Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Adelaide North Terrace Cultural Precinct

My last day in South Australia I spent in the Adelaide North Terrace Cultural Precinct. North Terrace runs east west on the northern edge of the Adelaide central business district, next to the Torrens River. Within a kilometer along the terrace are campuses of the Universities of Adelaide and South Australia, the State Library, Museum and Art Gallery.

I stayed in the Hotel Richmond, which is located in an arcade between the main shopping precinct (Rundle Mall) at the front and North Terrace behind.

On the next corner is the Centre for Defence Communications & Information Networking (DSIC), where I met the director, Dr Bruce Northcote who was giving a talk that evening to the ACS. The previous evening I had given a talk on how the IT industry could help defence. The building housing DSIC has a learning commons on the ground floor, with informal computer equipped meeting spaces for students.

As befits a high technology university building, the one housing DSIC had the most complicated lift buttons I have ever seen: to call am lift, rather than pressing a button for "up", you enter the floor you wish to go to. Presumably the lift control system then optimises the traffic.

I walked through the Adelaide University grounds to the banks of the Torrens Rive, where there are kilometres of cycling and walking tracks. A short walk up the river and around the corner was the State Library of South Australia. In the cafe I happened across Dr Genevieve Bell , Intel Fellow, Digital Home Group Director, User Experience Group, Intel Corporation, who talked in Canberra last week.

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Friday, December 04, 2009

Engineering Education Hubs and Spokes Project

The ‘Hubs and Spokes’ Project is a Australian National University and University of South Australia collaboration for teaching engineering in a blended mode. My course about solving climate change with ICT features on the new web site for the project.

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Friday, March 21, 2008

Consortium of Indian Universities in Adelaide

A consortium of Indian universities is to establish a campus in Adelaide. Students will spend a year at the new institution in Adelaide and then move to a South Australian University:
The Icfai University has entered a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the state of South Australia to set up its campus at Adelaide.

Initially, the university is planning to launch postgraduate management programmes in a leased space in Adelaide this year before setting up a full-fledged campus with other courses over a period.

The MoU was signed by the visiting South Australia premier Mike Rann and Icfai University chairman Subhash Sarnikar here on Saturday. ...

.... The students would spend a year in the Icfai campus in Adelaide and the second year at an existing university.

In the process, they get degrees or diplomas from both the universities ...

From: Icfai to set up campus in South Australia, BS Reporter, Business Standard Ltd, Hyderabad, March 17, 2008
According to its web site, ICFAI University is made up of separate universities sponsored by the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India. These are located in Uttarakhand, Tripura, Sikkim, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Jharkhand and each is a separate university under Indian law. This could make the administration of students in Adelaide quite complex.

ICFAI University offer Flexible Learning Programs, up to the Masters level, inlcuding in new areas, such as Cyber Law. Flexible Learning could offer an interesting challenge to Australian universities with traditional modes of teaching and traditional course content.

The web sites for the Nagaland and Jharkhand universities do not appear to have been established yet.

According to the Wikipedia there is a legal dispute in India and USA involving ICFAI over the use the term Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).

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