEO of the International Education Association of Australia, Phil Honeywood, who has been appointed to coordinate the sector's response, spoke to Campus Review after attending the Global Reputation Taskforce. The taskforce emphasised the need for "common, transparent and comprehensive" information being available to all during what Honeywood describes as an extremely "fluid" situation affecting many sectors. Honeywood also urged against the racial profiling of Chinese students and discussed why diversifying Australia's international education market is complicated and unwarranted.

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Last week Campus Review published an article based on the research of UWA's Dr Cyril Grueter and a team of Edith Cowan researchers. In contrast to what one might instinctively think, the study found that altruism - or kindness - does not apply to everyone and is more prevalent among high-SES individuals and suburbs.

In this podcast Grueter talks about the "lost letter" technique used in the study, speculates about the reasons for the results and underscores the importance of education in shaping kinder, pro-social individuals in the future.

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