<p class="apa">The purpose of this study was twofold, i.e. to examine the extent to which students’ self-reported use of digital technology constituted meaningful and interpretable dimensions of the digital citizenship construct, and to test the adequacy of the construct in terms of its reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and measurement equivalence for male and female students. The sample consisted of 391 undergraduates from 15 institutions of higher education in Malaysia. The data were collected using a self-reported 17-item questionnaire measuring university students’ digital citizenship behaviours. The results of the study supported and extended the results of previous work on students’ behaviors when using digital technology. The study found evidence that students’ digital citizenship is a valid and reliable multidimensional construct, and the measurement is gender-invariant. The findings are useful in making evidence-informed decisions in choosing and developing instructional interventions to produce ethical and responsible technology users, and in informing future research in the area.</p>
<p class="apa">Writing skill is seen as a cornerstone of university students’ success in both academic and career life. This qualitative study was conducted to further explore the teachers’ and students’ perceptions on the relationship between writing apprehension and writing performance, contributing factors of writing apprehension, and strategies to reduce writing apprehension. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to get more in-depth information from two respondents: one experienced instructor of teaching writing at the Centre for Languages and Pre-University Academic Development (CELPAD), International Islamic University Malaysia, and another, a graduate student who was reported to having a high level of writing apprehension using Daly and Miller’s (1975) questionnaire on writing apprehension. Thematic analysis approach was used for data analysis. Both respondents were convinced that writing apprehension has a negative influence on students’ writing performance; the sources of contributing factors could be students, instructors, and teaching learning setting; and writing apprehension could be reduced through suggested strategies. It is recommended that instructors should be more aware of students’ problems in the writing skill.</p>
This paper presents the findings of a study that intended to seek the content validity (CV) evidence of an instrument to measure the reading ability of university students in Sri Lanka. The reading passages and items were adapted from CEFR aligned Learning Resource Network (LRN) materials. The items were designed based on the cognitive processing involved in completing each reading task as prescribed by Khalifa and Weir (2009). As a part of collecting evidence for content validation of the instrumentation, Item Objective Congruence (IOC) analysis is used in this study. In IOC, the congruence between the cognitive processing of reading and the test items were studied providing quantified data for CV. A pool of twelve experts examined a total of 41 test items against eight cognitive processing effectively. As the experts had chosen more than one objective for an item, the IOC formula simplified by Crocker and Aligna (1986) for multi-dimensional assessment of multiple combinations of skills was applied in the present study. The findings of the IOC indicate the experts’ varying degrees of agreement in terms of what some of the items were designed to assess. 38 items had acceptable IOC indices, one item was removed from the study and two items were modified. Items having high congruence show that they test only one skill and those indicating low congruence notify that, items assess more than one cognitive processing skill. The study demonstrates the utility of the IOC method in gathering evidence for CV. Test development and validation are crucial in assessment which is the first and foremost process to evaluate educational management.
This study investigated the factors influencing assessment practices among academic staff in universities, in Uganda. Academic levels, type of the university, specialisation, class size, and assessment-based training were hypothesised as factors influencing the university academic staff's assessment practices. A purely quantitative approach was adopted to collect and analyse data for this study. An Assessment Practice Inventory Modified scale was used to collect data from 321 university academic staff considering their categorisations. Using multiple regression analysis, out of the five predictors included in the model academic levels and assessment-based training were found to be significant predictors of the university academic staff's assessment practices; (F [2, 310] = 46.331, p < .001). According to the results revealed in this study, it is recommended that universities should ensure that their academic staff rise in academic levels and also, they should provide them with assessment-based training to improve their competencies and skills in assessing students.
This paper describes the development of a prediction model for the early identification of low employability graduates in Malaysia. A total of five proportional hazard models are estimated and using the criteria of percentage correctly and wrongly predicted, a prediction model is selected based on the percentage correctly predicted. The percentile of the predicted hazard rate is used as the employability index (EI). In the context of Malaysia, it is recommended that the 5th percentile graduates be considered as low employability graduates. With this early identification tool, specific intervention programs can be tailored for the right target groups.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.