Universities should design the assessment activities that could induce students to be deep learners instead of surface learners, and at the same time equip them with relevant soft skills. This paper aims to gain insight on students’ perception on the appropriateness of the assessment activities in developing soft skills of a management accounting subject at a public university in Malaysia. 420 usable questionnaires were collected out of 686 distributed to fourth semester students taking the said subject. Descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney U test were conducted to achieve the objective. Results revealed that students did not benefit much from test or quiz implying that such assessment does not turn students into deep learners as expected. On the other hand, group work and presentation do contribute to the development of soft skills. However, findings should not be generalized to other subjects.

PurposeAcademic vitality and burnout studies can help the university administrators and lecturers to develop a quality education and provide more conducive working environments. Hence, understanding and fostering what contributes to faculty and institutional vitality is central to prevent burnout during times of change. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to investigate the level of vitality amongst lecturers in Malaysia and to see if there is any significant difference in vitality between the subgroups of the demographic variables.Design/methodology/approachThe study was conducted on 379 academicians from selected public and private universities, polytechnics and university colleges. Data were collected via Survey Monkey application. Descriptive analysis was conducted where mean values, standard deviation and median were calculated. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to see whether there is significant difference in vitality between the subgroups of the demographic. Additionally, Box and Whiskers plot was used to analyse the outliers to further scrutinise the extremely low mean scores. Open ended responses were also analysed to support the statistical analysis.FindingsResults obtained reveal that almost 25% of the respondents indicate high vitality; another 25% are moderately vital; while about 50% fall under the group of low to very low vitality. Only administrative posts were found to have a significant difference in overall vitality, while age, gender, number of children, income level, working experience and teaching field showed no significant difference.Originality/valueThis paper differs from other previous studies as it defined the different levels of vitality amongst academics based on quartiles. One important contribution of this paper is the use of the slider scale with percentage as the scoring units that provide an infinitesimal rating option that enriches the collected data and enables application of mathematical operations, such as the mean. The use of this slider scale had also facilitated the analysis of outliers due to the scale’s discriminative feature to scrutinise those considered as outliers.

Student assessment would influence the quality of the graduates produced. However, many assessment strategies are found to inhibit this intention. As such, this chapter proposes a few assessment activities, along with their practical implementation, that may encourage deep learning among students in the learning of management accounting subjects. This chapter reviews previous literature, focusing on the characteristics of effective assessment activities that suit the nature of the Millennial. Five assessment activities, namely test/quiz, case study, field study, simulated enterprise, and classroom activities, are proposed. A questionnaire evaluating the preferences of the students and lecturers on how the proposed activities could be implemented was adapted. The chapter elaborates on the practical implementation of the five proposed assessment activities believed to engage students' learning so they become deep learners. A future research project is also put forth.

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Performance Management (PM) system available nowadays mostly measures and appraises performance solely on outcomes of material aspects, while ignoring humanistic aspects leading to unfair employees’ performance appraisal. This concept paper aims to propose a PM model embedded with Islamic values which emphasizes that measuring and appraising performance should not only focus on outcomes, but also on effort exerted by the employees. Such measurement is seen as necessary as it will self-regulate employees to view work as an ‘ibadah’ which promotes self-supervision on the concept of ‘ihsan’ leading to highly ethical workforce. Previous literature, focusing on PM articles, especially those related to Islamic views, Islamic management, and related parts of al-Quran and Sunnah were reviewed. Combination of different viewpoints gives a rich source of knowledge to achieve the paper’s objective.  Findings from the review are used to argue and propose an Islamic PM model believed to produce satisfied employees that is grounded on the tenet that PM should combine both materials and spiritual aspects. It should start with the selection of a right leader who ensures Islamic work culture (which are universally accepted) to first be created and embraced and to apply Maqasid al-Syariah in designing its PMS based on both materiality and spirituality aspects.  This study contributes to new knowledge as it tries to extend limited available literature on this topic, especially on integrating effort together with outcomes in measuring and appraising employees’ performance, thus contribute to productive workers with better quality of work life.