Purpose
The sudden pandemic of COVID-19 has caused disruptive innovation in all areas of business including education. Despite the educators’ and students’ acceptance and readiness in the new normal, ...the traditional face-to-face (FTF) public speaking has been shifted to online courses to suit the current needs. This study aims to examine whether there were differences between online and FTF pubic speaking in the students’ anxiety level, speech performance, as well as their perceptions of the challenges in the implementation of online public speaking courses as a potential to disruptive innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
This pilot study was a mixed method research that involved a purposive sampling of two groups of 39 students in higher education. The instruments used were questionnaires of self-report anxiety, speech performance test and observation.
Findings
The findings show that the students preferred the traditional FTF rather than the online mode for public speaking courses. The challenges of internet connection and the lack of a live audience were their main concerns in online public speaking. It also provides a potential for disruptive innovation that could take into consideration of a live audience in university online courses.
Originality/value
This study provides the potential of public speaking course as a disruptive innovation. This brings implications for the innovators, marketers and educators to think of the online courses/programmes that can be best implemented while embracing the changes and the new normal of COVID-19 brings for student learning.
Reflective journal is used by the pre-service teachers (PSTs) to reflect on their learning and teaching experiences in the classroom but they lack writing it in a more critical way. This study aims ...to explore the common stages of reflective practice among the PSTs using a six-stage framework. The methodology utilised a case study involving a purposive sampling of a group of 20 participants in an institute of teacher education in Malaysia. The instruments were observations, reflective journals and interviews. The journals were analysed using content analysis by following the framework of reflective practice. The results showed that the PSTs reflected mostly at 'Describing' (36.04%), followed by 'Analysing' (26.00%), 'Associating' (21.15%), 'Feeling' (12.12%), 'Assessing' (2.78%), and 'Developing' (1.92%). The findings indicated that the PSTs reflected mostly at the lowest stage of 'Describing' compared to the highest stage of 'Developing'. It is also interesting to note that the PSTs reflected more deeply after they were able to project their feelings and receive peer feedback. The six-stage framework used in this study not only provides the PSTs a guideline to reflect deeply, but also allows them to develop their future roles as teachers. The implication is for the policy makers and educators to include the proposed framework in the course syllabus and it is recommended for the PSTs to use it as a guideline in developing their reflective practice.
As artificial intelligence (AI) translation technology advances, big data, cloud computing, and emerging technologies have enhanced the progress of the data industry over the past several decades. ...Human-machine translation becomes a new interactive mode between humans and machines and plays an essential role in transmitting information. Nevertheless, several translation models have their drawbacks and limitations, such as error rates and inaccuracy, and they are not able to adapt to the various demands of different groups. Taking the AI-based translation model as the research object, this study conducted an analysis of attention mechanisms and relevant technical means, examined the setbacks of conventional translation models, and proposed an AI-based translation model that produced a clear and high quality translation and presented a reference to further perfect AI-based translation models. The values of the manual and automated evaluation have demonstrated that the human-machine translation model improved the mismatchings between texts and contexts and enhanced the accurate and efficient intelligent recognition and expressions. It is set to a score of 1-10 for evaluation comparison with 30 language users as participants, and the achieved 6 points or above is considered effective. The research results suggested that the language fluency score rose from 4.9667 for conventional Statistical Machine Translation to 6.6333 for the AI-based translation model. As a result, the human-machine translation model improved the efficiency, speed, precision, and accuracy of language input to a certain degree, strengthened the correlation between semantic characteristics and intelligent recognition, and pushed the advancement of intelligent recognition. It can provide accurate and high-quality translation for language users and achieve an understanding of natural language input and output and automatic processing.
Education in the digital era requires a holistic and innovative approach to ensure that learning is not only effective but also relevant to the demands of the times. This study aims to identify the ...interaction effect between instructional leadership, organizational culture, and student learning independence on passion-based learning, teacher creativity, and student skills in the digital era. This research was approached with a quantitative approach, using the Structural Equation Modeling method. The respondents were principals and teachers of senior high schools totaling 270 respondents. The stages of analysis included exploratory factor analysis, normality and outlier tests, confirmatory factor analysis and hypothesis testing with the help of SPSS and AMOS software. The results showed that the three main elements mentioned significantly influenced passion-based learning, teacher creativity and student skills. This means that in order to improve students' skills in the digital era, it is important to encourage the integration of effective instructional leadership practices, the creation of a conducive organizational culture, and students' learning independence, in order to stimulate passion-based learning and teacher creativity, which can further improve students' skills.
This study aims to investigate the perception of undergraduate students about their lecturers’ behaviours in their learning environment. Behaviour is the explanation of observable outcomes and ...interaction between students and instructors. Behaviour can be positive, negative, effective or ineffective, and the way in which lecturers behave with their students in the learning environment may affect their learning experience and motivation. A Quantitative research design was employed in conducting the study. A questionnaire with 27 items was used to collect data from 140 randomly selected respondents from Takhar University, Afghanistan. SPSS version 25.0 was used to analyze the data. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics, i.e., Independent Samples t-test and One-Way ANOVA were employed in data analysis. The findings indicate that the students had a positive perception about their lecturers’ behaviours in the learning environment. The study also revealed that there did not appear to be any statistically significant differences in participants’ responses by their gender or the classes they took. The findings of the current study may lead to policies with regard to lecturers’ behaviours and inform instructors to improve classroom practices in the learning environment.
It is a common practice that teachers tell stories in the classroom when teaching literature. They are enthusiastic in their teaching profession but students nowadays are diverse in their learning ...styles and they need different approaches to be taught. Therefore, this study advocates teachers to reflect on their teaching practice to use technology specifically digital storytelling as a teaching method in the classroom. The single case study involved a pre-service teacher who underwent a micro-teaching session in teaching literature. The instruments used were peer observation checklist, the artefacts of digital storytelling, video recording, and reflective journal. The findings indicated that the participant was able to be more aware of her strengths and weaknesses in the crafts of storytelling, personalise her own learning and improve her teaching practice. The implications are for the educators to encourage pre-service teachers to use digital storytelling in the classroom, provide coaching and support to improve their crafts of storytelling in the teaching of children's literature as well as use digital storytelling as a tool for reflective practice in teacher education.
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