Intelligent Air Conditioner System: User Acceptance Level of ICONS and Cost Saving Analysis.

Innovator telah ditubuhkan oleh tiga orang pelajar Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). Innovator was formed by three students of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM)

Motivator And Inhibitor Factors Influencing Small Medium Sized Enterprises (Smes) In West Malaysia To Adopt E-Commerce

Penggunaan e-Dagang dalam kalangan perusahaan kecil dan sederhana di Malaysia masih rendah dan belum mencapai sasaran yang ditetapkan oleh pelan kerajaan. Objektif kajian ini ialah untuk mengkaji tahap penggunaan e-dagang dalam kalangan perusahaan kecil dan sederhana (SME), dan memeriksa hubungan antara manfaat, halangan, sokongan pihak pengurusan atasan, kesediaan organisasi, tekanan persaing, sokongan kerajaan serta penggunan e-Dagang. Selain itu, tiga faktor iaitu produktiviti pengurusan, sokongan operasi dan bantuan keputusan strategik dari nilai strategik yang dilihat digunakan untuk kesan keserhanaan ke atas faktor penentu. Hasil kajian menunjukkan penggunaan e-Dagang ialah berkadar sederhana. Faktor penentu kepada SME bersaiz kecil adalah sokongan pihak pengurus atasan, kesediaan organisasi, tekanan daripada pesaing dan sokongan kerajaan. Pada sudut yang lain, faktor penentu untuk SME dari kategori sederhana adalah sokongan pihak pengurusan atasan, tekanan persaingan and sokongan kerajaan. Sokongan operasi (OS) mempunyai kesan keserhanaan ke atas SME bersaiz medium. Kajian ini mengesahkan kepentingan sokongan operasi yang mempunyai pengaruh ke atas pihak pengurusan atasan dan persepsi mereka terhadap teknologi e-Dagang dari sudut implementasi terhadap organisasi mereka untuk meningkatkan kecekapan. The e-Commerce adoption among small and medium sized enterprises in Malaysia is low. It does not reach the target set in government’s plan. The objective of this study is to investigate the level of e-Commerce adoption among SMEs and to examine the relationship between perceived benefits, perceived barriers, top management support, organization readiness, competitor pressure, government support and e-Commerce adoption. Besides that, three variables: managerial productivity (MP), operational support (OS) and strategic decision aids (SD) from Perceived Strategic Value (PSV) are used to study the moderation effects of these determinant variables. The finding shows that the level of e-Commerce adoption is moderate. The determinant variables of small sized SMEs category to e-Commerce adoption are top management support, organization readiness, competitor pressure and government support. On the other hand, the determinant variables for medium sized SMEs category to e-Commerce adoption are top management support, competitor pressure and government support. The OS has moderation effects on medium sized SMEs. This study confirmed that the importance of the OS has influence on top management level or top manager perception of e-Commerce technologies in term of implementation in their organization to increase effectiveness

Crowd Saliency Detection via Global Similarity Structure

It is common for CCTV operators to overlook inter- esting events taking place within the crowd due to large number of people in the crowded scene (i.e. marathon, rally). Thus, there is a dire need to automate the detection of salient crowd regions acquiring immediate attention for a more effective and proactive surveillance. This paper proposes a novel framework to identify and localize salient regions in a crowd scene, by transforming low-level features extracted from crowd motion field into a global similarity structure. The global similarity structure representation allows the discovery of the intrinsic manifold of the motion dynamics, which could not be captured by the low-level representation. Ranking is then performed on the global similarity structure to identify a set of extrema. The proposed approach is unsupervised so learning stage is eliminated. Experimental results on public datasets demonstrates the effectiveness of exploiting such extrema in identifying salient regions in various crowd scenarios that exhibit crowding, local irregular motion, and unique motion areas such as sources and sinks.Comment: Accepted in ICPR 2014 (Oral). Mei Kuan Lim and Ven Jyn Kok share equal contribution

Unveiling the practices and challenges of professional learning community in a Malaysia Chinese School

Professional learning community (PLC) studies in the Asian Chinese nations remain scarce despite the emerging interest in the practice of PLC beyond the Western context. This study attempts to provide an understanding of the practices of PLC and challenges in implementing PLC in a Malaysian Chinese culture–dominated secondary school. This qualitative study used a phenomenological constructivist approach as a strategy of inquiry. Semi-structured interview data were collected from six middle leaders and ordinary teachers in a national-type Chinese secondary school in the northern region. Findings informed three existing PLC practices at the school level, namely, (a) peer coaching, (b) sharing of personal practices, and (c) professional development courses. However, the practice of PLC encounters various challenges, including excessive workload, teachers’ passive attitudes, unsupportive conditions in the school, poor execution of PLC by the school community, and a vague understanding of PLC. Interestingly, this study identified two uncovered challenges hindering the development of PLC: misconception about PLC and lack of supervision from the authority. Implications and future studies are presented

Unveiling the practices and challenges of professional learning community in a Malaysian Chinese Secondary School

Professional learning community (PLC) studies in the Asian Chinese nations remain scarce despite the emerging interest in the practice of PLC beyond the Western context. This study attempts to provide an understanding of the practices of PLC and challenges in implementing PLC in a Malaysian Chinese culture–dominated secondary school. This qualitative study used a phenomenological constructivist approach as a strategy of inquiry. Semi-structured interview data were collected from six middle leaders and ordinary teachers in a national-type Chinese secondary school in the northern region. Findings informed three existing PLC practices at the school level, namely, (a) peer coaching, (b) sharing of personal practices, and (c) professional development courses. However, the practice of PLC encounters various challenges, including excessive workload, teachers’ passive attitudes, unsupportive conditions in the school, poor execution of PLC by the school community, and a vague understanding of PLC. Interestingly, this study identified two uncovered challenges hindering the development of PLC: misconception about PLC and lack of supervision from the authority. Implications and future studies are presented

Unveiling the Practices and Challenges of Professional Learning Community in a Malaysian Chinese Secondary School

Professional learning community (PLC) studies in the Asian Chinese nations remain scarce despite the emerging interest in the practice of PLC beyond the Western context. This study attempts to provide an understanding of the practices of PLC and challenges in implementing PLC in a Malaysian Chinese culture– dominated secondary school. This qualitative study used a phenomenological constructivist approach as a strategy of inquiry. Semi-structured interview data were collected from six middle leaders and ordinary teachers in a national-type Chinese secondary school in the northern region. Findings informed three existing PLC practices at the school level, namely, (a) peer coaching, (b) sharing of personal practices, and (c) professional development courses. However, the practice of PLC encounters various challenges, including excessive workload, teachers’ passive attitudes, unsupportive conditions in the school, poor execution of PLC by the school community, and a vague understanding of PLC. Interestingly, this study identified two uncovered challenges hindering the development of PLC: misconception about PLC and lack of supervision from the authority. Implications and future studies are presented