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Information Communications Technology (ICT) plays an important role in enhancing Chinese students' learning efficiency and preparation for successful participation in a Western learning and teaching community. In the past, Chinese students' ICT preparedness for Western higher-education has not been emphasized in Chinese domestic K-12. Consequently, this lack of skills might be the cause tension between students and university academics in a blended learning and teaching environment. This pilot study used the Survey of Higher Education [15] to investigate 120 Chinese students between 16-18 years old who are commencing study in Australia and compared their responses with the expectations of 356 Australian academics. The results show that both Chinese students and Australian academics regard 'Data Retrieval and Data Management' skills as the most important skillsets. But gaps were discovered between commencing Chinese students and Australian academics in a number of communication and digital interactive skillsets used in a blended learning environment.

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IntroductionAging brings with an increased risk of chronic diseases among older adults, which could affect health outcomes. Evidence has showed that health literacy is associated with health outcomes. However, limited studies explore the underlying mechanism between health literacy and health outcomes. Hence, this study aimed to determine whether self-efficacy for managing chronic disease mediates the relationship between health literacy and health outcomes among older patients with chronic diseases, and to explore whether disease duration moderates the relationship between health literacy, self-efficacy for managing chronic disease, and health outcomes.MethodsParticipants were recruited from tertiary hospitals in Zhejiang Province, China from May 2019 to June 2020 using a convenience sampling method. A total of 471 older patients with chronic diseases completed questionnaires measuring demographics, disease-related information, health literacy, self-efficacy for managing chronic disease, and health outcomes. The mediation effect was examined using the structural equation model method, based on the bias-corrected bootstrapping method. The moderation effect was tested by the multiple-group analysis.ResultsA good fit model suggested that self-efficacy for managing chronic disease partially mediated the relationships between health literacy and health outcomes. In addition, disease duration moderated the relationships between health literacy, self-efficacy for managing chronic disease, and health outcomes.DiscussionThe findings highlight that adequate health literacy improved health outcomes among older patients with chronic diseases, which was further promoted by self-efficacy for managing chronic diseases. Moreover, a long disease duration could enhance the effect.

The outbreak of COVID-19 worldwide in 2020 has posed tremendous challenges to higher education globally. Teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) is among the many areas affected by the pandemic. The unexpected transition to online teaching has increased challenges for improving and/or retaining students’ language proficiency. WeChat, a popular social application in China, was widely used for TEFL at Chinese universities before COVID-19. However, it remains unclear whether the use of WeChat can facilitate Chinese university students’ English-language lexical proficiency during the pandemic. To fill this gap, the aim of the present study was two-fold: (1) it initially explored the relationship between the variables including students’ academic years, genders, and academic faculties/disciplines, and their lexical proficiency; and (2) it evaluated the effectiveness of a WeChat-assisted lexical learning (WALL) program in facilitating learning outcomes of English-language vocabulary. One hundred and thirty-three students at a university in Northern China participated in the WALL program for three weeks. As the results indicated, the independent variables had no correlation with the students’ lexical proficiency. More importantly, the students had a decline in the test scores after using the program, compared to their initial test scores. Moreover, the difference was reported to be medium. The findings further proposed questions on applying WeChat to vocabulary teaching in a large-scaled transition. The study is expected to provide insights for tertiary institutions, language practitioners, and student stakeholders to troubleshoot the potential problems regarding implementing WeChat-based TEFL pedagogies.