APPLICATION OF OUTCOME BASED CURRICULUM DESIGN STRATEGY AS AN EFFECTIVE MECHANISM FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Purpose: Outcome based curriculum one of the fastest implementing curriculum approach in the field of curriculum development process all over the world today. The purpose of this study is to examine the factors affect the intention to use SOLO taxonomy in the development of outcome based curriculum model in the secondary level school education. Method: This study applied SOLO Taxonomy model and input-process-outcome model to develop the conceptual framework for the study. Data is collected through questionnaires filled Accounting teachers in secondary schools, Accounting lecturers, academic staff of Ministry of Education and senior lecturers worked in curriculum development workshops in National Institute in Education (NIE) in Sri Lanka. Findings: It is found that there is a positive, strong and significant relationship between curriculum development inputs and outcome based curriculum development decision making process. Furthermore, there is a moderating effect of age, teaching experience and experience in curriculum development process on the relationship between curriculum development inputs and outcome based curriculum development decision making process. Value: The study addresses the need for curriculum decision making process. The study contributes to the curriculum policy making process. Findings of the study provide necessary guidance for curriculum policy makers and the policy makers in the general education field. Moreover, findings of this study contribute to the area of curriculum development that was beneficial to arrive at the proper decision making in constructing our own curriculum. Finally, the guidelines of this study will fulfill the requirement of the secondary school curriculum development program.  Article visualizations

TEACHERS PERCEPTIONS OF CLASSROOM PRACTICES BASED ON SOLO TAXONOMY IN SECONDARY SCHOOL SYSTEM

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the conceptual awareness of accounting teachers in their teaching learning process based on SOLO Taxonomy curriculum approach in secondary level schools. Further, the study explored the relationship between the curriculum development inputs and the SOLO based curriculum development process. The curriculum development inputs are teacher effectiveness, school community, school environment and technology availability. Method: Data was collected through questionnaires survey administration of accounting teachers in secondary level school in Sri Lanka. The respondent was selected on the basis of their subject and their experience. The data obtained from the teachers was input into the program Statistical Package for Social Sciences software package. Multiple Regression Analysis was applied to examine the relationship between Dependent variable and Independent variable to interpret the among curriculum development inputs and SOLO based curriculum development process. On the other hand, the study was analyzed moderating effect of individual factors between the relationship curriculum development inputs and SOLO based curriculum development process. Findings: The result indicates that the teacher’s attitudes and availability of SOLO based curriculum materials will exert the most influence upon the teaching leaning process in the secondary level schools. The results further incited that the moderating effect of age, teaching experience and experience in curriculum development process to the relationship between curriculum development inputs to the SOLO based curriculum development process. According to the analysis the gender does not moderate the relationship curriculum development inputs and the SOLO based curriculum development process. Value: The study will be applicable for curriculum development process to accounting curriculum and improve the performance of student competency level not only students who learnt accountancy but also throughout all other students in secondary level schools. The study assists curriculum policy makers in the field of curriculum development process in general education system to understand the issues related to outcome based curriculum development process in current era. Hence, findings of this study could be used to guide them in enhancing curriculum reforms and implementing new curriculum approach to enhance and overcome the current issues. The findings of this study will inform curriculum policy makers and educationists who wish to apply new curriculum approach on how they can develop SOLO based curriculum for the current education system. Thus, the findings of this study contribute to the area of curriculum development that was beneficial to arrive at the proper decision making in constructing our own curriculum. The guidelines of this study will fulfill the requirement of the secondary school curriculum development program.  Article visualizations

CURRICULUM POLICY MAKERS PERCEPTIONS OF CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT PROCESS BASED ON SOLO TAXONOMY IN SECONDARY LEVEL SCHOOLS IN SRI LANKA

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the conceptual awareness of curriculum policy makers on curriculum development process based on SOLO Taxonomy curriculum approach in secondary level schools. Further, the study explored the relationship between the curriculum development inputs and the SOLO based curriculum development process. The curriculum development inputs are teacher effectiveness, school community, school environment and technology availability. Method: Data was collected through questionnaires survey administration of curriculum developers in relation to the curriculum of secondary level schools in Sri Lanka. The respondents were selected on the basis of their subject which they are involving and their experience. The obtained data was analysed through SPSS software package. Regression Analysis was applied to examine the relationship between Dependent variable and Independent variable to interpret the among curriculum development inputs and SOLO based curriculum development process. On the other hand, the study was analyzed moderating effect of individual factors between the relationship curriculum development inputs and SOLO based curriculum development process. Findings: The results indicate that the curriculum policy makers attitudes and availability of SOLO based curriculum materials will exert the most influence upon the teaching leaning process in the secondary level schools. The results further incited that the moderating effect of level of education to the relationship between curriculum development inputs to the SOLO based curriculum development process. According to the analysis the job category does not moderate the relationship between curriculum development inputs and the SOLO based curriculum development process. Value: The study will be applicable for curriculum development process to accounting subject and improve the performance of student competency level not only students who are learning accountancy but also all other students in secondary level schools. The study assists curriculum policy makers in the field of curriculum development process in general education system to understand the issues related to outcome based curriculum development process in current era. Hence, findings of this study could be used to guide them in enhancing curriculum reforms and implementing new curriculum approach to enhance and overcome the current issues. The findings of this study will inform curriculum policy makers and educationists who wish to apply new curriculum approach on how they can develop SOLO based curriculum for the current education system. Thus, the findings of this study contribute to the area of curriculum development that was beneficial to arrive at the proper decision making in constructing our own curriculum. The guidelines of this study will fulfill the requirement of the secondary school curriculum development program

The Impact of HOT Skills on Enhancing Professional Communication Strategies among Malaysian TESL Students

Effective professional communication is required for the university students, particularly studying Education, to achieve their career goals. Perhaps a set of the most important skills for enhancing professional communication strategies among the university students and practitioners are to use Higher Order Thinking skills (HOTs). This research was conducted to investigate the Malaysian students' attitude towards HOTs in their professional communication strategies at two private universities in Malaysia. It tried to analyse the implementation of HOTs to indicate if these skills are able to enhance the university students' professional communication strategies in academic and professional settings. This study involved 54 respondents which consisted of 41 Bachelor of Teaching English as a Second Language (BTESL) students and 13 Diploma of TESL (DTESL) students already done their internship. The research instruments were questionnaire and interview. The researcher-designed questionnaire was distributed through online to all the respondents. Moreover, the interviewees were randomly selected by the researchers. Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and a comparative study. Overall, the findings showed that only a few trainee Malaysian BTESL students fell under the category of good background knowledge in HOTs. However, in the comparative study, it surprisingly showed that Malaysian DTESL students had a better understanding of HOTs compared to Malaysian BTESL trainee students. Therefore, it is suggested that HOTs are significant required thinking and creative skills which all Malaysian university students need to obtain during their education in the university level so that they can communicate effectively in this competitive world to achieve their career objectives

The Making of IT Teachers: Lessons Learned from Animation-enhanced Training

This paper discusses the roles of effective Information Technology (IT) teachers in today’s challenging educational environments. The discussion begins by discerning the teaching and learning philosophy that is relevant and crucial to establishing encouraging settings for learning. Moreover, important components of effective teaching are highlighted that help nurture IT teachers’ skills and proficiency. The making of effective IT teachers was addressed in a lab-based training involving 17 IT student teachers who used a host of technological tools, namely animation. Upon the completion of the training, these future IT teachers had gained the essential abilities in the specific IT domain that can improve their employability – both in private and civil sectors. This training had also honed their technical skills, making them more articulate in handling any jobs that they were assigned to do

Statistical overview on quality bus services in Klang Valley

Malaysia is one of the fastest grown country in Southeast Asia. Urban development in this country has a same issues should be address as developed countries around the world such as traffic congestion and increasing development area as well as population. Urban area in these countries is facing tremendous traffic congestion problem due to increasing of car ownership day by day. Therefore, there is an urge to study the current state of West Klang public buses in order to provide a thorough picture of its service ratings and performances this paper presents the statistical analysis of the stakeholder perception on the bus service for urban transportation in West Kuala Lumpur. The scope of work for this study is to investigate stakeholders’ views on bus service performance by did a survey in the west side of Klang Valley area only, which are and Puchong, Subang Jaya, Klang, Shah Alam, and Petaling Jaya. Several analyses have been conducted to identify the statistical analysis based on the data given by stakeholder.The result showed that, there are significant positive relationship between all attributes and bus performance. Result summary of hypotheses testing showed the positive relationship between variable. There are several issues should be improved to increase the quality of service for bus performance such as the on time performance buses, route service provided by operator and service coverage of bus. These are several issued have addressed by corresponding and users. Bus operator and government plays their roles tried to rectified all necessary issued and ensured that public opinion and user feedback would be heard.Feedback regarding level of service quality for bus performance should be conducted frequentl

Experimental and Finite Element Analysis of Laser Stitch Welded Structure / Mohd Azmi Yunus ...[et al.]

Nowadays, the application of laser stitch welding in automotive manufacture has dramatically increased due to its capability in producing lightweight joints. The dynamic characteristics of laser stitch welded joints are important to be analysed in order to understand the effect of the joint towards the noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) of the assembled structure. However, the accuracy of dynamic characteristics of the finite element model is differ from the experimental data due to the invalid assumptions of the input value of the model properties. Understandably, physical phenomenon of the laser stitch welded joint is complex and consist of many uncertainties in order to model in details. In this paper, a few joint connectors are investigated to represent laser stitch welded joints by using finite element modelling method. In this paper, a different type of element connectors such as rigid body element (RBE), shell element and solid element format are explored to represent laser stitch weld joints of a thin plate welded structure. The predicted results of different types of element connectors are then compared in term of natural frequencies and mode shapes with the experimental counterparts. The comparisons of results reveal that shell element has better capability to represent laser stitch welded joint in comparison with other element connectors

Alley-cropping system can boost arthropod biodiversity and ecosystem functions in oil palm plantations

Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) is among the fastest expanding crops, due to high global demand for vegetable oils. Large areas of forest are converted into oil palm plantation to meet the market demand in producing countries which causes rapid decline in tropical biodiversity, including arthropods. The alley-cropping system has the potential to promote faunal biodiversity, related ecosystem services and food security in agricultural landscapes. In alley-cropping, a main crop is intercropped with a secondary crop (often a food crop), secondary crops are cultivated in the alleys in between the main crop. We compared arthropod taxonomic richness, arthropod predators and decomposers between five alley-cropping treatments (pineapple, bamboo, black pepper, cacao, bactris), where oil palm is intercropped with another species. In addition, we sampled two control treatments: monoculture oil palm, aged seven and 15 years old. A total of 50,155 arthropod individuals were recorded using pitfall trap sampling, representing 19 orders and 28 families. Fourteen orders belonging to sub-phylum Insecta, three orders from Arachnida (Araneae; Acarinae; Scorpiones) and two orders from Myriapoda (Chordeumatida; Geophilomorpha). We detected an increase in beta-diversity of oil palm production landscape. Specifically, we found that the number of arthropod orders, families and abundance were significantly greater in alley-cropping farming plots than those in monoculture plots. In addition, alley-cropping treatments contained larger numbers of predators and decomposers. Our findings suggest that the alley-cropping system can become a key management strategy to improve biodiversity and ecosystem functions within oil palm production landscapes

Electrochemically exfoliated functionalized graphene flakes: facile synthesis, 3rd order optical nonlinearity and optical limiting response

High quality graphene production is prerequisite for good performance in nonlinear optics application such as fast optical communications, all-optical switching, and optical limiting. Graphene journey begins with the method of synthesizing graphene which need to be simple, fast, and environmentally friendly. Hence, we introduce the method by exfoliating graphite by electrochemical route to produce good quality functionalized graphene for various nonlinear optics application. In this work, functionalized graphene flakes are synthesis by using two different electrodes; furnaced graphite rod (Gr-FG) and non-furnaced graphite electrode (Gr-NFG). Visual inspection on the synthesized Gr-FG and Gr-NFG show dark murky color solutions give the impression of high yield functionalized graphene flakes. Further observation under transmission electron microscopy (TEM), selected area electron diffraction (SAED), and UV–vis and Raman analysis confirm the good quality functionalized graphene structure. The nonlinear optical behavior of the functionalized graphene was accessed via Z-scan technique with 637 nm laser source operating in continuous mode with simultaneous monitoring of the close and open aperture signal. Close aperture profile of Gr-FG and Gr-NFG display nonlinear refraction, whereas open aperture profile shows reverse saturable absorption (RSA). Equation fitting reveals higher n2 magnitude for Gr-FG compared to Gr-NFG, but the later possess higher magnitude of β. Further analysis on the 3rd order of optical nonlinearity by z-scan technique reveal the admirable value at the range of 10−6 esu. Optical limiting performance conducted via transmittance-based measurement shows superior limiting of Gr-NFG compared to Gr-FG

A systematic review of social media acceptance from the perspective of educational and information systems theories and models

The study of social media acceptance and adoption is not a new research topic. However, the analysis of the educational and information systems (IS) theories/models that are used to examine the social media acceptance and adoption is considered an important research direction. To examine these theories/models and provide researchers with a clear vision of this research topic, we should be aware of the leading educational and IS theories/models used in this line of research. To this end, this systematic review retrieved and analyzed 2,382 articles. The retrieved articles were then critically examined to meet the inclusion and exclusion criteria, in which 122 articles published between 2009 and 2018 were eventually selected for further critical analysis. The main findings indicated that the uses and gratifications theory (U&G) and the social constructivism theory were considered the most widely used educational theories in social media. Besides, the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) were considered the most extensively used IS models in studying the social media acceptance and adoption. These results afford a better understanding of social media studies related to the educational and IS theories/models and form a constructive reference for future research