Penggunaan strategi pembelajaran pengarahan kendiri di kalangan pelajar-pelajar jurusan perakaunan jabatan perdagangan di politeknik

Kajian ini adalah bertujuan untuk mengenalpasti tahap Strategi Pembelajaran Pengarahan Kendiri (SPPK) di kalangan para pelajar jurusan perakaunan, Jabatan Perdagangan, di 3 buah politeknik iaitu Politeknik Shah Alam, Politeknik Kota Melaka dan Polikteknik Port Dickson. Secara khususnya, objektif kajian ini adalah untuk melihat penggunaan ciri-ciri strategi pembelajaran pengarahan kendiri di kalangan pelajar terbabit. Ciri-ciri yang terlibat adalah memahami isi pelajaran, motivasi, metakognitif, strategi pembelajaran, kepekaan konteks dan penggunaan sumber luaran sebagai bantuan. Instrumen kajian yang digunakan untuk mengutip data yang diperlukan adalah menerusi pengedaran borang soal selidik kepada para responden. Kemudian, data-data tersebut dianalisis dengan menggunakan perisian Microsoft Excel. Dapatan kajian yang diperolehi dipersembahkan dalam bentuk jadual taburan min dan graf garis (line graf) bersertakan interpretasinya. Responden kajian adalah seramai 180 orang pelajar iaitu dari tiga buah politeknik yang telah ditetapkan. Kaedah yang digunakan untuk mengira jumlah responden itu adalah melalui kaedah persampelan strata. Dapatan kajian mendapati bahawa kebanyakan pelajar semester 1 dan 6 mempunyai ciri-ciri SPPK tetapi di tahap yang rendah. Antara cadangan untuk meningkatkan ciri-ciri tersebut ialah dengan meningkatkan isi pelajaran, membina dan meningkatkan motivasi pelajar, membantu menentukan strategi pembelajaran, metakognitif, memperkembangkan kepekaan konteks dan seterusnya meningkatkan penggunaan sumber luaran

Accountability in waqf mangement: learning from praxis of nongovernmental organisation (NGO)

The paper aims to explore a conceptual framework in which improvement on waqf management may be made focusing on its relationship with beneficiaries. The study uses accountability as the main theoretical lens informing this, where waqf management does not merely see beneficiaries as the passenger in the relationship, rather, as one of the means to improve waqf management. Drawing from NGO accountability literatures, the paper looks at the potential of the holistic accountability where the notion of downward accountability augments the conventional upward accountability. While effort to improve the effectiveness of waqf management tends to focus on upward accountability to board of trustee,there may be a huge potential to listen to and to have dialogue with beneficiaries. An improved accountability relationship downwardly to beneficiaries offers an opportunity for an improvement on the effectiveness and efficiency of waqf management. This is essentially a conceptual paper in which the empirical study is in progress. In presenting the conceptual elements, the paper draws experience from NGO accountability literature and explores the extent to which a theoretical understanding of holistic accountability may offer important insight into the way management of waqf may be improved

Foreign investment, government expenditure, and economic growth in Malaysia

This study uses the ordinary least squares technique to examine the effect of foreign investment and government expenditure on the growth in GDP per capita in Malaysia over the period 1978-2005. The regression results showed that the growth of export and ratio of government expenditure to GDP are the driving forces in enhancing the economic growth in Malaysia. Foreign investment and previous year real income per capita growth depict positive impact, whereas population growth exerts a negative impact on economic growth

A decentralized proportional-integral sliding mode tracking controller for a 2 D.O.F robot arm

Trajectory tracking with high accuracy is a very challenging topic in direct drive robot control. This is due to the nonlinearities and input couplings present in the dynamics of the arm. This paper deals with the tracking control of a class of direct-drive robot manipulators. A robust Proportional-Integral (PI) sliding mode control law is derived so that the robot trajectory tracks a desired trajectory as closely as possible despite the highly non-linear and coupled dynamics. The controller is designed using the decentralized approaches. Application to a two degree of freedom direct drive robot arm is considered

Malaysian geography teachers’ knowledge about environmental concepts

AbstractThis paper is based on a study focused on the geography teachers’ knowledge of environmental concepts. Geography is considered as an ideal discipline to study the environment, as it involves the study of human-environment interaction. The study was conducted in two phases using sequential explanatory mixed-method design. In Phase I (quantitative), a set of the questionnaire was developed and administered to 365 teachers in the state of Kedah, a region north of peninsular Malaysia. Rasch Measurement Model was used to assess internal validity of the items, unidimensionality of each construct, and item arrangement in each scale in the questionnaire. In Phase II (qualitative), interview protocols were developed based on the outcome sequence of items in Phase I. Nine teachers were interviewed and have their teaching sessions video-recorded. The quantitative findings indicated that teachers’ knowledge of concepts of the environment was generally high. However, there were concepts that they highly understood as well as concepts that were less understood. The qualitative results from interview and video-recorded teaching sessions confirmed the results based on the questionnaire, and provide explanations by teachers on their level of knowledge. This study suggests that concerted efforts be made to provide adequate knowledge of environmental education through pre-service and in-service training for geography teachers

Theoretical development of minimum effort active noise control with feedback inclusion architecture.

This paper presents the development of minimum effort active noise control theory for feedforward single-input single output (SISO) architecture, which includes the feedback acoustic path in the controller formulation. The theoretical range of effective minimum effort parameter with respect to level of point cancellation at the observer and the interference pattern generated around the observer for periodic noise control in free-field are investigated. It is found that for a minimum of 6 dB cancellation which corresponds to cancellation factor of 0.75 at the observer, the effort parameter must be specified as less than unity. It is also found that the cancellation pattern characterised by 20 dB, 10 dB and 6 dB zones reduces significantly in terms of size with an increase in the value of the effort term

Towards service quality improvement for passenger satisfaction at intercity express bus services / Murzamir Ahmad...[et al.]

This research is about the Service Quality dimensions that become important for express bus services as a form of land public transport. The ICOP SHE 2010 emphasises good and quality service to customer in which requires the service provider to offer the best service to meet the customers’ needs. The Safety Star Grading is introduced with an indicator to determine the operational safety level and service performance of bus service providers. With poor assessment rating and no award obtained, this research is to identify the possible causes in business operations and determine the service quality improvement for InterCity Express Bus. Four (4) components of key research areas consist of business tools namely SWOT Analysis, Fishbone Analysis, Benchmarking and Passenger Satisfaction Survey have been used in this study. Service quality dimensions of reliability, responsive, safety and tangible are used for this study. The outcome of this study supports the company to improve their service and able to obtain a good star rating and would be a good selling point to the company. The passengers then can make their best choice with confidence when they want to travel. The findings of the same study should be enhanced to other regional areas and should be interpreted with care in the future

Prevalence of methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) and cytosolic serine hydroxymethyltransferase (cSHMT) genes polymorphisms in healthy Malaysian population

Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) and Cytosolic serine hydroxymethyltransferase (cSHMT) are enzymes involve in folate regulation in human. The C to T transition of the cSHMT and MTHFR genes at the 1420 as well as 677 nucleotides both carries TT genotype respectively. These enzymes have direct and indirect relations with the production of homocysteine. TT genotypes of both genes give rise to high level of homocysteine which in turn is linked to cardiovascular diseases susceptibility. This study evaluates MTHFR 677C-T and cSHMT 1420C-T polymorphisms and the distribution of their genotypes in a Malaysian study population emphasizing on the gender and major ethnics. Three hundred and ten (310) healthy subjects were recruited and genotyping of the variants were performed using PCR-restriction fragement length polymorphism (RFLP) method. Our results showed that for MTHFR gene, the frequency of TT genotype on the whole study population was 0.17±0.374. Females (21.08%) were identified to carry higher frequency of TT genotype while the Chinese (28.83%) had the highest frequency of TT genotype compared to Malay and Indian (p < 0.05). The frequency of TT genotype of cSHMT gene on the other hand was 0.24±0.425. Females (16.32%) and the Chinese displayed highest frequency of cSHMT TT genotype (p < 0.05). Our preliminary results showed that female and the Chinese display higher prevalence of TT genotype of both MTHFR and cSHMT genes in Malaysia.Keywords: methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR), cytosolic serine hydroxymethyltransferase (cSHMT), polymorphisms, PCR-RFLP, Malaysian populatio