Malaysian Technical University Research Articles

THE INFLUENCE OF TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND READINESS FOR CHANGE ON LANGUAGE EDUCATORS’ WORKPLACE COMMITMENT IN MALAYSIAN TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY NETWORK (MTUN)

Higher learning institutions aim to ensure continuity and feasibility in the academic sphere for the benefit of academic leaders, language educators, and students. Local governments and international organisations recognise higher learning institutions as contributors to achieving long-term academic aspirations through competent top management and realistic alternatives to current concerns and difficulties. The Malaysian government's educational aspirations require top management to prioritise language educators' potential and improve the language learning environment. Academic leaders are accountable for providing the best academic culture, structure, and environment for language educators, influencing other academic professionals, and aiding the Ministry of Education in raising the standard of language education in Malaysia to a world-class system. The study focuses on determining the level of workplace commitment among Malaysian Technical Universities (MTUN) language educators if their leaders adopt a transformational leadership style. Transformational leaders inspire language educators to prioritise the institution's goals and have a significant impact on their workplace commitment. The study also examines the influence of readiness for change on the relationship between MTUN academic leaders' transformational leadership and MTUN language educators' workplace commitment. The findings from these studies demonstrate that readiness for change mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and language educators' workplace commitment.

Perspectives of Perceived Organizational Support (POS) Theory Towards Individual Happiness

Introduction: Organizations must take a proactive stance when it comes to their workers' welfare and well-being to demonstrate their best commitment in this regard. Objective: This paper presents the descriptive data of organizational factors that contribute to staff happiness in one of the Malaysian Technical University Network (MTUN) clusters in Malaysia. Methods: This study was conducted at one of the Malaysian Technical University Network (MTUN) clusters in Malaysia. It involved 20 respondents comprising academicians who had served more than 11 years. The session at the Round Table Discussion was organized to discuss the issues that were highlighted in the survey data. Results and Conclusion: Analysis showed that the personal economy and personal appreciation dimension were among the highest contributors in determining employee happiness, followed by a support system, workstation environment, and trust. Furthermore, the discussion is related to the general aspect of Perceived Organizational Support Theory which supports the data analysis on individual happiness aspect in the institution of higher education. Originality/Value: By emphasizing the role of factors such as support systems, workstation environment, and trust in determining employee happiness, the study provides valuable insights into the broader dynamics of the workplace. Understanding how these factors influence employee satisfaction can inform strategies for improving organizational culture and employee engagement. Hence, this finding is related to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3: Good Health and Well-being because it focuses on individual happiness, which is closely tied to mental well-being and overall health, both of which are central to SDG 3.

SHARING SESSION SUASANA AKADEMIK DI LUAR NEGERI BAGI MAHASISWA TEKNOLOGI INFORMASI UNTUK MENINGKATKAN MOTIVASI BERINOVASI

The Information Technology Study Program, Faculty of Computer Science, Amikom University, Purwokerto, has grown in terms of the number of students, but requires accreditation by the Ministry of Education and Culture. Active involvement of students in various activities is a key factor in achieving good accreditation results. However, some students were not involved in extracurricular activities, which limits their knowledge, skills, social networks, and interpersonal skills. Lack of motivation, interest, and opportunities to innovate were identified problems. A program was proposed to address two problems facing Purwokerto University Amikom Information Technology students: lack of motivation to seek additional experience and engage in innovation, and underutilization of PkM activities and study center programs. The proposed solution was in the form of a sharing session about studying abroad, where students will learn about the IT student atmosphere at Amikom Purwokerto and gain motivation to innovate. This program involved a partnership with the Malaysian Technical University Melaka, where Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ahmad Naim Che Pee as resource person and guide. The results of the activities carried out showed that student motivation increased to be more innovative, for lecturers to make students aware that they would involve students in research activities and community service, as well as for study centers to manage programs that inspired students to develop innovation.

Recruitment Pattern Graduates from Malaysian Technical University

Recruitment is a process of identifying individuals who have the potential to create a quality staff that will ensure the achievement of a company's goals and mission. Many employers are interested in recruiting capable graduates. However, there are still employers who do not offer a salary equivalent to the student's qualifications. Accordingly, this study aims to determine the recruitment pattern for Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) graduates from 2015 until 2020. It identifies graduates of UTHM, a public technical university who receive salaries equivalent to their qualifications at the Diploma level. It also aims to identify employers who consistently hire UTHM graduates from the designated years. This empirical study analyzed raw data from the Graduate Tracer Study online system administered by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia. The respondents consisted of 1302 diploma graduates at UTHM. The results of the study show that only 32% of graduates receive a salary commensurate with their diploma qualification. This shows a high mismatch between the job salaries and qualifications of graduates. Further results also found that there are 43 companies consistently recruiting UTHM Diploma Graduates from 2015 to 2020. Attentively, JST Connector (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd is the most consistent company in recruiting UTHM Diploma graduates with a total of 15 employees in that period.

Development and Reliability of Cross-Cultural Dimension Items, and Marketability Skills Amongst Malaysian Technical University Network Future Graduates

Development and Reliability of Cross-Cultural Dimension Items, and Marketability Skills Amongst Malaysian Technical University Network Future Graduates

Internationalisation of Curriculum Delivery: Complexities of English as an Instructional Language in a non-English Culture

Abstract: English language is the main lingua-franca in higher education worldwide. For that reason, higher education institutions in Malaysia including the Malaysian Technical and Vocational University (MTVU, a pseudonym) have been promoting English as the language of instruction. With the existence of international students and voluminous English academic resources, implementing English as the language of instruction is a significant commitment. International students, as well as academic staff in MTVU however, come from various non-western cultures where English is not their native language. This paper focuses on an issue related to the use of English language amongst these groups in learning and teaching processes. Jin’s (1992) theories underlying Cultural Synergy model was used as the underpinning theories of the study. Data collected were from focus group and semi–structured in-depth interviews which were conducted with eleven international students and nine academic staff in MTVU. Through interpretive thematic analysis, findings highlighted that limited English proficiency is not only an issue solely for international students, but also for academic staff. This paper reveals this unique and complex issue from the perspectives of both students and staff. The paper then further discusses the consequences of these complexities for the learning and teaching environment.
 
 Keywords: Academic staff, English language, International students, Learning and teaching, Malaysian TVET

The Attitudes of MTUN Students towards m-Learning Usage during COVID-19 Pandemic

Open and Distance Learning (ODL) is an online Teaching and Learning (T&L) method that has been implemented to all educational institutions in Malaysia to curb the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study is to identify the attitude level of Malaysian Technical University Network (MTUN) students towards the Mobile Learning (M-learning) usage in ODL methods during the COVID-19 pandemic situation. The total number of respondents involved was 481 engineering students from four MTUN institutions. The study design used is quantitative which uses a questionnaire as a research instrument. The questionnaire used measures three elements of students' attitudes in the aspect of affective, behavior and cognitive towards M-learning implementation. Results were analyzed using descriptive statistics involving the use of mean and standard deviation while inferential statistics involved One-way ANOVA analysis. Result shows that attitudes level of MTUN students towards M-learning was at moderate level for two (2) aspects of affective and cognitive while the behavior aspect was rated at high level. Meanwhile, the result of one-way ANOVA showed no significant difference between the attitudes of student towards ODL across year of studies. Therefore, it can be concluded that the students of MTUN institutions had positive attitudes towards the implementation of M-learning with year of study in the university does not have influence on student’s attitude towards M-learning environment. It is advisable that the use of M-learning in the future needs to be enriched with the features of 21st century learning as to enhance students learning experiences.

Effects of Using Online Approach on Speaking Skills Among Malaysian University Students

The role of the university has gone far from just producing students with excellent academic achievements to producing students with tremendous communication skills such as speaking in English to enable them to compete in the global market. However, many university students in Malaysia are still struggling to acquire the English language comprehensively that matches the employers’ expectations. Hence, the importance of spoken English should be emphasized more by creating more interesting platforms and using online approaches such as vlogs to enable the students to use the language more profoundly. Thus, a pilot study was conducted to identify the effect of the vlog approach on the speaking skills of 50 students from a Malaysian Technical University. This study employed a quantitative method. A survey was conducted using a self-developed questionnaire which was distributed through Google Form. The questionnaire comprised 3 sections: student demography, speaking ability, and vlog effects. The data were analyzed using the mean score, standard deviation, Linear regression, and ANOVA. The results revealed that the use of online vlog activities had significantly helped the respondents to improve their speaking skills. Meanwhile, there was no significant difference in the use of vlog activities among the male and female respondents with regard to improving speaking skills in English. Therefore, it was concluded that using online vlog activities was a useful platform to practice and improve speaking skills in English among university students and more of these types of online approaches could be employed to help the university students to enhance confidence to speak in English.

The Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation towards Physical Activity among Malaysian Technical University (UTeM) Students

This study explores the inherent and external factors which influence university students' involvement in physical activity. As the key respondents were reacting to the adapted Exercise Reward Inventory and Participation Motivation questionnaire, 400 students comprising 200 males and 200 females were sampled. It shows that health and fitness (M = 4.37) are the intrinsic highest mean value variables, whereas peers and friends (M = 3.97) are factors for extrinsic variables. There are substantial differences in the presence of inherent health and fitness motives between gender and physical influences (t = - 6.51, p < 1.05) (t = - 5.05, p < 0.05). Only in the family did there appear to be substantial sex variations in extrinsic motivation (t = 6.98, p < 0.05). There were only substantial variations of sex in relation to external motivation in the family (t = 6.98, p < 0.05). Lastly, the most contributing factors to physical activity are the inherent motivational and extrinsic motivational factors (the position of the university). University should emphasise the opportunity to promote physical activity among more students by encouraging safer cultural activities between men and women. This study is also important for the physical and spiritual growth of healthy students. This experience shows that the most successful way, particularly for students, is to make the next generation safe and energy efficient.

English-Speaking Confidence among Malaysian Technical University Students: A Pilot Study

Speaking in English confidently is a challenging task but very crucial for university students. Graduates with good communication efficiency especially in the engineering field are greatly demanded in the current work industry. Performing confidently is not only important for scoring academic tasks but also to help expand the revenue of the companies at workplace. Thus, a pilot study was conducted to investigate the perceptions of a public technical university engineering undergraduates’ confidence level in speaking English. A mixed method design was employed where a survey and semi-structured interview were conducted for data collection. The participants were selected using purposive sampling method where a total number of 50 undergraduates provided valid responses to the online questionnaire and 5 undergraduates participated in the semi-structured interview. Descriptive statistics using Statistical Package for the Social Science Version 25.0 (SPSS version 25.0) and thematic analysis were adopted for data analyses. The results revealed three main areas that were identified as important to build the students’ confidence in speaking: applying manual skills, familiarization of vocabulary and correct usage of grammar. The findings also highlighted that the participants felt that more public speaking practices should be provided to them to improve their confidence level further in speaking English fluently.

Website quality of Malaysian Technical University

&lt;span&gt;University website is the platform for university to interact with people. It is also an interphase for people to infer and getting known about the university. In addition, quality of the university website is vital to let people get positive response to the university. Therefore, university website should be evaluated for better performance. This study evaluate website of Malaysian Technical University (MTUN) on year of 2016 based on the criteria selected using online web diagnostics tools. There are nine criteria selected to measure the website; load time, response time, page rank, traffic, design optimization, page size, number of items, markup validation and broken link. The result shows website of UMP performed better in design optimization, page rank and markup validation. Meanwhile, UTHM performed in page rank, load time and page size. UTEM excellences in response time, number of items and broken link. Lastly, UniMAP performed in traffic criteria only. However, the (MTUN) University website is almost not meets with the criteria that selected with the quality standard that have been suggested. &lt;/span&gt;

Internationalization of Higher Education: The Activity-Process at Malaysian Technical University

Internationalizing higher education has long been on the agenda of most countries. The purpose of internationalization is to improve the quality and relevance of international standards. Given today’s interrelated and interdependent world, internationalization has proven to be a useful tool for higher educational institutions to benchmarking and improve innovative solutions for continuous challenges. Thus, higher education institutions need to strengthen their quality through its primary functions to reach a certain level of internationalization. This paper highlighted the most common practices of internationalization of higher education at the national and sector, institutional and faculty, and individual levels. With a view in identifying approaches and best practices in Malaysia, it is critically reviewed the relevant approaches to internationalization that are covered in the scholarly literature review from the past few decades. The review has revealed the chronology of international education – internationalization from the past until this century and its meaning that carries the concept of internationalization of higher education. The review also identified the approaches to internationalization which are the activity and process approach where has been applied in the internationalization of higher education stratification level. Therefore, this paper will catalyse the change in the understanding of the world that strongly focuses on internationalizing the higher institutions.

Happiness Indicator of MTUN Staff's Success Factor

Feeling happy is fundamental to human experience in life. The interest in happiness has also extended to workplace experiences. There are some ways to know the factors that can contribute to the employee happiness. This paper tries to identify the success factors to determine happiness at the workplace among public university staff. A simple random sampling technique was executed as a methodology for this research. The data was collected using questionnaire from 535 university staff One of the Malaysian Technical University Network has been choose. The results showed that family and social factors have a high mean score to staff happiness while organizational factor has a low mean score to staff happiness. Therefore, this study tries to propose some approaches for organization to do in order to make staff happy in the workplace especially on the aspect of employee welfare.

Forecasting Electricity Consumption Using SARIMA Method in IBM SPSS Software

Forecasting is a prediction of future values based on historical data. It can be conducted using various methods such as statistical methods or machine learning techniques. Electricity is a necessity of modern life. Hence, accurate forecasting of electricity demand is important. Overestimation will cause a waste of energy but underestimation leads to higher operation costs. Univesity Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) is a developing Malaysian technical university, therefore there is a need to forecast UTHM electricity consumption for future decisions on generating electric power, load switching, and infrastructure development. The monthly UTHM electricity consumption data exhibits seasonality-periodic fluctuations. Thus, the seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) method was applied in IBM SPSS software to predict UTHM electricity consumption for 2019 via Box-Jenkins method and Expert Modeler. There were a total of 120 observations taken from January year 2009 to December year 2018 to build the models. The best model from both methods is SARIMA(0, 1, 1)(0, 1, 1)12. It was found that the result through the Box-Jenkins method is approximately the same with the result generated through Expert Modeler in SPSS with MAPE of 8.4%.

Electricity Consumption Forecasting Using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS)

Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) is a developing Malaysian Technical University. There is a great development of UTHM since its formation in 1993. Therefore, it is crucial to have accurate future electricity consumption forecasting for its future energy management and saving. Even though there are previous works of electricity consumption forecasting using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), but most of their data are multivariate data. In this study, we have only univariate data of UTHM electricity consumption from January 2009 to December 2018 and wish to forecast 2019 consumption. The univariate data was converted to multivariate and ANFIS was chosen as it carries both advantages of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Fuzzy Inference System (FIS). ANFIS yields the MAPE between actual and predicted electricity consumption of 0.4002% which is relatively low if compared to previous works of UTHM electricity forecasting using time series model (11.14%), and first-order fuzzy time series (5.74%), and multiple linear regression (10.62%).

A PLS Analysis On The Relationship Between Servant Leadership And Academicians OCB In MTUN Universities

There have been many research endeavours on the relationship between servant leadership and OCB. As servant leadership is widely used in education sector. Malaysian Technical University Network (MTUN) has its own importance in the Malaysian higher education. This study employed Structure Equation Modelling, and investigated the impact of five constructs of servant leadership on organizational citizenship behaviour. Partial least square is used to analyse the relationship. Results of this study show that servant leadership dimensions have significant positive relationship with academicians OCB. This study contributes empirically and theoretically to the body of knowledge in the fields of leadership and organizational behaviours.

The Influence Of Extrinsic Motivation On Students’ Retention And Study Success

There are concerns over the growing need of more engineers to work for the market. However, graduation rate in this field has decreased over the years. There is an urge to understand why some engineering students can achieve success while others not. Extrinsic motivation is seen as an important motivational factor that could influence students’ decision to complete or quit their studies in engineering courses. The current study explores extrinsic motivation of engineering students using a qualitative approach. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews, where 24 final year engineering undergraduates from the Malaysian Technical University Network (MTUN) universities were selected using referral and chain referral techniques of sampling. Data were analysed using a thematic coding approach and Atlas.Ti software was used to assist the coding process. The findings found that the successful students were mostly influenced by three main extrinsic factors namely people, program, and incentives.

Relationship between Social Support and Work-Family Conflict: A Case Study of Women Employees in a Malaysian Higher Education Institution

Work-family conflict (WFC) is a relatively less studied construct in the Eastern world and even sparser in the academic literature regarding working women in Malaysia. This paper is one of the few studies to examine social support mechanism used to alleviate such conflicts. The study examined the relationship between social support from work domain (supervisor support) and family domain (family support) addressing both directions of the conflict, work-to-family (W-to-FC) and family-to-work conflict (F-to-WC). A total of 278 women employees (146 academics and 132 non-academics) at a Malaysian Technical University participated in the study. The well-established instrument in work family literature was used to collect data via a survey. The results indicated a moderate level but relatively high mean value of W-to-FC than F-to-WC reported by women. Contradictory to a large body of work-family literature, the Pearson correlation analysis showed that work-family specific supervisor support is not related to either directions of work-family conflict (WFC) for Malaysian women. Social support provided by family however, was found to be statistically and negatively related to both directions of conflict. Findings from this study contribute to the understanding of the role of informal workplace social support by supervisor and family support with WFC in Malaysian educational institutions specifically in TVET. The results showed that women employees do experience WFC and supervisor work-family support is not enough to mitigate these conflicts. Hence, to produce women role models and retain them in the workplace, TVET higher learning institutions such as universities need to look into other workplace social support (like, family friendly policies, maternal leave, onsite childcare) to reduce the conflict for women employees.

Engineering Technology Curriculum Development: Bridging the Gap Between Academia-Industry Through Undergraduate Final Year Project

The Malaysia Higher Education sector has experienced major growth in the 60 years since its independence. In order for Malaysia to keep up with the increasingly challenging and competitive global economy, higher education must be sustainably transformed. One of the key shifts highlighted in the Malaysia Higher Education Blueprint 2015-2025 is through empowering Technology, Vocational, Education and Training (TVET) programmes. Although the graduates from the Malaysian Technical University Network (MTUN) have shown significant achievements through the Graduate Employability rates, there are some pressing issues that still need to be addressed. The industry practitioners have raised concerns about graduates that does not meet employers’ expectations and is not well-prepared to enter the workforce. As part of the initiative to address the gap above, the Engineering Technology Infrastructure Program (ETIM) at Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) has taken the effort to appoint the industry practitioners as its Undergraduate Final Year Project (FYP) co-supervisors. These industry co-supervisors plays an important role since the beginning of the course by providing real-life industry problems for the students to propose solutions. This method have seen tremendous improvement towards students’ soft skills such as problem-solving and decision-making. This helps the graduates to better prepare themselves upon entering the workforce and simultaneously fulfilling the industry needs in being exposed to real-life industry problems. The industry and academia should continuously work together to ensure that the courses and curriculum are current and in accordance to the requirements posed by the industry.

Participation in continuous professional development training and perceived teaching assessment: A case study at the Malaysian Technical University

Participation in training has been claimed to have various effects on individuals, teams and organizations. In the context of higher education, continuous professional development (CPD) training programs is of utmost importance to improve academicians' competencies, teaching effectiveness and eventually students' performance. However, majority of studies on CPD training programs in Malaysia have been exploratory and descriptive in nature and none has investigated the relationship between participation in CPD training programs and perceived teaching performance. Thus, thus study aimed to bridge the empirical gap using quantitative secondary data from year 2015 to 2017. University's CPD training program participation records and the teaching assessment ratings by students on eighty academicians were included in this study based on the data accessibility from both sources. Descriptive analyses showed that majority of respondents who were rated excellent by students attended CPD training programs. Linear regression analysis showed that 11% of variance in teaching performance was explained by participation in CPD training programs. This finding substantiates the importance of CPD training programs. More importantly, this result shows that compulsory CPD training programs during the initial teaching years is not sufficient to maintain teaching performance. Consequently, academicians need to participate in CPD trainings to upgrade their teaching know-hows.