First-year undergraduates' expectations and experience of university and student engagement variables were investigated to determine how these perceptions influence their student identity and overall course satisfaction. Data collected from 554 first-year undergraduates at a large private university were analyzed. Participants were given the adapted version of the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education Survey to self-report their learning experience and engagement in the university community. The results showed that, in general, the students' reasons of pursuing tertiary education were to open the door to career opportunities and skill development. Moreover, students' views on their learning and university engagement were at the moderate level. In relation to student identity and overall student satisfaction, it is encouraging to state that their perceptions of studentship and course satisfaction were rather positive. After controlling for demographics, student engagement appeared to explain more variance in student identity, whereas students' expectations and experience explained greater variance in students' overall course satisfaction. Implications for practice, limitations, and recommendation of this study are addressed.

This study aimed to explore students’ first year experience to provide insights that may prove to be useful for institutional policy and practice. A semi-structured interview was conducted on 30 undergraduates from a private university to examine their perceptions, experiences, and attitudes towards first year experience. Themes were derived from the analysis of the transcribed interview transcripts. The results showed that in general students pursue tertiary education as it can guarantee their career prospect and intellectual development. Moreover, classroom engagement and academic staff engagement on students were less crucial in comparison to peer engagement. However, the students’ perceptions of studentship and quality of teaching were positive. Lastly, most students were satisfied with their first year experience in the university. Practical implications, recommendations and limitations for future practice are put forth

Articles you may be interested inThe relationship between budget allocated and budget utilized of faculties in an academic institution AIP Conf.The relationship between spectral characteristics and perceived hypernasality in children Abstract. This study examines the association between emotional intelligence and its influence on academic performance on medical students to see if emotional intelligence emerges as a significant influencer of academic achievement. The instrument used is the Trait-Meta Mood Scale (TMMS), a 30-item self-report questionnaire designed to measure an individual's perceived emotional intelligence (PEI). Participants are required to rate the extent to which they agree with each item on a 5-point Likert scale. The TMMS consists of three subscales -Attention to Feelings (which measures the extent to which individuals notice and think about their feelings, Clarity (which measures the extent to which an individual is able to discriminate among different moods) and Mood Repair (related to an individual's ability to repair/terminate negative moods or maintain pleasant ones). Of special interest is whether high scores in the Clarity and Repair subscales correlate positively with academic performance, and whether high scores on the Attention subscale, without correspondingly high scores in the Clarity and Mood Repair subscales, correlates negatively with academic performance. Sample population includes all medical students (Years 1-5) of the MD program in UCSI University, Malaysia. Preliminary analysis indicates no significant relationship between overall TMMS scores and academic performance; however, the Attention subscale is significantly correlated to academic performance. Therefore even though PEI has to be ruled out as an influencer on academic performance for this particular sample, the fact that Attention has a significant relationship with academic performance may give some insight into the factors that possibly influence medical students' academic performance.

Gender-stereotyped roles of female and male characters are common in literature. Seeing that Harry Potter series has gained much popularity especially among children and teenagers, this qualitative paper attempts to investigate to what extent the author, Rowling (1997), confirms or challenges the gender stereotypes in the portrayal of the main male and female characters through her lexical (words) and grammatical (nouns, verbs, adjective and adverbs) choices. Halliday’s transitivity system is used to examine the lexis and structures that Rowling chose to describe the characters in her novel. Several scenes which contain descriptions about the main male and female characters were analyzed. Analysis of the excerpts from the novel showed that both the male and female main characters are portrayed with either feminine or masculine roles.