Published Scholarly Output

Writing from within the analytic horizons of media reception studies, the article argues that the structuring moments of the ‘tourist gaze’ (Urry, 1995) are exemplified in client ludic looking on-line at the tourism information, marketing and purchasing screens authored by industry and state. Hermeneutic philosophers foreground the processes of understanding, of arriving at a text’s interpretation. In cognitive play, they assert, significance is created on screen or read elsewhere. Using the Internet instantiates processes of comprehension resulting in cultural varieties of understanding content. Articulating (ten) moments or aspects of ‘play’, the article explores the multiple ways in which tourists constitute themselves as viewers, their cognitive, pleasurable, political and even physical behaviour in response to the screen’s mediated meaning. Ludic, they go on-line.

This paper examines the effects of gender and level of study on the information‐seeking behaviour of business undergraduates. The study employed paper‐based survey questionnaires to gather quantitative data. A total of 366 respondents consisting of students from three different levels of study (years 1, 2 and 3) participated in the survey. The extent and pattern of information‐seeking amongst students was investigated using the independent variables of gender and level of study, and the dependent variable of academic activity (tutorials, assignments, research projects/theses). The results indicated differences in information‐seeking behaviour between male and female students in the case of tutorials and assignments, but not for research projects/theses. Conversely, learning behaviour differences between different levels of study were observed for projects/theses, but not for tutorials. These findings provide insights for higher education managers, researchers, faculties and information professionals, for future curriculum design and support. Implications for the design of learning activities with appropriate pedagogical approaches are discussed.

In this paper I explore the notion of reflexivity in two main domains. In the first, I explore my struggles as a trained objective, positivist researcher trying to embrace and appreciate subjective qualitative research practices. In the second section, I explore the dynamic relationship between myself, the researcher and my participants, focusing on issues related to ethnicity and power. Generally, research that explores ethnicity and power relationships commonly depicts the researcher as the privileged self compared with the participants as the marginalised other. However, in this paper I illustrate how this relationship in a multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual research context is much more complex and multifaceted than usually acknowledged. Moreover, this was further complicated by the researcher’s own experience in relation to the issue under investigation, which was different from that of the participants.

PurposeAn important aspect of an academic curriculum in higher learning institutions for technical disciplines is the industrial internship programme for students. The purpose of this paper is to investigate students’ perception of the effectiveness of an industrial internship programme offered by a private technological university in Malaysia.Design/methodology/approachUtilising a case study approach, the data for this study were collected though a survey questionnaire. The questionnaire gauged students’ perception of their eight‐month internship programme.FindingsThe students rated the industrial internship programme favorably. Generally, students viewed the learning through practical experience during the internship positively. In addition, factors related to the organisers’ operational and administrative efforts and the role played by the host company were also identified as important in determining the success of the industrial internship programme.Originality/valueIndustrial internship programmes in respective universities vary according to various needs. By sharing the findings in this case study, other institutions with similar or different industrial internship programmes can benefit from the information discussed in this paper.

Education has become increasingly driven by economic forces and it is now seen as a way to advance economic growth and prosperity. This article starts by describing the traditional educational vision and Bauman’s liquid modernity. Later, the higher education scenario in Malaysia will be presented. The objective of this research is to investigate the factors influencing Malaysian students’ university degree choice, and their perspectives on basic science as well as basic social science degree courses in universities. Our findings show the primacy of economic considerations when students make a choice about their education. An examination of the relevance of Bauman’s liquid modernity is also applied here. Moreover, the discrepancies in the research results will be discussed. The article concludes that while liquid modernity promises opportunities and advancement, awareness of the current dynamics in the education sector is also needed.

AbstractAlthough experimentally induced positive mood can generally last for 20 min and the induced mood is conducive to creative performance, it is still unclear whether the facilitation effect is stable during these 20 min. Two studies were conducted to examine this issue while controlling for the impacts of task switching, practice effect, and test item differences. In Study 1, participants (N = 42) were randomly assigned to positive, negative, and neutral mood conditions. After watching a short video clip, participants answered four items of the Alternate Uses Test (AUT) in 20 min, with 5 min allotted for each item. Creative performance during each 5‐min period was scored in terms of fluency and flexibility. Separate repeated‐measures analyses of variances on these creativity scores showed that positive mood consistently enhanced performance over 20 min. Study 2 further eliminated the effects of test item differences and test order. Participants (N = 131) underwent the same mood induction procedure and answered the same four items of the AUT, except that these items were presented in four different sequences in accordance with the Latin square design. Consistent with the findings in Study 1, Study 2 showed that the facilitation effect of positive mood lasted for 20 min when the interference of task switching, practice effect, and test item differences were minimized. This finding not only sheds light on the debate regarding the stability of experimentally induced positive mood effect, but also contributes to the body of empirical evidence that future studies may use to examine the positive mood effect over a relatively long period of time.