Abstract-The purpose of this paper is to examine the academic and athletic motivation and identify the factors that determine the academic performance among university students in the Emirates of Dubai. The study examined motivation based on nontraditional measure adopting a scale to measure both academic as well as athletic motivation. This study involving 217 athlete and non-athlete students reveals that academic motivation, career athletic motivation and student athletic motivation are motivational factors in improving students' academic performance. Further, it showed there is a significant trend in student athletic motivation as a function of both father educational qualification and mother educational qualification. Findings also suggests a significant trend in career athletic motivation as a function of nationality, however, there is no significant pattern observed from all the three factors as a function of gender and GPA.

South East Asian petroleum retailers are under considerable pressure to improve service quality by reducing turnover. An empirical methodology from this industry determined the extent that jobs characteristics, training opportunities, age and salary influenced the level of job satisfaction, an indicator of turnover. Responses are reported on a random sample of 165 site employees (a 68 per cent response rate) of a Singaporean retail petroleum firm. A restricted multivariate regression model of autonomy and training opportunities explained the majority (35.4 per cent) of the variability of job satisfaction. Age did not moderate these relationships, except for employees >21 years of age, who reported enhanced job satisfaction with additional salary. Human Capital theory Life Cycle theory and Job Enrichment theory are invoked and explored in the context of these findings in the South East Asian retail petroleum industry. In the South East Asian retail petroleum industry, jobs providing employees with the opportunity to undertake a variety of tasks that enhanced the experienced meaningfulness of work are likely to promote job satisfaction, reduce turnover and increase the quality of service.

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Teaching and learning in higher education has been influenced by the rapid rate of innovation in technology. A technology intervention was used to teach Foundation Statistics. This paper reports students’ performance relative to those taught statistics using traditional teaching methods. Failure rate was reduced from 34% with traditional teaching to only 14% with the inclusion of technology, and in order to measure students’ perception towards the integration of technology in the subject, a total of 144 students of 30 different nationalities were surveyed at the end of the semester before the final examination. The analysis of the survey highlighted the students’ positive perception independent of their overall performance. Overall, the survey expressed a significant result showing that the use of technology helped students to perform better.