Overview
The emergency and disaster management sector has highlighted the importance of contemporary practice being grounded in research. In this unit, you will be encouraged to explore the notion of research, plus the important questions of why and how research can and should inform the different phases of emergency and disaster management. In order to do so, you will build knowledge and skills in critically analysing research, understandings of the frameworks and practices guiding the ethical conduct of research and your role in utilising and implementing research in a professionally and ethically responsible manner. You will learn fundamental underpinning research literacies and how you can use these to inform decision-making processes grounded in evidence-based practice.
Details
Pre-requisites or Co-requisites
Co-Requisite for this unit is DSMG28001 Foundations of Emergency and Disaster Management. Students enrolled in the CM40 Bachelor of Paramedic Science/Graduate Certificate in Emergency and Disaster Management must also have a minimum of 156 credit points to enrol in this unit.
Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework).
Offerings For Term 1 - 2022
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes – in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 6-credit Postgraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.
Class Timetable
Assessment Overview
Assessment Grading
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%). Consult the University’s Grades and Results Policy for more details of interim results and final grades.
All University policies are available on the CQUniversity Policy site.
You may wish to view these policies:
- Grades and Results Policy
- Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework)
- Review of Grade Procedure
- Student Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure
- Monitoring Academic Progress (MAP) Policy and Procedure – Domestic Students
- Monitoring Academic Progress (MAP) Policy and Procedure – International Students
- Student Refund and Credit Balance Policy and Procedure
- Student Feedback – Compliments and Complaints Policy and Procedure
- Information and Communications Technology Acceptable Use Policy and Procedure
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of University policies are available on the CQUniversity Policy site.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Feedback from Have your Say evaluation
Moodle site
Continue to review the Moodle site in order to enhance useability.
Feedback from Five-year review and industry consultation
Content
Remove the content now being covered in the new Foundation of Emergency and Disaster Management unit and as such, update the depth and breadth of research-specific content.
Feedback from Student emails
Feedback mechanisms
Provide additional information to students about the different feedback mechanisms, for example, 'My Experience' and 'Have your Say'.
- Identify different research approaches and their use in researching emergency and disaster management issues
- Examine ethical issues and the frameworks and practices underpinning the ethical conduct of research
- Locate appropriate peer-reviewed and grey literature relevant to emergency and disaster management
- Analyse contemporary literature, and its relationship to the different phases of emergency and disaster management
- Formulate strategies for the implementation and utilisation of research in emergency and disaster management contexts and situations
- Communicate future directions and strategies for enhancing the body of knowledge in emergency and disaster management
NIL
Alignment of Assessment Tasks to Learning Outcomes
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 1 - Written Assessment - 25% | ||||||
| 2 - Written Assessment - 45% | ||||||
| 3 - Presentation - 30% | ||||||
Alignment of Graduate Attributes to Learning Outcomes
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 1 - Knowledge | ||||||
| 2 - Communication | ||||||
| 3 - Cognitive, technical and creative skills | ||||||
| 4 - Research | ||||||
| 5 - Self-management | ||||||
| 6 - Ethical and Professional Responsibility | ||||||
| 7 - Leadership | ||||||
| 8 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultures | ||||||
Textbooks
There are no required textbooks.
IT Resources
- CQUniversity Student Email
- Internet
- Unit Website (Moodle)
- Zoom capacity (web cam and microphone)
All submissions for this unit must use the referencing style: American Psychological Association 7th Edition (APA 7th edition)
For further information, see the Assessment Tasks.
d.fanany@cqu.edu.au
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Online Classroom Session – Introduction and Unit Overview
Note: Your unit co-ordinator will contact you before week 1 to confirm times for online classroom sessions.
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Assessment 1 due Friday, April 1st
Emergency Management Research Directions Due: Week 4 Friday (1 Apr 2022) 4:00 pm AEST
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Assessment 2 due Friday, May 13th
Research Planning and Ethics Due: Week 9 Friday (13 May 2022) 4:00 pm AEST
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Research Communication Due: Week 12 Friday (3 June 2022) 4:00 pm AEST
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1 Written Assessment
You are an emergency management professional who is employed as a consultant by the state government of Queensland. The government is planning to expand the breadth and scope of its emergency management efforts, and it will need to be aware that there are seven key challenges that are considered particularly significant to the future of the industry. They can be described as:
- Increased uncertainty, complexity, and convergence
- Disaster risk reduction and policy disconnects
- Community expectations and resilience
- Social media, networking, and emergence
- The political-operational nexus
- Measuring emergency management effectiveness
- Development and capability
You have been assigned to present a short summary of the state of recent research in one of these areas (your choice). You must search for three articles relevant to your chosen topic; a minimum of two of these articles must be peer-reviewed. You might wish to start with CQ University’s recommended 7-step process, as described on the Moodle site and the library resources. Since each of these challenges is an evolving concern of emergency management, it is preferable to use recent articles as much as possible (the past 10 years, or 5 years where applicable). The article “Politics, Policy and Paradigms: Challenges of Change in Future Emergency Management” on the Moodle site will give you a brief introduction to what each of these challenges involves.
For each journal article you find, you will need to present a short summary of its arguments and findings, and explain briefly how this knowledge can be used to enhance at least one of the prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery concepts of emergency management (PPRR).
Your response should be up to about 1000 words in total. Upload your response to Moodle in Microsoft Word format by the end of Week 4.
This assessment is worth 25% of the overall grade for this unit.
Week 4 Friday (1 Apr 2022) 4:00 pm AEST
Week 6 Friday (22 Apr 2022)
The complete rubric for this assessment will be available on Moodle. You will be assessed on:
- Concise, accurate, and accessible summary of article content
- Analysis of how the research enhances prevention, preparedness, response, and/or recovery
- Locate appropriate peer-reviewed and grey literature relevant to emergency and disaster management
- Analyse contemporary literature, and its relationship to the different phases of emergency and disaster management
2 Written Assessment
The state government is expecting a very rainy wet season. It has received warnings that the risk of floods in some regions will be very high, and that flooding might even reach disastrous levels in a few of these. There is an urgent need for more information on which communities will be affected, and on the specific needs and perspectives of these communities.
You have been assigned to assist in the design of research methods that can be used to gather information from the public, such as their past experiences with floods, their perspectives on these events, and their expectations of government and other stakeholders. Some information of this type is potentially sensitive or difficult for members of the public to talk about, and to entrust to others (particularly representatives of the government).
The government has identified certain remote communities which it considers a priority because of their high assessed vulnerability to disastrous flooding. Another consultant has prepared a preliminary plan which would involve people from remote communities being brought to larger towns like Cairns and Rockhampton to be interviewed by field officers from Disaster Management Queensland. Your task is to present an analysis of this plan; specifically, you need to provide responses to the following concerns:
1. What are the ethical considerations or problems associated with this approach? If so, what are some ways that the methods could be adjusted to avoid them?
2. What are one or two alternative methods that could be used in this situation? Would any of those alternatives be preferable to the approach outlined above, and if so, why?
3. What specific types of information will the government need to collect in order to enhance prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery?
To support your responses, you should consult and cite the published literature (including academic publications, commercial publications, and grey literature where applicable) on research methods and ethical issues related to data collection from interviews, as well as literature on the use of information as a resource in emergency management.
Note: your response must address the methods and the goals of the proposed research project. You are not consulting on how to prepare for floods, or something similar.
Your response should be at most about 1500 words. Upload your response to Moodle in Microsoft Word format by the end of Week 9.
This assessment is worth 45% of the overall grade for this unit. You must achieve a score of at least 50% (22.5 out of 45) on this assessment to pass the unit.Week 9 Friday (13 May 2022) 4:00 pm AEST
Week 11 Friday (27 May 2022)
The complete rubric for this assessment will be available on Moodle. You will be assessed on:
- Discussion of ethical issues and considerations related to the proposed methods
- Discussion of strengths and weaknesses of possible alternative methods
- Discussion of possible goals and information needed in a research project of this type
- Use of literature to support discussion
- Identify different research approaches and their use in researching emergency and disaster management issues
- Examine ethical issues and the frameworks and practices underpinning the ethical conduct of research
- Locate appropriate peer-reviewed and grey literature relevant to emergency and disaster management
- Analyse contemporary literature, and its relationship to the different phases of emergency and disaster management
3 Presentation
Note: this assessment revisits the same topic you considered in Assessment 1. As such, you can use some of the same articles and content if you wish, but you will need to find at least some additional sources to extend your discussion.
The rainy season has started, and there have already been emergency warnings in some of the communities identified in the research project from three weeks ago (Assessment 2). Partly because of this, your discussion of the future emergency management challenge (Assessment 1) has made its way all the way to Queensland’s state Cabinet. Some ministers have shown an interest in learning about how this challenge relates to the current problems with flooding in remote communities.
Your task is to prepare a short presentation on how research in your topic from Assessment 1 can be used to enhance Queensland’s preparedness for floods. Your presentation should:
- Explain how issues or problems connected to your topic might affect this specific emergency management context
- Identify one such issue or problem which requires future research, and where a deeper understanding would enhance prevention, preparedness, response, and/or recovery for this specific emergency management context
- For this identified concept, briefly outline how you believe future research could be conducted and what concepts it most needs to elucidate to enhance prevention, preparedness, response, and/or recovery for this specific emergency management context
Your presentation should be not more than 10 minutes in length. Submit your presentation as an audio recording on PowerPoint slides, via Moodle, by the end of week 12.
This assessment is worth 30% of your overall grade for this unit. You must achieve a score of at least 50% (15 out of 30) on this assessment to pass the unit.Week 12 Friday (3 June 2022) 4:00 pm AEST
Exam Week Friday (17 June 2022)
The complete rubric for this assessment will be available on Moodle. You will be assessed on:
- Explanation of your challenge's relevance to the context specified
- Identification of area requiring future research
- Characterisation of identified area's potential for enhancing emergency management in the context specified
- Discussion of possible goals, aims, methods, etc for future research in identified area
- Presentation clarity and use of literature to support arguments
- Formulate strategies for the implementation and utilisation of research in emergency and disaster management contexts and situations
- Communicate future directions and strategies for enhancing the body of knowledge in emergency and disaster management
As a CQUniversity student you are expected to act honestly in all aspects of your academic work.
Any assessable work undertaken or submitted for review or assessment must be your own work. Assessable work is any type of work you do to meet the assessment requirements in the unit, including draft work submitted for review and feedback and final work to be assessed.
When you use the ideas, words or data of others in your assessment, you must thoroughly and clearly acknowledge the source of this information by using the correct referencing style for your unit. Using others’ work without proper acknowledgement may be considered a form of intellectual dishonesty.
Participating honestly, respectfully, responsibly, and fairly in your university study ensures the CQUniversity qualification you earn will be valued as a true indication of your individual academic achievement and will continue to receive the respect and recognition it deserves.
As a student, you are responsible for reading and following CQUniversity’s policies, including the Student Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure. This policy sets out CQUniversity’s expectations of you to act with integrity, examples of academic integrity breaches to avoid, the processes used to address alleged breaches of academic integrity, and potential penalties.
What is a breach of academic integrity?
A breach of academic integrity includes but is not limited to plagiarism, self-plagiarism, collusion, cheating, contract cheating, and academic misconduct. The Student Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure defines what these terms mean and gives examples.
Why is academic integrity important?
A breach of academic integrity may result in one or more penalties, including suspension or even expulsion from the University. It can also have negative implications for student visas and future enrolment at CQUniversity or elsewhere. Students who engage in contract cheating also risk being blackmailed by contract cheating services.
Where can I get assistance?
For academic advice and guidance, the Academic Learning Centre (ALC) can support you in becoming confident in completing assessments with integrity and of high standard.
What can you do to act with integrity?
