Student's Perceptions on the Relevance of a Diploma in an Automotive Curriculum to the Workplace

AbstractThis research compares student preparation to meet workplace needs through a comparative study between TAFE in Australia and Community Colleges in Malaysia. It addresses responses from Malaysian industries that local graduates do not fulfill the needs of industries. The changing nature and demand in the workplace need focusing for the future workforce. It is important to ensure the future worker can cope with the new technologies. The purpose of this study is to investigate student preparation in mechanical engineering (automotive) and whether they meet workplace needs. The study aims to explore and compare the needs of automotive industries and the educational approaches employed to produce highly skilled workers in both countries. A mixed- method research approach was used to develop an insight to stakeholders’ perspectives: students, educators and employers. There were 152 participants: 113 students, 30 lecturers and nine employers. The data generated represents a comprehensive review through case study. The findings provide an insight of the stakeholders’ view of a variety of needs; commensurate in developing a technician labour force. The key issues include the update of training facilities, relevance of curriculum content, technological advancement in the automotive industry, and collaboration between educational institutions and the automotive industry. The study also identified gaps in the qualifications and experiences of teacher: especially inadequate experience, knowledge and skills with current technologies for the automotive industry. On this issue of imperatives for economic growth, the programs reviewed in this study in both Malaysia and Australia are commercial activities designed for profit of the training providers and the automotive industries. The best practices from the training providers could be improved by directly involving stakeholders in the curriculum design activities. This may include implementing customized programs that support local priorities; economic, social and environmental

The noise-lovers: cultures of speech and sound in second-century Rome

This chapter provides an examination of an ideal of the ‘deliberate speaker’, who aims to reflect time, thought, and study in his speech. In the Roman Empire, words became a vital tool for creating and defending in-groups, and orators and authors in both Latin and Greek alleged, by contrast, that their enemies produced babbling noise rather than articulate speech. In this chapter, the ideal of the deliberate speaker is explored through the works of two very different contemporaries: the African-born Roman orator Fronto and the Syrian Christian apologist Tatian. Despite moving in very different circles, Fronto and Tatian both express their identity and authority through an expertise in words, in strikingly similar ways. The chapter ends with a call for scholars of the Roman Empire to create categories of analysis that move across different cultural and linguistic groups. If we do not, we risk merely replicating the parochialism and insularity of our sources.Accepted manuscrip

Vocational education and training (VET) practices: issues and challenges in vocational secondary school

Innovation is an important element for teaching and learning in ensuring that the product is always relevant to current requirement. In vocational education, there are a lot of innovations should be carried out such as management, administration and facilities. In terms of the national corporation to become an industrialized nation the need for vocational education becomes fundamental. The relationship between teacher’s pedagogy beliefs and students learning style can be seen as one mediated through process whereby teacher’s beliefs influence their teaching strategies which will turn influence student’s learning style. It is therefore important in VET to address teacher’s new teaching methods, vocational skills, knowledge and student’s learning style to make the practices in SVS can fulfill the goal of VET in globalization. This paper is to describe the role of Vocational Education Training (VET) for preparation to produce human capital start from the basis level. VET in Malaysia started in secondary school and for specific purposes Vocational Secondary School (VSS) has been designed to fulfill the needs of future workforce. Teachers are the main factors to have systematic and interesting approach for students and stakeholders to make VET in VSS is the main choice of education to developed student carrier pathways. The focused in this paper is what is the practices in VSS can achieved the current and future workforce in flexible manner and at a consistent level of quality. It also to review what does it mean to teach in VET and what makes an effective VET teacher. The factors consists the approach to teach in VET, role of teachers and VET students preferences. In summary, the investigation of VET practices will improve the skills of VET teachers including pedagogy and vocational skills it will provide the effectiveness of teaching

Creating place: design education as vocational education and training

Design is an increasingly important component of our world-at-work. This project reveals the views of design educators working within vocational education and training (VET). Research participants called for a review of design education teaching methods in the VET context, with a particular focus on promoting innovation and creativity in diploma level programs

Student's perception on the relevance of the diploma in an automotive curriculum to the workplace

This research compares student preparation to meet workplace needs through a comparative study between TAFE in Australia and Community Colleges in Malaysia. It addresses responses from Malaysian industries that local graduates do not fulfill the needs of industries. The changing nature and demand in the workplace need focusing for the future workforce. It is important to ensure the future worker can cope with the new technologies. The purpose of this study is to investigate student preparation in mechanical engineering (automotive) and whether they meet workplace needs. The study aims to explore and compare the needs of automotive industries and the educational approaches employed to produce highly skilled workers in both countries. A mixed- method research approach was used to develop an insight to stakeholders’ perspectives: students, educators and employers. There were 152 participants: 113 students, 30 lecturers and nine employers. The data generated represents a comprehensive review through case study. The findings provide an insight of the stakeholders’ view of a variety of needs; commensurate in developing a technician labour force. The key issues include the update of training facilities, relevance of curriculum content, technological advancement in the automotive industry, and collaboration between educational institutions and the automotive industry. The study also identified gaps in the qualifications and experiences of teacher: especially inadequate experience, knowledge and skills with current technologies for the automotive industry. On this issue of imperatives for economic growth, the programs reviewed in this study in both Malaysia and Australia are commercial activities designed for profit of the training providers and the automotive industries. The best practices from the training providers could be improved by directly involving stakeholders in the curriculum design activities. This may include implementing customized programs that support local priorities; economic, social and environmental

Tactical interactions : dialogues between Greece and Rome in the military manuals of Aelian and Arrian

This chapter looks at two interconnected texts which were published within two or three decades of each other: Aelianus Tacticus’ Tactical Theory (addressed to Trajan) and Arrian’s Tactics, published two or three decades later under Hadrian. Both texts appear to draw on the same source material, and it is reasonable to suppose that Arrian was aware of Aelian’s earlier treatise, although there is no direct interaction between them. Their different approaches to the same material offer an opportunity to explore different models of literary and cross-cultural interaction, and also to examine our go-to metaphors and interpretative models for analysing them. While Aelian establishes a series of polemical comparisons between age-old Greek military theory and currently effective Roman military practice, Arrian hints at overlaps between Greek and Roman traditions, both by incorporating a section on Roman cavalry manoeuvres and by interacting with a speech delivered by Hadrian to the Roman army at Lambaesis in 128. Both approaches are equally tactical; and both are revealing of the complex dynamics of cross-cultural interaction, which took place on and off the page, and in literary and less literary forms of writing.PostprintPeer reviewe