Factors Influencing the Improvement of Students’ Communication Skill: An Industrial Training Intervention

Shazaitul Azreen Rodzala,Maisarah Mohamed Saat

doi:10.32861/jssr.spi6.899.906

Abstract

Communication skill has been globally recognized as among required attributes for graduates employability. This situation urges the stakeholders to find ways in preparing students with excellent communication skill. An implementation of iCGPA in public universities is one of recent initiatives taken by Ministry of Education with the aims to produce graduates who are balanced in both academics and non-academics. Undergoingindustrial training also is a good platform for students to improve their communication skillas they being exposed to hands-on-work. Thus, this paper aims to examine students’ communication skill improvement based on industrial training intervention. It also aims to examine the relationship between communication skill improvement and selected factors, and further explore the predictors of this improvement. A quantitative method using pre and post survey was adopted. The survey was conducted among undergraduate students from six different public universities in Malaysia. Overall, findingsof paired sample t-test reveal that students’ communication skill improvement has developed significantly after undergoing industrial training. The improvement were found to be correlated with program of study, motivation, leadership styles and organizational cultures. Using multiple regression analysis;extrinsic motivation, low power distance culture, medium size of organization and laissez-faire leadership style are the best predictor of communication skill improvement.

Highlights

The popularity of Social Network Sites (SNS) continues to increase among university students leading to a serious concern in security and privacy issues
One of the most significant of the implications is that this study provides an empirical evidence to the IT-related expertise of the important role in protecting SNS users against cyber-attacks
This study proffers a bold theoretical implication to explain that devolving more personal information on SNS does not increase the vulnerability of users to security attacks

Summary

Introduction

The popularity of Social Network Sites (SNS) continues to increase among university students leading to a serious concern in security and privacy issues. Scholar like (Whitman, 2003) have categorized SNS information security threats into human errors, compromises to intellectual property, privacy espionage or trespass, information extortion, sabotage or vandalism, theft, software attacks, forces of nature, quality of service aberration from service providers, hardware and software failures and technological desuetude. Security threats such as human error, compromises to intellectual property, information extortion, sabotage are vandalism are often caused by users’ negligence and errors. Not many users have the awareness of protecting themselves against information security threats or have the preparedness to take themselves out of cyber-attacks (Kim, 2013)

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Conclusion