Research has indicated that informal cooperative learning (ICL) can make the environment in a classroom more conducive for teaching and learning. Through ICL, students could focus their attention on the material taught in class and help each other in the learning process. However, implementing ICL may require more time and effort from the lecturers because they need to prepare teaching materials and different tasks for class activities. Some-times it may be difficult for the lecturer to monitor all students in the groups when implementing ICL. Thus, this study aimed to explore the im-plementation of team-teaching in ICL classroom. The action research meth-od was used in this study where the researchers themselves involve in im-plementing ICL through team-teaching, evaluate the process, do reflection and change the practice based on the evidence gathered. The participants were 32 first-year-students who were mainly exposed to the traditional method of lecture. Students and lecturers’ activities, behaviors, interac-tions, and reflections were recorded in a research journal and later analyzed to determine the students’ and lecturers’ experience in ICL classroom con-ducted through team-teaching. The findings showed that it was easier to monitor and facilitate the students as well as to manage the class by imple-menting ICL through team-teaching. In addition, the workload of the lectur-ers has reduced which in turn gave them more time to plan, prepare and or-ganize teaching materials.
Learning and academic achievement are attributable to the complex cognitive phenomenon of selfregulation. There was a need to study self-regulation, a popular research area in education, on engineering students learning Statics. However, there was no specific instrument to measure self-regulation in fundamental engineering courses like Statics. Therefore, a modified self-regulated learning (SRL) instrument was used in the study that was carried out at four higher institutions in Malaysia, with a total of over 600 student participants. The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) was modified for Statics and using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), nine new factors and respective items for self-regulation were confirmed.
Malaysia is consolidating and strengthening Engineering Technology (ET) programs to produce skilled human resources to spearhead economic growth and achieve the status of a developed nation by 2020. ET programs need to increase the students' intake to fulfil the industry requirements for technical graduates. The Malaysian Technical University Network (MTUN) institutions and UniKL are among the higher education institutions in Malaysia that offer undergraduate ET programs to produce work-ready graduates. A key component of Engineering Technology curriculum is laboratory facilities. This article evaluated the laboratory facilities at MTUN institutions. We used mainly qualitative data methodology, comprising of focus group interviews, observations and document analysis. We also adopted the quantitative method using survey questionnaires to investigate students' satisfaction on the laboratory facilities related to the practice-oriented learning at the institutions. The results indicate that the laboratory facilities provided by the selected MTUN institutions are adequate for the current number of students.
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