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The use of a drama-based pedagogical (DBP) approach, while well-documented to promote active learning and enhance students' generic skills, is under-utilised in the context of higher education, particularly in psychology learning and teaching (L&T). A project, comprising two virtual drama-integrated learning sessions, was implemented to gauge the efficacy of the DBP approach in psychology L&T at a Hong Kong university. Aside from facilitating effective learning and application of psychological theories on the topic of classroom management in a semi-authentic setting (i.e. a drama context highly analogous to a real-life situation), this project aimed to enhance students' creative thinking, problem-solving, communication, and critical thinking skills. A mixed-method evaluation framework was utilised to evaluate students' feedback upon completion. The project's quantitative analyses, while utilizing the subjective outcome evaluation approach, underscored students' acknowledgement of DBP's positive impact on their learning in alignment with prior research. Qualitative analyses, meanwhile, uncovered the underlying five elements through which DBP is conducive to achieving the current expected outcomes. Discussions pertaining to the possible interconnection of these five elements behind DBP and its implications on university psychology education are featured.

Basic science educators play a significant role in medical and health professions curricula, particularly in the biomedical science components. Although the shift from basic scientists to educators seems promising, no study has yet explored the transition process from the perspective of basic scientists themselves, especially in the early stages of their transition. An anonymous survey with voluntary participation was administered to all basic scientists in National University of Singapore (NUS) Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. The survey aimed to identify the perceived challenges faced by basic scientists transitioning to basic science educators in medical and health professions education. This study consisted of Likert scale questions, followed by one multiple-choice question and two open-ended questions. Twenty-one basic scientists either postdoctoral fellows or instructors, completed the study. The study found that gaps in clinical content and experience, along with teaching pedagogy and training were among the major concerns for basic scientists aspiring to be basic science educators. These challenges and shortcomings could potentially be addressed by providing them with clinical shadowing opportunities, education mentorship and teaching training. Since most respondents lacked teaching experience, the results might differ if the majority had been involved in teaching within medical and health professions education. Nonetheless, it is important to understand and acknowledge the challenges and concerns experienced by basic scientists and examine how they can navigate them in the process of their transition to teaching medical and health professions. This also provides opportunities for personal reflection and development so that basic science educators will be more prepared for greater challenges and the ever-changing demands of contemporary medical and health professions education.

While previous studies have focused on the outcomes of using dubbing apps to foster learner's development of English-speaking ability, this study, grounded in cognitive apprenticeship (CA), is an investigation of the learning processes, which included modeling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, reflection, and exploration, involved in the use of a dubbing app, Mofunshow. Participants included 26 college students at a science and technology university in Taiwan. Data included GEPT speaking pre-and post-test scores, initial and final dubbing videos, learning logs, and reflective essays. The results showed that after engaging in video dubbing the students improved their English-speaking ability, in terms of accuracy and fluency. Coaching and modeling were ranked as the two most useful processes which supported students as they improved their English-speaking ability through repeatedly listening, echoing, and imitating. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed.

There were few papers for interdisciplinary integration of Scratch programming, English learning, and local cultures as far as the digital animated E-book creation of elementary schools was concerned. This article proposes an interdisciplinary innovative teaching mode, with college students as teachers, Scratch programming and English learning as tools, and a local legend The Wind Chasers of Siraya as material for schoolchildren in a remote area of Taiwan. Schoolchildren were divided into four groups, and each group was responsible for a part, and finally these four parts were integrated into a complete animated English picture book with images, sound, music, and games. The purpose is to enhance the acquisition and learning of information technology and English application among schoolchildren in the remote area. Participants were evaluated in accordance with their learning motivation, self-efficacy, and learning effect. The self-efficacy scale was designed from three dimensions of the self-efficacy theory presented by Bandura and the syllabus of five functions in Scratch. The teaching effects were investigated with paired sample t test. The results of these assessments revealed that schoolchildren's learning motivation has been elevated, with a significant improvement of self-efficacy and overall learning achievement. In addition, the post-test revealed that Scratch programming and English learning from the culture-based illustration book had significant correlation, which suggested that the overall program successfully integrated these two subjects.

Research experience is widely used in quality assurance exercises to benchmark postgraduate education at the institutional level. However, individual differences in students' research experience have been largely neglected. Furthermore, little is known about how differences in students' research experience are associated with skill development and overall satisfaction. This study addressed these gaps using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. Study 1 was a quantitative study that involved surveying 590 research postgraduate students (i.e. 421 PhD and 168 MPhil students). A person-centered approach, specifically latent profile analysis, was used to analyze the data. Our findings revealed that students could be divided into three groups based on their research experience: rewarding, ordinary, and unsatisfactory. Those with a rewarding research experience experienced greater development in their skills and higher levels of satisfaction, while those in the unsatisfactory group demonstrated the worst outcomes. Study 2 was a qualitative study that involved interviews with 10 PhD students. The qualitative findings largely triangulated the quantitative results but also uncovered emerging themes, including the importance of student-supervisor misfit, publication pressure, and the COVID-19 pandemic context. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Expectancy-value theory mostly focuses on how expectancy and value beliefs are associated with academic achievement. Both expectancy and value beliefs are multidimensional and can be further decomposed into general and specific factors. However, few studies have explored the associations of these general and specific factors with academic achievement and learning strategy use. This study aimed to investigate the bifactor structure of expectancy and value beliefs and investigate the linkages between general and specific expectancy-value factors and mathematics achievement and learning strategy use. Based on the expectancy and value dimensions measured by the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), bifactor models were used to analyse the data collected from 563 senior secondary school students in China. Three key findings emerged: (1) both expectancy and value beliefs could be disentangled into general and specific factors; (2) general factors were significantly associated with mathematics achievement and learning strategy use; and (3) the specific factors were positively associated with mathematics learning strategy use but not mathematics achievement. Methodological and practical implications are discussed. [Spanish translation by Mercè Rius.]

The field of language education has experienced a rise in using virtual reality (VR) to support interactive, contextualized, and collaborative language learning in recent years. The current study investigates the effects of auditory, visual, and textual input on speaking and writing in English for Tourism Purposes (ETP) through immersive, scenery-based virtual reality (SBVR) dyadic learning. Adopting a framework on ETP sociocultural, linguistic, and formulaic competence, the researchers designed relevant learning content using audios, images, and verbatim onscreen text on "EduVenture VR" to create an interactive, simulated tour. Thirty-eight English as a foreign language undergraduates participated in this single-group quasi-experiment. Various data sources included speaking and writing pre-, post- and delayed post-tests, a post-intervention survey, and reflections about the VR learning experience. The study reported significant speaking gains in language accuracy, destination promotion, knowledge retention, and replication of ETP language, as well as significant writing improvement in using sophisticated vocabulary, knowledge retention, and replication of ETP language. The study concludes that SBVR warrants positive impact on improving productive ETP skills. Possible factors, limitations, and pedagogical implications for using scenery-based VR in dyadic learning for ETP are discussed. Finally, the study suggests future research directions to combine technology-enhanced language learning theories with multimodal input and material design supported by immersive VR to enhance language production for specific purposes.

The ability of automatically modeling learners' personalities is an important step in building adaptive learning environments. Several studies showed that knowing the personality of each learner can make the learning interaction with the provided learning contents and activities within learning systems more effective. However, the traditional method of modeling personality is using self-reports, such as questionnaire, which is subjective and with several limitations. Therefore, this study presents a new unobtrusive method to model the learners' personalities in an intelligent Moodle (iMoodle) using Learning Analytic (LA) approach with Bayesian network. To evaluate the accuracy of the proposed approach, an experiment was conducted with one hundred thirty-nine learners in a public university. Results showed that recall, precision, F-measure and accuracy values are in acceptance range for three personality dimensions including extraversion, openness, and neuroticism. Moreover, the results showed that the LA approach has a fair agreement with the Big Five Inventory (BFI) in modeling these three personality dimensions. Finally, this study provides several recommendations which can help researchers and practitioners develop effective smart learning environments for both learning and modeling. For example, it is needed to help identify more features of the hardest personality traits, such as agreeableness, using gamification courses.

Based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and supplemented by social cognitive theory and gender schema theory, this study investigated the interactive mechanism of TAM by incorporating self-efficacy and gender as two factors in students' usage of sports bracelets. Data were collected from 682 Chinese college freshmen. Results indicated that perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEU) and attitude towards technology (ATT) significantly influenced students' intention to use sports bracelets. Self-efficacy (SE) not only was positively associated with PU and PEU, but, more importantly, self-efficacy moderated the relationship between PEU and behavioural intention (BI), and also between ATT and BI marginally. The effects of SE towards BI were found to be more apparent for low PEU and ATT students. In the case of sports bracelets, gender was found to moderate the relationships between PU and BI, and BI increased with PU for males but remained unchanged for females. Implications were discussed.

The following review incorporates a systematic selection, coding, and analysis methodology in order to compile a corpus of empirical research studies that investigate the use of technology-mediated feedback in L2 writing contexts published from 2015-2019. Trends are identified by coding and quantitatively analyzing key parameters of the corpus, and the corpus is qualitatively analyzed, contextualizing and exploring emergent themes within these trends in rich detail.Key quantitative findings reveal (A) the leading journals are "Computer Assisted Language Learning," "Computers & Education," "Journal of Second Language Writing," and "Language Learning & Technology"; (B) the region with the most publications is Greater Asia, with the USA as the country with the most publications; (C) the majority of studies were conducted in EFL contexts; (D) tertiary contexts dominate, with the majority occurring at the undergraduate level in blended learning contexts; (E) the majority of studies examined feedback that contained both local and global feedback; (F) the majority of studies gave comprehensive feedback via a mix of direct and indirect feedback, were delivered within formative treatments, and used either asynchronous or mixtures of both asynchronous and synchronous modes; (G) as for types of technology used, multiple technologies were used most, followed by individual study tools, cloud-based word processors and shared documents, and network-based social computing; (H) most research orientations were descriptive or comparative and used non-experimental designs; and (I) the most popular sources of feedback were issued from teachers, AWEs, and peers. Eight studies investigated the use of feedback stemming from multiple sources. Finally, qualitative analyses explore emergent themes involving the intersection of source of feedback and technology type; in doing so, the authors describe, contextualize, and critique in rich detail how the use of artful combinations of technologies and sources are currently shaping the use of technology-mediated feedback in L2 writing instruction and research.

The development of any intervention to remedy student reticence should be based on students' real needs. This is to avoid the risk of making generalisation and hasty decision in designing course contents. This study investigated reticent pre-service English teachers' needs with the view of developing a remedial course to alleviate reticent behaviour and to improve oral participation in English for Academic Purposes classrooms. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, this study employed a survey, a semi-structured interview and a focus group discussion to collect data from pre-service English teachers and English instructors in a Malaysian state university. The findings revealed that the pre-service English teachers' reticent behaviour was caused by virtual of their negative beliefs towards oral participation, lack of discussion skills and fear of negative evaluation. Additionally, the findings also implied that training in oral participation skills alongside relevant linguistic knowledge is needed for remediation of reticence as the reticent pre-service teachers encountered difficulties in asking questions, contributing ideas and providing connected utterances during open-class discussions. This study highlights the needs for further research in this domain in order to inform the development of intervention to remedy student reticence.

With the advancement of information and communication technologies, technology-supported peer assessment has been increasingly adopted in education recently. This study systematically reviewed 134 technology-supported peer assessment studies published between 2006 and 2017 using a developed analysis framework based on activity theory. The results found that most peer assessment activities were implemented in social science and higher education in the past 12 years. Acting assignments such as performance, oral presentations, or speaking were the least common type of assignments assessed across the studies reviewed. In addition, most studies conducted peer assessment anonymously and assessors and assessees were randomly assigned. However, most studies implemented only one round of peer assessment and did not provide rewards for assessors. Across studies, it was more often the case that students received unstructured feedback from their peers than structured feedback. Noticeably, collaborative peer assessment did not receive enough attention in the past 12 years. Regarding the peer assessment tools, there were more studies that adopted general learning management systems for peer assessment than studies that used dedicated peer assessment tools. However, most tools used within these studies only provide basic functionalities without scaffolding. Furthermore, the results of cross analysis reveal that there are significant relationships between learning domains and anonymity as well as learning domains and assessment durations. Significant relationships also exist between assignment types and learning domains as well as assignment types and assessment durations.

Writing has always been subjected as a difficult task for students taking English language subjects during their first two semesters studying in tertiary education. For these students, writing a composition has been a task they would prefer to avoid doing. One of many reasons is the inability to first generate and organize their ideas for writing tasks. Besides, they faced difficulty in expressing themselves fluently or being able to write sentences that are grammatically correct in the target language. Realizing the importance of writing skills among undergraduates in the tertiary education, a study was carried out on 200 undergraduates who attended a day Malaysian University English Test (MUET) workshop to examine students' writing ability through a proposed model of Transferring, Restructuring, Engaging, Negotiating and Documenting (T.R.E.N.D.). The findings had shown significant improvement in learners' writing in term of coherency and the development of ideas after the workshop. As a whole, the use of T.R.E.N.D. Model had helped to improve students' writing ability in terms of not only language proficiency, but also their level of confidence.

This research focuses on the approach adopted by a university of science and technology in Taiwan (hereinafter the university) to develop students' employability indices and to explore the questionnaire analyses. The university developed the "Employability Map; E-Map" by weighting the learning hours, which was used to evaluate students' various employability items over the course of their schooling. Considering it not so appropriate to use students' credits on courses to be the standard of judgment, the Department of Computer Science & Information Engineering (hereinafter the department) proposed an innovative method to convert the E-Map of weighting by learning achievement to conduct assessments that is more reflection students' employability indices for graduate, and analyzed the questionnaires of alumni and their employers' various core employability indices. From those questionnaires, finding the graduating students and alumni are lack of self-confidence. The statistical data shall serve as a reference for guiding students at course selection, as well as improving department courses and planning.

This study investigated the effect of explicit reading strategy instruction on reading comprehension, reading strategy use, reading motivation, and reading self-efficacy in Chinese university EFL learners. A total of 117 first-year university students were randomly assigned to either the experimental group or the control group. Students in the experimental group received a 16-week reading strategy training embedded into their English reading classes. The data were collected through five major instruments: a reading comprehension test, a reading strategy questionnaire, a reading motivation questionnaire, a reading self-efficacy questionnaire, and a semi-structured interview. Independent-samples t-test results showed that there was a significant difference in reading comprehension between the experimental group and the control group after the reading strategy instruction, suggesting that students who received reading strategy instruction made significant improvement in their reading comprehension. ANCOVA analysis of pre- and post-questionnaires results showed that there were no significant changes in reading strategy use, reading motivation, and reading self-efficacy at the end of the strategy instruction. Furthermore, interview data, showed that experimental group students held very positive attitudes toward the reading strategy training. Interview results further suggested that lack of significant changes in strategy use, motivation, and self-efficacy at the end of strategy training could be explained by a dynamic interplay of individual and contextual factors.

This study examined the effectiveness of an experiential learning-based integrated policy advocacy education model in Hong Kong, a partially democratic and non-Western society. The model incorporated guest lectures, a mock hearing, a site visit, and an advocacy project. A mixed methods evaluation involving 144 students in quantitative surveys and 9 students in focus groups demonstrated that this model increased students' levels of political activity, political efficacy, competence in advocacy, and their intention to take future advocacy action despite what some have perceived to be a pessimistic and ambivalent environment for advocacy in Hong Kong. Interviews with six advocates also suggest that an ideal advocacy education model should incorporate theoretical teaching, social justice values, sharing experiences of field experts, practice, and action.

This review study investigates the appropriation of sensing technology in context-aware ubiquitous learning (CAUL) in the fields of sciences, engineering, and humanities. 40 empirical studies with concrete learning outcomes across mandatory and higher education have been systematically reviewed and thematically analyzed with an outcomes-based teaching and learning approach. Four derived themes have been found to describe the design and implementation of CAUL, including learner-centeredness, technological facilitation, learning ecology, and research evaluation. The learning processes enabled by context-aware sensing technology have been explicated, revealing specific ways to apply new technologies in formal and informal environments. The analysis based on intended learning outcomes suggest that more efforts should be directed to fostering competence in analyzing and creating in mandatory education, and to creating in tertiary settings. Finally, unequal distribution of CAUL implementation across world regions calls for more technological appropriation in Southeast Asia and Africa. Specific suggestions on how to improve CAUL are also provided to better prepare learners in the twenty-first century.

The use of technology such as online software has been examined in English as a foreign language (EFL) writing contexts. However, few studies have incorporated context-aware ubiquitous technology into EFL writing instruction. To develop multimodal and digital literacy of target EFL undergraduates in this pilot project, the researchers designed and implemented an augmented-reality context-aware ubiquitous writing (ARCAUW) application, which aimed to increase long-term memory, motivation, and self-regulated cognition in participants' writing development. The pilot project compared the writing outcomes and learner perceptions of the proposed ARCAUW writing mode against the baseline mobile-assisted, classroom-based writing mode. The two writing modes differed in the way that metacognitive scaffolding tasks were carried out. Pre- and post-test results showed that (a) although both modes led to significant improvement in writing the process analysis essay, ARCAUW was conducive to the development of task schema in long-term memory, motivation, and self-regulation in writing, and (b) additional cognitive processing during AR-based learning led to mixed results in writing performance. It was concluded that ARCAUW should be incorporated into mobile-assisted writing courses to reach optimal instructional outcomes. Finally, a five-step procedure was offered to help EFL practitioners design and implement ubiquitous writing in their own teaching contexts.

This paper examines the translanguaging practice of two EFL teachers in a Xinjiang university, where English and Mandarin Chinese are predominant but Uyghur is minoritised as a medium of instruction. We focus on data in which the teachers translanguage across all three languages and make a case for the conception of pedagogical translanguaging which is differentiated from spontaneous translanguaging and in which named languages (or naming languages) can play an important role in the instruction (Cenoz, J., and D. Gorter. 2017. "Sustainable Translanguaging and Minority Languages: Threat or Opportunity?" "Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development" 38 (10): 901-912. doi:10.1080/01434632.2017.1284855; Cenoz, J., and D. Gorter. 2020. "Pedagogical Translanguaging: An Introduction." "System" 92: 102269. doi:10.1016/j.system.2020.102269). More specifically, named languages can be helpful in accomplishing specific goals of pedagogical translanguaging, in particular, developing metalinguistic awareness of multilingual students whose mother tongue /community language is minoritised. While translanguaging across all three languages appears a very useful teaching resource, it is restricted to the teaching of English vocabulary and grammar, areas in which students are perceived to be weakest. Moreover, the use of Uyghur only when it is felt to be most needed suggests that much more 'breathing space' (Cenoz, J., and D. Gorter. 2017. "Sustainable Translanguaging and Minority Languages: Threat or Opportunity?" "Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development" 38 (10): 901-912. doi:10.1080/01434632.2017.1284855; Cenoz, J., and D. Gorter. 2020. "Pedagogical Translanguaging: An Introduction." "System" 92: 102269. doi:10.1016/j.system.2020.102269) is required to sustain Uyghur and to exploit the full pedagogical potential of the ethnic language.

Objective: This study assessed the prevalence and correlates of mental health (MH) symptoms and diagnoses in international college students in the United States. Participants: The sample included 44,851 degree-seeking undergraduate students (42,428 domestic students and 2,423 international students). Methods: Logistic regression analyses were conducted using international student status to predict MH symptoms and diagnoses from the Spring 2017 administration of the ACHA-National College Health Assessment (ACHA-NCHA). Results: International students were less likely than domestic students to report a diagnosis of anxiety, comorbid depression and anxiety, or other psychiatric diagnoses. International students were more likely to report suicide attempts and feeling overwhelmingly depressed. Conclusions: Among international students studying in the US, lower rates of MH diagnoses despite higher rates of depressive symptoms and suicide attempts mirror similar trends seen in American-born minority students. University campuses should consider culturally sensitive and targeted psychoeducation, mental health services, and outreach programming.

To address the challenges of limited language proficiency and provide necessary feedback in the implementation of task-based language teaching (TBLT), a mobile-supported TBLT application was developed to provide linguistic and task scaffolding. Sixty-six English as a foreign language (EFL) university learners participated in a three-week experiment as part of a general English course. They were assigned to either an experimental group (mobile-supported TBLT), which received TBLT with scaffolds built into the application, or a control group (traditional TBLT), which received traditional paper-based TBLT without the scaffolds. At the end of the experiment, an English achievement test of vocabulary, grammar, and conversation comprehension was administered to determine if the technological scaffolds enhanced the learning outcomes for the course. Students' self-perceived use of oral communication strategies was also measured to explore how these scaffolds affected the conversational interaction essential for task performance. Results showed that the mobile-supported TBLT group outperformed the traditional TBLT group on the vocabulary and conversation comprehension tests but not so much on the grammar test. Also, the mobile-supported TBLT group reported greater awareness of fluency- and accuracy-oriented strategies for speaking than the traditional TBLT group. Implications for designing mobile learning to enhance TBLT in an EFL setting are drawn.

Nowadays, employers expect college graduates (or simply "graduates") to be for ready in taking up challenges when they enter into their careers. Most competencies that employers are looking for cannot be learned but can be developed by participating in extracurricular activities. However, planning on participation in extracurricular activities is difficult, given the lack of measurement standards together with their unstructured and non-systematic nature. To provide a smarter way for activity organisers, advisers and students to plan for extracurricular activities, our university has launched the central repository on student development activities system and codified the information about participation in extracurricular activities in a quantified and systematic way. This paper has collected data from three consecutive years from the system, the employers' feedback data and the academic performance data of placement students in the Department of Computer Science. Participation level, with logarithm transformation, had a positive and significant relationship with academic performance. Moreover, the competency developed by most students had a positive relationship with job performance in the placement year of 2019/2020. In this article, we discuss contributions, limitations and future directions.

The learning analytics dashboard (LAD) has been recognised as a useful tool to facilitate teachers' diagnosis and intervention in collaborative learning. However, little empirical evidence has been reported concerning the effects of LAD on teachers in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a LAD system called the Knowledge-Behavior-Social Dashboard (KBSD) for supporting teachers' diagnosis and intervention of CSCL activities. Thirty-five pre-service teachers participated in the experiment. The results indicated that teachers using KBSD used more 'cross-group' strategies to diagnose students' learning problems. Teachers in the experimental group also performed more interventions involving 'cognitive guidance', 'scaffold instructing', 'positive evaluation' and 'individual facilitating'. Moreover, the analysis of the interview revealed that the KBSD tool has the potential to assist teachers in detecting learning problems in a group in an easy and convenient manner. Pedagogical implications and future research are also addressed.

This paper analyses the learning impacts of a social justice learning unit, which was implemented through three lectures in each of two undergraduate teacher education courses in 2017/18 across two semesters. The design of the unit allows for social inquiry and experiential learning in the undergraduate curriculum. A sequential mixed-methods design was adopted, with pre and post questionnaire and interview data gathered from undergraduate students. We argue that learning and applying social justice concepts through group inquiry and other learning activities on social justice related issues, together with an experiential learning site visit, can facilitate the development of understanding of both the concept and application of social justice, a positive perception towards ethnic minorities and a desire for further learning and engagement in the community. This study would be useful for any university educators who want to teach about and for social justice in ways that may help students to develop an increased willingness for community service.

This study examines whether semantic relatedness facilitates or impedes the acquisition of English collocations by conducting two experiments respectively on Chinese undergraduates. Each experiment was composed of a reading session, a productive test, and a receptive test. Experiment 1 began with the reading session of 28 paired-up words and their collocations (in sentence context). Those words were counterbalanced between two randomly selected groups by cross-matching on semantic relatedness. Results of the productive test revealed that the participants scored significantly higher on test items that were semantically related than the randomly cross-paired counterparts. However, for the receptive test, the participants performed significantly better on semantically unrelated items. Experiment 2 was similar to Experiment 1 except that the word pairs selected were only semantically related and did not have any shared morphemes. Experiment 2 also revealed consistent results. The results of the two experiments consistently illustrate that semantic relatedness may exert a facilitatory effect on language output but an inhibitory effect on the process of language input.

Recent research has focused on students' knowledge sharing behavior and its driving factors, which promote the knowledge transmission and exchange in different educational settings. However, little research has focused on factors that inhibit knowledge sharing. Based on social learning theory and social cognitive theory, the current study investigates the relationships between knowledge hiding behaviors and students' belief about interactional justice and professional commitment. Based on 312 reliable questionnaires collected from Chinese and international postgraduate students in China, this study explored postgraduate students. Three knowledge hiding behaviors include playing dumb, evasive hiding, and rationalized hiding, all of which is negatively related to interactional justice. Furthermore, the moderating effect of professional commitment was found to influence evasive hiding more significantly than the other two aspects of knowledge hiding. Based on the findings of the study, implications are elaborated for learners, supervisors, and higher education.

To achieve a more effective teaching method, an experimental study using a learning-from-mistakes approach was investigated. A novel approach was adopted from organizational learning literature involving two steps. A first step established the psychological safety notion in students, and the second step called for a student discussion of mistakes they had made. Two classes of freshmen university students studying basic accounting participated in this study. One class was assigned as the treatment group, whereas the other the control group. Students' performance was repeatedly measured on three separate occasions: pretreatment test, midterm examination, and a final examination as the posttest. Results showed that students from the treatment group outperformed those in the control group on the latter two occasions, whereas both groups scored similarly in the pretreatment test. It is thus concluded that such a suggested approach may ultimately help students learn more effectively.

This paper introduces an e-Learning for urban tourism education through a scenario-based game of a hypothetical city. This scenario game set a good example to integrate components of e-Learning, gamification and scenario-based platform in tourism geography and planning education. This study evaluated the effectiveness of urban tourism scenario game in terms of knowledge enrichment, attitudinal change and platform usability reported by a sample of voluntary university students (n = 30). The overall effectiveness of the game is found generally positive. Paired-sampled t-test results show that this game platform is successful in improving participants' fundamental knowledge about new concepts, models and issues in the urban tourism context. The nature of tourism study in social science involves dynamism of perception and views, and thus leading to attitudinal changes of the game players although these changes are only statistically significant in one-fourth of the attitudinal attributes. The usability is the shortcomings of the game since this dimension is difficult to control except some technical elements. From the statistical results, the game does not reach a high expectation of usability except the educational design of the game. Some discussions and suggestions are made to enhance the effectiveness of game-based learning in tourism education through clever integration of modes of learning and other e-Learning elements.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of reflective thinking effects in the process of designing software on students' learning performances. The study contends that reflective thinking is a useful teaching strategy to improve learning performance among lower achieving students. Participants were students from two groups: Higher achieving students were the control group, and lower achieving students were the experimental group. The experimental group students wrote weekly diaries demonstrating reflective thinking in the processes of designing software. The study's results show the evaluation scores of the two groups of students' software designs were comparable. The abilities of the experimental group to comment on a design improved. This shows that a reflective thinking strategy did have positive effect on improving lower achieving students' learning performances, especially in the process of software design. Discussion of the results and suggestions for future study appear at the end of this study. (Contains 7 tables and 2 figures.)

This paper is an attempt to draw the statistical data from reports and documents to reveal the rationale for subsidizing the higher education in Hong Kong. There is a discussion made with reference to educational planning interacting with personal choice. The notion of economics has been noted with consideration of allocation of scarce resources and how the behaviour is adjusted by means of the mechanism and the optimization of goal. The higher education institutes can assist the improvement of the local regime through the training of competent and responsible professionals. Financing higher education is sensible as the optimization of goal is obvious.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs), a unique form of online education enabled by web-based learning technologies, allow learners from anywhere in the world with any level of educational background to enjoy online education experience provided by many top universities all around the world. Traditionally, MOOC learning contents are always delivered as text-based or video-based materials. Although introducing immersive learning experience for MOOCs may sound exciting and potentially significative, there are a number of challenges given this unique setting. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation methodologies for delivering immersive learning experience to MOOC learners via multiple media. Specifically, we have applied the techniques in the production of a MOOC entitled "Virtual Hong Kong: New World, Old Traditions", led by "AIMtech" Centre, City University of Hong Kong, which is the first MOOC (as our knowledge) that delivers immersive learning content for distant learners to appreciate and experience how the traditional culture and folklore of Hong Kong impact upon the lives of its inhabitants in the 21st Century. The methodologies applied here can be further generalized as the fundamental framework of delivering immersive learning for future MOOCs.

This study assessed both local and international students' satisfaction on dimensions that may foster or disadvantage their learning experience in a recently established English-medium instruction (EMI) undergraduate international business program in Southern Taiwan. The study recruited 278 students (171 local and 97 international), and assessed their satisfaction with program management, interaction with peers within the program, and cultural diversity in the university. The results indicated that both local and international students were satisfied with local students' openness to foreign cultures, students' ability to communicate in English during class, content of courses, and the level of internationalization of the college. All participants, however, were significantly dissatisfied with the depth and frequency of social interaction outside classrooms, and with the facilities and management offered by the university. Findings of this study may have managerial and instructional implications for staff and faculty of English-medium programs in identifying potential issues and improving student retention.

Although the contribution of family support and peer support to university adjustment has been examined separately, few attempts have been made to explore the mechanism underlying this relation. This is the first study in the Asian context to test the role of self-esteem in mediating the effect of social support on first-year university adjustment outcomes. Self-esteem is a measure of one's positive or negative attitudes toward oneself (Rosenberg, 1965). Higher self-esteem is vital to a variety of developmental outcomes in early adulthood, such as the transition to university, whereas lower self-esteem has been related to poorer adjustment (Hickman, Bartholomae, & McKenry, 2000). Perceived self-esteem stems from social attachments to others that reflect positively on oneself and provide interpersonal support (Friedlander, Reid, Shupak, & Cribbie, 2007). High self esteem developed as a result of social support from family and peers may increase individuals' belief in their ability to solve problems, leading to better university adjustment. The authors hypothesized that self-esteem mediates the impact of family support and peer support on university adjustment. The participants in this study were 418 first year university students (mean age 19.94 years; 65% female) at an education university in Hong Kong, China, offering mainly education related subjects. As expected, findings showed that first-year university students receiving greater family and peer support reported better adjustment outcomes overall, which provides additional evidence of the universally beneficial effects of multiple support figures on university adjustment. Such findings corroborate the previous argument that parental support plays an important role throughout adolescence and early adulthood, even as reliance on support from peers increases.

The purpose of this study was to investigate pre-service English teachers' reticent beliefs towards oral participation in English for Academic Purpose classrooms. To this end, 144 Malaysian pre-service English teachers enrolled in a teacher-training programme participated as respondents in a survey conducted using the Reticent Belief Index. They were all diagnosed with high level of reticence prior to the study. In addition, 24 pre-service teachers, selected randomly from among the survey participants, took part in focus group discussions. The results of the study revealed that the majority of the pre-service English teachers subscribed to eight beliefs that are presumed to be associated with reticent behaviour. Additionally, a newly identified belief, 'Kiasuim' was also found to cause the pre-service teachers being reticent in the class. The results of the study point to the importance of alleviating pre-service teachers' reticent behaviour via a remedial course which incorporates the elements of modifying reticent beliefs.

Informal science learning has drawn the attention of researchers, educators and museum administrators for a long time. However, the problem of how to better support visitors to be more engaged while visiting exhibits and improve informal science learning performance is still missing. Context-aware technologies have the advantages of fostering learning interest and providing real time feedback. Previous studies have examined the effectiveness of 5E Learning Cycle in science learning. To address the problem, this study aims to develop a mobile label assisted system using the 5E Learning Cycle approach based on iBeacon technology in a science museum. A total of 43 college students participated in this study. Participants from different majors were assigned to two groups in an effort to make the groups relatively equivalent in terms of student majors. One group was the experimental group (mobile label assisted visiting mode, n = 21), and the other one was the control group (traditional visiting mode, n = 22). From the results of learning performance, stay-time, behavioral pattern analysis, and interviews, it was found that the mobile label assisted system can effectively guide visitors to interact with exhibits, conduct thoughtful learning, and prolong the visiting stay-time. Visitors are willing to visit the science museum with it. This was one of the very few studies focusing on the application of iBeacon to design mobile label system in a science museum. It turned out that iBeacon technology has huge potential applications for the future science museum.

Research on teaching and learning in the Hong Kong higher education context is the basis for exploration of how on-campus teachers and students view their educational experience. Contrary to stereotypes, teachers reveal themselves as highly student-centered, helping and guiding their students while carefully orchestrating the learning experience of all students; these qualities are extended to distance education. (Author/MSE)

The mathematics education literature shows that encouraging students to develop multiple solutions for given problems has a positive effect on students' understanding and creativity. In this paper, we present an example of multiple-solution problems in statistics involving a set of non-traditional dice. In particular, we consider the exact probability mass distribution for the sum of face values. Four different ways of solving the problem are discussed. The solutions span various basic concepts in different mathematical disciplines (sample space in probability theory, the probability generating function in statistics, integer partition in basic combinatorics and individual risk model in actuarial science) and thus promotes upper undergraduate students' awareness of knowledge connections between their courses. All solutions of the example are implemented using the R statistical software package.

Medical law is not new in medical literature and can constitute an imperative component in medical education. Some medical schools include medical law as a compulsory component of the curriculum. In line with curriculum re-structuring at the University of Malaya, medical law was integrated in the medical curriculum and the feasibility of this integration into the Year 1 undergraduate curriculum was evaluated. Following implementation of a 4-week medical law module, an evaluation of the suitability of early integration of this module was conducted using a ten-item, 4-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly agree) questionnaire. Two open-ended questions were also included to gauge insights of the integration. All items were scored 3 points or more from the students' responses (n = 129). Using the open-ended questions, recommendations for future directions as well as constraints and issues related to the integration of medical law into teaching and learning was revealed. Overall, findings of the study indicated that integrating medical law into medical curriculum at an early stage was beneficial for the medical students.

Students attending object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD) courses typically encounter difficulties transitioning from requirements analysis to logical design and then to physical design. Concept maps have been widely used in studies of user learning. The study reported here, based on the relationship of concept maps to learning theory and semantic memory, suggests that integrating OOAD instruction with concept maps might help learners understand these transitions more clearly. An empirical experiment, involving two treatments based on concept maps and conventional instruction, was conducted to examine the relevance of concept map-based instruction for an effective understanding of phase transitions. The results indicate that compared with conventional instruction, concept map-based instruction is more efficient in improving learner understanding because of greater learner engagement and because of concept maps' properties when they are used as an information medium. This study can aid instructors in realizing the difficulties in learning phase transitions and motivate researchers to develop more effective learning instructions.

Educating our future engineers so that they can gain high proficiency in computational thinking is essential for their career prospects. As educators, acquiring a good understanding of the various learning motivation factors/tools as well as their inter-relationships is a significant step forward in achieving this goal. In this article, we describe an exploratory, data-analytic investigation into the influences of the various learning motivation factors on one another as well as on effecting e-learning of a group of science and engineering students taking computer programming courses. Based on the algorithmic results, we highlight concrete ideas that may have direct impact on improving an existing e-learning system. Further, we describe how the graphical visualization of the algorithmic results can guide us to set priority for focusing on which learning motivation factors first, and which factors next, in achieving a given education goal. These are among some of the new insights not easily obtainable from confirmatory-based analyses.

Students in object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD) courses typically encounter difficulties transitioning from object-oriented analysis (OOA) to logical design (OOLD). This study conducted an empirical experiment to examine these learning difficulties by evaluating differences between OOA-to-OOLD and OOLD-to-object-oriented-physical-design (OOPD) transitions from the perspective of semantic distance in the context of semantic network theory. The experimental results indicated that two factors inhibit the learning of OOA-to-OOLD transition: the semantic distance between phases and the precise degree of transition relations. The OOA-to-OOLD transition exhibits a greater semantic distance than the OOLD-to-OOPD transition, which causes difficulty in retrieving and understanding the semantics of OOA-to-OOLD transition relations. OOA-to-OOLD transition relations are less precise, which causes learners to have difficulty in developing efficient schema acquisition and automation when learning OOA-to-OOLD transition. These results provide further insight into the cognitive processes of learners who are learning phase transition. This may guide educators to develop an effective learning instruction method for phase transition and motivate researchers to remedy the inherent deficiency of phase transition in OOAD by considering the cognitive processes of developers.

In this study, we develop a theoretical model to investigate the association between social network properties, "content richness" (CR) in academic learning discourse, and performance. CR is the extent to which one contributes content that is meaningful, insightful and constructive to aid learning and by social network properties we refer to its structural, position and relationship attributes. Analysis of data collected from an elearning environment shows that rather than performance, social learning correlates with properties of social networks: (i) structure (density, inter-group and intra-network communication) and (ii) position (efficiency), and (iii) relationship (tie strength). In particular, individuals who communicate with internal group members rather than external members express higher tendencies of "content richness" in social learning. The contribution of this study is three-fold: (i) a theoretical development of a social network based model for understanding learning and performance, which addresses the lack of empirical validation of current models in social learning; (ii) the construction of a novel metric called "content richness" as a surrogate indicator of social learning; and (iii) demonstration of how the use of social network analysis and computational text-mining approaches can be used to operationalize the model for studying learning and performance. In conclusion, a useful implication of the study is that the model fosters understanding social factors that influence learning and performance in project management. The study concludes that associations between social network properties and the extent to which interactions are "content-rich" in eLearning domains cannot be discounted in the learning process and must therefore be accounted for in the organizational learning design.

Statistics has been recognised as one of the most anxiety-provoking subjects to learn in the higher education context. Educators have continuously endeavoured to find ways to integrate digital technologies and innovative pedagogies in the classroom to eliminate the fear of statistics. The purpose of this study is to systematically identify students' perspective of using cooperative learning in a flipped statistics classroom by utilising Q-methodology, which is a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Forty-five students who had participated in a 16 week course were interviewed and asked to rank 30 statements according to their relative importance. Three distinctly different factors that represented groups of participants with similar views were extracted. All groups identified cooperative learning as an effective instructional strategy in flipped classrooms. It is concluded that students' concerns were reflected in these multiple perspectives; therefore, individual levels of support should be provided.

This article presents the findings of a qualitative study on teacher leadership in the context of university-school collaboration for school improvement (USCSI) on the Chinese Mainland. Through the lens of structuration theory, it explores the process of teacher leaders exercising their power in a USCSI project. During the school improvement process, teacher leaders exercised that power related to the control resources existing by the domination structure of the school. However, this study found that teacher leaders could also transform control resources, as power referred to the transformative capacity of human action. The data that is informed this paper were collected from three middle schools involved in the same USCSI project in Beijing, capital of the People's Republic of China.

For the past several years, a team in the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE), National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan, has been establishing a pedagogical approach to embody embedded systems in the context of robotics. To alleviate the burden on students in the robotics curriculum in their junior and senior years, a training platform on embedded systems with co-design in hardware and software has been developed and fabricated as a supplement for these students. This general-purpose platform has several advantages over commercial training kits for embedded systems. For instance, the programming layer has been brought onto an open-source platform ported by Linux and [mu]C/OS-II such that it is mostly hardware-independent. Meanwhile, in addition to linking to fundamental library functions provided for robotics, users can program the codes not only in C language, but also through visual programming by means of a graphic interface developed along with the platform, allowing users to concentrate on higher-level robot function design. In other words, the platform facilitates rapid prototyping in robotics design. Meanwhile, a tailored laboratory manual associated with the platform has been designed and used in classes. Based on assessments and evaluation on the students who have completed this course, the curricular training is satisfactory and largely meets the requirements established at the design stage. (Contains 1 table and 12 figures.)

This study investigates how Internet self-efficacy helps students to transform motivation into learning action, and its influence on learning performance. In this study, the effects of Internet self-efficacy on motivation and the learning performance of online college students were examined using social cognitive theory. The subjects of this study were 87 college students participating in an online course. We applied quantitative analysis to elucidate the relationship between student-perceived Internet self-efficacy and learning performance. The effects of Internet self-efficacy on student motivation and learning performance were evaluated through the analysis of variance. Students with high Internet self-efficacy outperformed those with low Internet self-efficacy on the final exam and were more confident in their ability to complete an online course. Significant gender differences were noted, in which males had a higher degree of Internet self-efficacy and confidence than females; whereas, females had higher scores of online discussion participation and the final exam than males. Regarding the learning motivation, the influence of Internet self-efficacy of males on the dimensions of relevance and confidence in the attention, relevance, confidence, satisfaction motivation model were stronger than females. Therefore, educators are encouraged to identify the psychological characteristics of online learners to provide suitable support for their learning.

Web-based information problem-solving has been recognised as a critical ability for learners. However, the development of students' abilities in this area often faces several challenges, such as difficulty in building well-organised knowledge structures to support complex problems that require higher-order skills (e.g., system thinking). To resolve these issues, this study employs a semi-automatic tool that supports query expansion-based concept mapping (QECM) for assisting learners' web-based information problem-solving. The query expansion technique aims to recommend relevant concepts and linking words for building the map. The linking of concepts also uses non-taxonomic relationships for visualising a systemic model to develop complex problem-solving. An experiment was conducted by randomly dividing 50 participants into two groups, QECM (experimental) and conventional keyword-based search system, (control), to compare their performance during web-based information problem-solving tasks. The results show that the QECM system facilitated participants in extending their queries so as to enhance the comprehensiveness of their constructed concept maps. The QECM also improved the participants' information problem-solving performance by bridging concepts of an assigned task. The findings imply that learners using the QECM system can focus on the higher-order tasks of problem-solving and be better engaged in exploring real-life problems with the web.