The current study seeks to determine the stages of high school graduates' decision to enroll in higher education institutions (HEIs) by examining the influencing factors in relation to the student's university choice decision-making process in Malaysia. The survey has been done by collecting quantitative data. Over the 6-month collecting data process, 253 students responded, with 220 surveys completed. Usable data from surveys were analyzed using the AMOS 24.0 software. The study employed a 20-item adopted and adapted questionnaire measuring the mentioned factors. The study discovered that university reputation, teaching staff quality, and campus facilities significantly influenced school leavers' university choices, but the promotion variable did not. Gender moderated the relationship between university reputation, staff quality, and students' enrolment intentions. These findings are essential for decision-making and can guide higher education marketers in improving strategies to attract students.

The study seeks to investigate the indirect language learning strategies used by learners of Mandarin as a foreign language in an online learning environment during the COVID-19 Pandemic period. A simple random sampling was employed, and 445 Malay undergraduate students engaged in a Mandarin course in a Malaysian university participated by answering a questionnaire. The Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL), developed by Oxford in 1990 was used to collect the data. To ascertain the pattern of indirect language learning strategies preferred by male and female degree students in the Mandarin Course, descriptive statistics were utilised in the study. The Independent Sample t-Test was also utilized to examine the significant differences between the indirect learning strategies used by the male and female degree learners. The results show that the metacognitive strategy is the favourite indirect learning strategy for Malay undergraduates, followed by affective strategies and social strategies. Additionally, regardless of gender, metacognitive strategy emerged as the most common learning strategy. However, results indicated that there were no significant differences between the metacognitive learning strategies employed by male and female degree students. These findings provide repercussions to Mandarin as a foreign or second language educators to assess existing teaching strategies to enhance the effectiveness in classroom which offer various learning strategies to make students better learners.

The rapid occurrences of Corona Virus Disease (Covid-19) have posed various challenges to our society, including the quality of the education system in Malaysia. The current study aims to first measure the impact of demographic variables (gender, age, and education level) and non-demographic variables (perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and technological factor) on e-learning satisfaction among students from a higher education institution in Malaysia, and to construct a student satisfaction prediction model subsequently. A structured questionnaire survey was administered to a total of 344 respondents and the statistical analysis of the Chi-Square test and Multiple Regressions was performed. The result of the study reveals that the satisfaction of students on e-learning experience during the pandemic is significantly correlated to gender. The study further shows that three dominant variables, namely perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and technological factors are significant factors that influence the satisfaction level of student's learning in the e-learning environment. The findings of the study will be beneficial to policymakers to identify the level of student satisfaction on e-learning education during the COVID-19 pandemic and may provide evidence-based data to improve the learning performance of students.

The open-ended interactions between the educator and student could definitely achieve a great success of teaching and learning. However, this is not easy to apply in the university classes as most classes are large size. Conversational agents, automated computer software that interact with human users through human language conversations, may implement into education to support the teaching and learning process. Unfortunately, this application in education domain is found scarce even though it has about 60 years’ history. This study is to design, develop and incorporate a conversational agent in the teaching and learning of undergraduate's mathematics subject. A quasi experimental design with a convenient sample was used. The students were brief and used it for learning outside the classroom as a blended learning tool for a month when they were taught by the lecturer in face-to-face classes. After that, they participated a 5 Likert-scale adapted questionnaire on perception toward this incorporation. Results shown that majority of them perceived positively on the aspect of usefulness of incorporation in their learning. The results cannot be generalized in accordance for all subjects, undergraduates and universities, but, may serve as a reference to design and develop educational conversational agent to be blended into learning for other subjects or universities.

The arrival of advanced communication and information technologies has changed the method of teaching and learning in the 21st century. Thus, different types of impactful teaching approaches have been applied by educators to ensure that the focus of education is not only to deliver knowledge but also to cultivate students’ problem solving, creativity, collaboration and communication skills. In view of a subject which is totally new to students, they need time to learn and practise the skills learned which include listening, speaking, reading and writing. However, the credit hour for the particular subject is only two hours per week, which is a challenge for the lecturer to guide students in achieving the learning outcomes of the subject and to implement the teaching and learning process. Therefore, the scaffolding teaching method was chosen as an action research to see the impact on student’s learning. The focus of the study was Introductory Mandarin Level 1. The new roles of teachers were applied through a mechanism including self-learning, group discussion, and presentation. Lecturer had designed and created self-learning notes as a reference to help students understand the particular lesson, facilitated students using effective questioning skills and summarized the lesson at the end to scaffold students’ learning. At the end of the semester, students were required to answer a survey questionnaire regarding teaching and learning. This approach gave a positive result which showed that it managed to motivate students to participate in class. Students enjoyed the activities in class and were more active and confident to express their ideas as they understood the topic well during their discussion rather than one way lecture in the class. Keywords: Scaffolding, Google Slides, Google Classroom, Online Distance Learning

Research on second language learning has expanded enormously since its inception. Many studies related to second language learning have discussed how psychological factors particularly emotions affect a learner’s motivation. But despite all that, little is known about the antecedents of these emotions in second language learning. The present study therefore explored the negative emotional experiences as the antecedents of various emotions and the effects on Chinese ESL Learners. This discursive study employed a qualitative design to gain an understanding of how negative emotions that were caused by negative emotional learning experiences affect a person’s attitudes and motivation in English language learning. 14 Chinese adults with relatively limited English proficiency spoke, by way of Autobiographical Memory Interview (recall of events and facts from one’s past), about their negative emotional experiences while learning and using the language during the past 20-25 years and how these experiences have impacted them psychologically and changed their attitudes and motivation in the English language learning process. The findings revealed that the learners’ negative emotional learning experiences shape their negative emotions and learning attitudes, and predispose them to become demotivated in learning English.

Many academic libraries attempt to source their collections from all the publications available. However, librarians may fail in this attempt because of some economic factors that prevent them from building a comprehensive collection of materials. The increasing price of periodicals and books and the unchanged budget for inter-library loan have precluded librarians from providing their best reference service to users. This study makes a contribution in topping a list of core journals cited in Library and Information Science (LIS) dissertations. A core list is helpful for students to use as a guide when they carry out a literature review. The aim is to identify the characteristics of cited literature in Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) dissertations submitted to University of Malaya. This includes finding out the various type of information resources used in research projects as well as other main variables, such as: language distribution of cited documents, publication frequency, authorship patterns, country of publishing, subject areas, chronological distribution of total citation, core journal titles used in the field of LIS, etc.

This study applies citation analysis method to examine the use of information resources by students of the Master in Library and Information Science (MLIS) at the University of Malaya in preparing their dissertation. References from a sample of 40 MLIS thesis from the period 2000-2005 were examined for: year of publication; author; source title; bibliographic format; language; subject category; and place of publication. Core journal titles are compared with Journal Citation Report (JCR) listing and also for availability at the University of Malaya Library. The study shows that journals and books are still the most used sources for information and there is a steady increase in the use of electronic media by Library and Information Science (LIS) researchers. Authorship pattern indicates preference for single authored works. This study serves as a baseline indicator of resources used by LIS researchers. It can be utilised by librarians to focus on collection development to support research needs.

This study applies citation analysis method to examine the use of information resources by postgraduate students of Master in Library and Information Science (MLIS) in preparing their dissertation at the University of Malaya. References from a sample of 40 MLIS thesis from the period 2000-2005 were examined for: year of publication; author; source title; bibliographic format; language; subject category; and place of publication. Core journal titles are compared with Journal Citation Report (JCR) listing and also for availability at the University of Malaya library. The study shows that journals and books are still the most used sources for information and there is a steady increase in the use of electronic media by LIS researchers. Authorship pattern indicates preference for single authored works. This study serves as a baseline indicator of resources used by LIS researchers. It can be utilised by librarians to focus collection development to support research needs.