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This article discusses the early findings of a qualitative study on information-processing behaviors in using a Learning Management System (LMS) among undergraduate students with intellectual disabilities. The study focuses on how special-need students seek, discern, and make use of academic and non-academic information in the process of learning. Students with intellectual disabilities have limitations in getting and understanding lectures and instructions from lecturers or academic support staff. While the presence of a Learning Management System (LMS) highly assists students in the learning process, a specific approach must be used to cater to their needs. Data from qualitative interviews and observation of a group of students with diverse intellectual disabilities in an Indonesian university shows the evidence. The findings suggest three views of information processing abilities and attitudes toward information exhibited by students with learning disabilities.

This article discusses how cultural values drive the ways students engage in a Learning Management System (LMS) and perceive its usability from the perspective of Intercultural User Interface Design (IUID). Universities around the world employ LMS as an integral part of online learning but the cultural significance of the interface design remains under debate as it is believed to be an enhancing aid for information processing and learning. Analyzing data from qualitative interviews and usability testing on Indonesian and international students in an international university in Indonesia, this article provides remarkable insights for both students and educators. Evidence shows that nationality-embedded cultural values as reflected in students’ personal characteristics regulate their learning behaviors. Cultural dimensions such as individualism versus collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity versus femininity are present in students’ attitudes toward online learning. For this reason, this study suggests that the cultural values and backgrounds of LMS users need to be taken into account in designing an online learning platform.

This article discusses the interpretation of television in relation to ethnic identity embraced by the female members of Javanese diaspora in Malaysia. The Javanese diaspora in this context refers to the descendants of the colonial Javanese migrants from Indonesia. In contemporary Malaysia, they are considered as Malays, but essentially they retain some cultural identifications of Javanese ethnicity, especially the language. As Malaysia becomes one of the destinations for Indonesian migrant labour and popular culture, the Javanese diaspora are certainly exposed to manifold images of their ethnic origin. Through the audience ethnography in a Javanese community of Selangor, this article reveals that the Malaysian Javanese women negotiate both representative and distant images of Javanese identity on television. Their interpretation of ethnic identity from television represents the notion of ‘interpretive ethnicity’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study explores the uses of Islamic television content in bridging the gap between Javanese and Malay identity among the Malay women of Javanese descent in Malaysia. Malaysian religious television programmes have constantly promoted the Islamic identifications of Malayness, enabling the Malay audience to reconstruct the culturally religious identity. While the reconstruction of Islamic identity through television viewing simply represents a lived experience for the majority of the Malay society, it has some cultural meanings for certain Malay sub-ethnic communities, such as the Javanese. This ethnographic study on a Malaysian Javanese community reveals that the interpretive engagement of this particular community in Islamic television viewing serves the purpose of negotiating Malay identity. The results of this study suggest that religious content can serve as an engaging platform to construct multi-ethnic identities beside popular and ethnic-related contents. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]