Intensive English language program for overseas students at Malaysian private tertiary education institutions

As Malaysia is positioning itself to be a regional center of educational excellence, efforts are taken to recruit international students from other countries in the region to pursue international tertiary education, with English as the language of instruction. It is an acceptable fact that most countries within the region place English as a foreign language, thus, the majority of students coming from these countries do not possess the command of English language required to study at a tertiary level. Therefore, as an international education provider, Malaysia has to cater for this need. This paper aims to highlight the competitive advantages and limitations that Malaysia has in terms of providing the English language program that overseas students need. It also explores possible strategies to overcome the limitations. The discussion is focused on Malaysian private tertiary education institutions. It mainly stemmed from a critical analysis of Malaysian education system as well as the socio and cultural aspects of Malaysia. It also incorporates data from informal discussions with English teachers and international students

Demystifying Learning Analytics in Personalised Learning

This paper presents learning analytics as a mean to improve students’ learning. Most learning analytics tools are developed by in-house individual educational institutions to meet the specific needs of their students. Learning analytics is defined as a way to measure, collect, analyse and report data about learners and their context, for the purpose of understanding and optimizing learning. The paper concludes by highlighting framework of learning analytics in order to improve personalised learning. In addition, it is an endeavour to define the characterising features that represents the relationship between learning analytics and personalised learning environment. The paper proposes that learning analytics is dependent on personalised approach for both educators and students. From a learning perspective, students can be supported with specific learning process and reflection visualisation that compares their respective performances to the overall performance of a course. Furthermore, the learners may be provided with personalised recommendations for suitable learning resources, learning paths, or peer students through recommending system. The paper’s contribution to knowledge is in consider ing personalised learning within the context framework of learning analytic

The Use of Learner Development Activities in ESL Classrooms; the Correlation Between Learner Autonomy and Students' English Writing Proficiency

This study focuses on the effort to foster learner autonomy in an Intensive English Program through the activities suggested in the three learners’ development stages promoting learner autonomy and its result in developing the students’ learner autonomy as well as their English proficiency level. The levels of perceived learner autonomy are measured by a questionnaire; while their levels of English proficiency are evaluated through the pre and post test of essay writing assessments. There have been quite a few definitions of learner autonomy suggested by different learner autonomy scholars and the one that this research project uses as a conceptual framework is that of Littlewood (1996, p. 428) who defines autonomy as “…independent capacity to make and carry out the choices which govern his or her action …” The findings indicates that despite the fact that there is no significant correlation between the students’ perceived learner autonomy and the students’ performance, the result of their post test indicates otherwise. The verification from their writing proficiency as well as teachers’ reflective journals indicates that the activities suggested by Scharle and Szabo (2000) do make a positive impact, with or without the recognition from the students

Data on multicultural education and diagnostic information profiling: Culture, learning styles and creativity

This article contains data related to multicultural education and diagnostic information profiling preliminary findings. It includes the responses of 253 students. The data consists of six sections, i) culture: race, ethnicity, language and identity; ii) learning preferences: physiological and perceptual; iii) cognitive learning styles: physical, emotional and mental; iv) creativity skills and problem solving skills; v) motivation; and vi) students’ background knowledge. The data may be used as part of data analytics for specific personalized e-learning platform