The COVID-19 pandemic has brought academic face-to-face classes to a halt, globally. Schools, higher institutions, and all learning centres were forced into emergency mode searching for platforms to ensure the continuity of teaching and learning (UNESCO, 2020). Online classes were made mandatory, and instructors curated lessons to best deliver their lessons. However, frustrations emerged where teachers shared their experience of talking to the abyss of their computer screens as students did not switch on their cameras during online lessons. A link to a Google form questionnaire which is quantitative (questionnaire), qualitative (short answer questions) in nature was given to the author’s communicative English class students. Fifty students in an English communicative course responded and the chairperson of the course was interviewed (qualitative) to find challenges teachers faced in their online classes. The author focused on one issue - students’ refusal to turn on their cameras. The findings revealed the main reasons for not turning on the cameras during lessons as lack of internet data, poor internet connection, social norms, not being physically presentable, and not being comfortable to be looked at by peers. Instructions from teachers and class assessments affect students’ choice to turn on the camera, too. These findings serve as knowledge contributions for teachers to understand students and to do content curation.

Malaysia is a multi-racial country with a multi-racial composition, thus producing a variety of communication languages spoken as a result of ethnic assimilation from various races. Malay language is the mother tongue and is upheld as the national language, and thus becomes an element of the identity of Malaysians. It is also considered a point of unity of all the people that lead to national cohesion. The increase in the enrolment of international students every year proves the success of the Ministry of Education Malaysia in fulfilling the vision and mission of the Internationalisation Policy of Malaysian Institutions of Higher Learning. However, in the excitement of pursuing modernisation of education today, the university is bearing heavy responsibility in lifting the position of the Malay language as the official forum for learning and teaching as well as a selection of the main medium of communication among students, especially international students. Discussion of this paper focused on dismantling trade empowerment in the context of the Malay language proficiency in the language that seeks to help assimilation and accommodating international students. This research chooses a qualitative approach by utilising the semi-structured interview method to generate empirical data from a target group of 30 international students in selected Malaysian Public Universities. The findings show that international students utilise their mother tongue to recognise their abilities and agree that the importance of understanding and having the skills of the local language can contribute to the transformation of assimilation in the culture of Malaysia’s multi-ethnic society. Ultimately, mastering the mother tongue as a medium of communication for HLI students is a universal skill requirement of international students for the improvisation of self-confidence in facing the challenges of language learning in a multi-racial country.

Poverty eradication through the agricultural sector has been one of the most important agendas in Sabah. To understand this matter, an examination of poverty eradication history in Sabah is immensely valuable. Accordingly, by examine the documents such as books, official government reports journals, and newspapers, this paper discusses the poverty eradication efforts in Sabah. Based on the information obtained, it shows that the rural areas' economic development in Sabah through the agricultural sector has been the focus of both the state and the federal governments. This was carried out due to the need of ensuring the people of Sabah be able to improve their standard of living, particularly in terms of socio-economics well-being as they generally linked with the issue of poverty.

This paper debates the relevance of knowledge of nationhood as a conveyance for national unity identity and integration of university students’ self-identity in addressing the issues and challenges of the Covid-19 post-pandemic era. In dissecting the significance of university student’s understanding of the Malaysian Studies course, the thrust of this discussion perspective works on the two-pronged objectives of (1) identifying the relevance of national unity identity issues of the younger generation, and (2) examining the challenges of applying National Principles as self-identity integration of university students. The synthesis of the discussion was also embroidered on the nurturing of the national language in society and the issue of compliance with the country’s constitution and laws. The qualitative approach utilises secondary data content analysis methods, namely the results of research in journals, reports, books and online news sources. The results of the study show that the course education of the nature of Malaysian Studies is a strong medium that can help understand the knowledge of nationhood and foster the retention of self-identity among students. The element of integration is also argued to place the relevance of university students to know the origin of a national identity and to avoid being influenced by external negative cultures. Naturally, each individual learns norms, values and habits through socialisation agents such as family, education, government and peers. Therefore, in the context of the relevance of learning and teaching elements that contain aspects of Malaysian Studies, understanding the knowledge of nationhood is a critical agenda for the future of the country where the formation of national identity must be inculcated in every student to strengthen national unity.

In 2020, the School Innovation Project research grant was introduced by Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) with the aim of assisting teaching and learning activities at the school level. In general, the success of teaching and learning activities also depends on strengthening the mastery of local and foreign languages among students. The question is, the teaching and learning methods used by educators or teachers must also be accompanied by elements of innovation in order to encourage students to continue to excel in their studies. Therefore, this paper will discuss preliminary studies related to innovation elements based on local wisdom. Sekolah Kebangsaan Kanibongan was chosen as this pilot project in accordance with its location as a rural school. The research methodology is based on elements of local wisdom, which is one of the folk tales of the Rungus ethnic group. From these folk tales, several innovative activities have been organized including video screenings, storytelling and learning activities. The results of the study found that this kind of activity can further enrich the learning activities of students based on local wisdom. At the same time, students can also go through new experiences that are interactive and innovative in learning languages, including the national language.