Department of General Education and Language
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Item Faculty perceptions of online presence: intercultural considerations(Emerald Publishing, 2023) Yousef, Dima; Takshe, Aseel A.; Contu, DavideItem The right to de-referencing ‘manifestly inaccurate’ information: TU, RE v Google(Taylor and Francis Ltd., 2023) Chemlali, Laroussi; Benseddik, LeilaItem The EMI policy in UAE universities and its impact on arab students' identity and faith in their academic Arabic(Springer, 2020-11-05) Masri, TaghreedIn the UAE, the adoption of EMI policy is being carried out in higher education without problematization. This study aims to assess the preferences of Arab students regarding their favored language of instruction. It also aims to examine how they perceive their Arab identity after studying in EMI universities. The study is based on a critical theoretical framework. A sequential mixed-methods approach of quantitative and qualitative data collection was used. Qualitative thematic analysis was carried out to analyze interviews while quantitative data analysis was used to analyze survey data. The participants were UAE University students whose first language is Arabic. The findings showed that many of them seem to have lost their faith in Arabic as a language of academia and see EMI as the normal MI, although they still consider academic Arabic an essential part of their identity, which raises questions about their sense of self-worth and self-esteem. © The Author(s) 2020. All rights reserved.Item Pre-service Mathematics Teachers' Perspectives on STEM Education(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2022) Almarashdi, Hanan Shaher; Abulibdeh, Enas Said; Zaitoun, Eman; Taha, Sawsan; Libdeh, Abdalla AbuItem The subtle art of (re)framing your mind(Emerald Publishing, 2023-02-17) Yousef, DimaPurpose: The purpose of this study is to explore through the author’s personal experience the impact rebuilding the author’s well-being had on the author’s identity and efficacy as a teacher. This describes the author’s experiences after the death of the author’s father and the effect of the author’s emotional state on the author’s personal and professional identity. It also explores how the author developed sustainable habits to cope with daily challenges. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopts an auto-ethnographic approach utilizing journal entries and reflections collected over the years as part of the healing process. These will provide a descriptive view of the author’s emotional state in the years after the author’s father's death. The author employed this method to explore the author’s personal experiences and provide a better understanding of the connections between the reconstruction of the professional identity and the importance of well-being and mental health in light of a significant or transformative event. Findings: The paper provides insights about the significance of a positive mind-set on the efficacy and performance of teachers. This suggests that there is a connection between the impact of improving the author’s well-being on a personal and professional level. Originality/value: There is little research on how self-efficacy or coping strategies could have an impact on teachers. The paper offers a unique insight into teachers' emotional and academic identities. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.Item Weathering the Storm: Financial Variable as a Key Influence to Entrepreneurial Venture Survival Over Time in Canada(Springer Science and Business Media B.V., 2017) Baadel, Said; Kabene, StefaneEach year numerous new small businesses confidently enter the marketplace but a vast majority of these firms will fail to survive beyond their tenth birthday. Past studies have focused on a variety of external factors such as geographic location and industry size. Despite the effects these variables play over time, a great amount of decisions are made internally and thus it is imperative to consider their impact on survival rates. Young firms with little experience can be heavily disadvantaged when attempting to gain funding within financial markets. Evidence indicates that a vast number of new small firms are forced to rely on equity financing, specifically in the form of internal resources. Beyond retained earnings, firms must rely on social networks in an attempt to solidify relationships with potential investors. Firms require capital to fund future growth but face barriers as turning a profit initially can be quite challenging. This chapter takes an in-depth look into one crucial internal variable, financing, and statistically analyzes its effect on the survival of small entrepreneurial ventures. The objective entails uncovering the causation for such internal downfall and providing such an insight may greatly assist small firms to compete and grow in their respected industries, therefore substantially increasing their chance of survival. © 2017, Springer International Publishing Switzerland.Item Managerial Recruitment Issues in China: The Expatriate Factor(Springer Science and Business Media B.V., 2017) Kabene, Stefane; Baadel, SaidWith China becoming the world’s largest economy, it must somehow manage the existing human capital. The problem lies in the lack of managerial talent currently located in China. This paper attempts to look how China is currently recruiting managers and examines the factors hindering the recruitment of Chinese-born and expatriate managers. China is recruiting managers using the same methods as the Western world. However, a strong emphasis is put on a factor known as guanxi. The shortage of Chinese-born managers can be attributed to financial reasons and the lack of education and government commitment. China’s culture is a major factor hindering the success of expatriates as well as the organizational structure in China because of the socialist culture. These issues must be addressed to attract managers into China to successfully compete in a globalized economy. © 2017, Springer International Publishing Switzerland.Item Cybersecurity awareness: A critical analysis of education and law enforcement methods(Slovene Society Informatika, 2021) Baadel, Said; Thabtah, Fadi; Lu, JoanAccording to the international Anti-Phishing Work Group (APWG), phishing activities have abruptly risen over the last few years, and users are becoming more susceptible to online and mobile fraud. Machine Learning techniques have potential for building technical anti-phishing models, with a handful already implemented in the real time environment. However, majority of them have yet to be applied in a real time environment and require domain experts to interpret the results. This gives conventional techniques a vital role as supportive tools for a wider audience, especially novice users. This paper reviews in-depth, common, phishing countermeasures including legislation, law enforcement, hands-on training, and education among others. A complete prevention layer based on the aforementioned approaches is suggested to increase awareness and report phishing to different stakeholders, including organizations, novice users, researchers, and computer security experts. Therefore, these stakeholders can understand the upsides and downsides of the current conventional approaches and the ways forward for improving them. © 2021 Slovene Society Informatika. All rights reserved.Item English Medium Instruction and Human Linguistic Rights: Academic, Psychological and Cultural Suffering(Brill | Nijhoff, 2020) Masri, Taghreed IbrahimIn higher education in the UAE, English is used as the medium of instruction, while academic Arabic is relegated to few electives that can be also taken in English. Policy makers perceive the transition from Arabic medium instruction (ami) schools to English medium instruction (emi) universities as normal and automatic. This study aims to explore how students see this transition, and whether they find it automatic and smooth, or embroiled in hardship and difficulties. It is based on a critical theoretical framework and is approached using exploratory critical methodology. Twenty semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty undergraduate Arab students in three English-medium universities. Results showed that students faced psychological, academic, social and cultural difficulties associated with the transition from Arabic schools to English-medium instruction universities.Item Optimal levels of private tutoring investment in South Korea(Inderscience Publishers, 2021) Hultberg, Patrik T.; Calonge, David Santandreu; Choi, TyDuring the past several decades, South Korea has transformed itself into an international educational powerhouse. The rapid economic and social achievements have largely been attributed to intentional government-regulated education plans and policies. However, since the 1960s, a powerful parallel for-profit private tutoring sector (hagwons) has emerged with significant effect on families. The main aim of this study is twofold: to model how Korean households decide on the level of investment in private tutoring and to explore whether the current amounts of such investment seem optimal across various income levels, an issue which, to date, has received scant attention in the research literature. This exploratory investigation takes the form of a two-period life-cycle model that provides a framework in which to discuss household private tutoring investment decisions. © 2021 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.Item A Critical Examination of the Arab Undergraduate Students’ Perceptions of their Academic Arabic Proficiency in Three EMI Universities in the UAE(Canadian Center of Science and Education, 2019) Masri, Taghreed IbrahimThe overwhelming power that English enjoys has become a threat to many indigenous languages that are losing the battle against English dominance and hegemony. One facet for this threat is the use of English as a medium of instruction (EMI). The EMI policy has been a naturalized and taken-for-granted practice without questioning or problematizing. As a result, academic Arabic is almost absent from the academic scene in the UAE higher education. This study aims to problematize the use of English as medium of instruction at three universities in the United Arab Emirates. It also aims to critically explore the perceptions of Arab university students who were in Arabic schools, of their Arabic proficiency after studying at university. Based on critical theoretical framework and approached from interpretive and critical paradigms, the study used a mixed-methods approach of quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. 268 surveys and 20 semi-structured interviews showed that students were aware of the decline in their Arabic proficiency due to studying via English. Results also indicated that students showed symptoms of Academic language attrition. c2019 by the author(s).Item Costs and benefits of private tutoring programs: the South Korean case(Emerald Group Holdings Ltd., 2021) Hultberg, Patrik T.; Calonge, David Santandreu; Choi, TyPurpose: The purpose of the study is twofold: to offer a theoretical model that illuminates families' motivation to invest in private tutoring and to consider the implications of such investments in the context of South Korea. Given that parents invest in private tutoring for their child if the perceived expected benefits, at the time of enrollment, are greater than the direct and indirect costs of such tutoring, the study explores how private tutoring may affect educational inequities and possibly lead to inferior social outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: A theoretical model based on the human capital approach was developed. Three questions based on stylized facts were addressed: (1) Why would a household send a child to private tutoring? (2) Why do different households invest in different amounts of private tutoring? (3) Why may a household over-invest in private tutoring? Findings: The findings of this study indicate that the demand for private tutoring services decreases with the costs of private tutoring, while increasing as levels of academic readiness and aptitude, levels of household education, levels of current wealth and expected returns to private tutoring increase. These findings imply that private tutoring may exacerbate social inequities and cause an inferior social outcome, but that a government can influence the demand for tutoring through taxation. Research limitations/implications: This study did not address the non-pecuniary benefits that may be derived from private tutoring. The most important limitation and potential source of weakness of the study is that the model is theoretical. These results therefore need to be interpreted with caution. Practical implications: The study indicates the need for private households, as well as government officials, to carefully consider the costs and benefits of private tutoring in South Korea. Although the study focuses on South Korea, the findings may apply to other countries in which private tutoring offerings are prominent. Social implications: The educational choices that families make for their children have important financial and social implications in all countries, but especially in South Korea. The important implication is that private tutoring will tend to aggravate educational and social inequality. Originality/value: The existing body of research on private tutoring investment in South Korea suggests that the phenomenon is ubiquitous, growing and spreading to other countries. Furthermore, the motivation behind households' decisions to invest in private tutoring for their children is not always addressed in the published literature. Also, far too little attention has been paid to the economic impact private tutoring has on households and children, as well as society in general. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.Item The Professional Identity of Adjunct Faculty: Exploratory Study at a Private University in the UAE(Canadian Center of Science and Education, 2018) Masri, Taghreed IbrahimProfessional identity has recently made its way as a concept that has become a central theme in teachers’ professionalism. However, adjunct faculty professional identity and development have not been given enough interest in literature despite their increasing contribution in higher education. The purpose of this study was to assess adjuncts’ perceptions of their identity. It also aimed to examine what institutional professional development they receive and the effect of its presence or absence on their professional identity. Four semi-structured interviews were conducted with four adjunct faculty in the Department of Writing Studies at a university in the UAE. Results showed that adjunct faculty have dilemma making sense of their professional selves due to being perceived differently by their students, colleagues, administrators and themselves. Results also showed that adjuncts are vulnerable, insecure, and embarrassed to declare their identity to their students. In addition, findings revealed that they do not get institutional professional development opportunities that they need and that ignoring their professional development threatens the quality of teaching and the reputation of the institution they work in.Item MCOKE: Multi-Cluster Overlapping K-Means Extension Algorithm(World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, 2015) Baadel, Said; Thabtah, Fadi; Lu, JoanClustering involves the partitioning of n objects into k clusters. Many clustering algorithms use hard-partitioning techniques where each object is assigned to one cluster. In this paper we propose an overlapping algorithm MCOKE which allows objects to belong to one or more clusters. The algorithm is different from fuzzy clustering techniques because objects that overlap are assigned a membership value of 1 (one) as opposed to a fuzzy membership degree. The algorithm is also different from other overlapping algorithms that require a similarity threshold be defined a priori which can be difficult to determine by novice users.Item A clustering approach for autistic trait classification(Taylor and Francis Ltd, 2020-07-02) Baadel, Said; Thabtah, Fadi; Lu, JoanMachine learning (ML) techniques can be utilized by physicians, clinicians, as well as other users, to discover Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) symptoms based on historical cases and controls to enhance autism screening efficiency and accuracy. The aim of this study is to improve the performance of detecting ASD traits by reducing data dimensionality and eliminating redundancy in the autism dataset. To achieve this, a new semi-supervised ML framework approach called Clustering-based Autistic Trait Classification (CATC) is proposed that uses a clustering technique and that validates classifiers using classification techniques. The proposed method identifies potential autism cases based on their similarity traits as opposed to a scoring function used by many ASD screening tools. Empirical results on different datasets involving children, adolescents, and adults were verified and compared to other common machine learning classification techniques. The results showed that CATC offers classifiers with higher predictive accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity rates than those of other intelligent classification approaches such as Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Random Forest, Random Trees, and Rule Induction. These classifiers are useful as they are exploited by diagnosticians and other stakeholders involved in ASD screening. © 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.Item Diversifying The Teaching Methods : Student’s Perceptions of Smart Learning(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2019-12) Abulibdeh, Enas; Abu Libdeh, Abdalla; Trayek, Fuad A.; Murshidi, GhadahThere is an increasing need for improving the e-learning systems and so integrating smart Applications into education is a useful communication tool in interactive educational environment for both learners and teachers. The introduction of smart Applications has revolutionized education by providing a smart learning environment creating a new style in learning known as smart learning. The main purpose of this study is to shed light on this new concept of learning and highlighting the attributes and features of smart classroom. It aims to investigate the student's perception of smart learning and their extent of using different smart learning tools. The study was conducted at several Universities in the United Arab Emirates sampling 411 students enrolled in different programs. © 2019 IEEE.Item Work-life conflict costs: a Canadian perspective(Inderscience Enterprises Ltd., 2020) Baadel, Said; Kabene, Stefane; Majeed, AsimWith current trends showing increased work hours, dual-earner households, and less time spent with family, it is evident that there is a work-life conflict. It is important for human resource managers in Canada to adapt to this changing trend by implementing new policies and programs. Our goal was to discover if there was a correlation between the work-life conflict and absenteeism. Our research study demonstrated that there is no significant correlation between hours worked and time spent with family, but there is a positive significant relationship between time spent working and absenteeism. Our study also indicates a positive correlation between time spent with family and absenteeism. Canadian companies can ease the implications of work-life conflict by adopting some work-life best practices. These practices include reduced work hours and flexible schedules that are already prevalent in European countries. Copyright © 2020 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.Item Frugal MOOCs: An adaptable contextualized approach to MOOC designs for refugees(Athabasca University, 2019-12) Shah, Mariam Aman; Calonge, David SantandreuThere is a growing body of literature that recognizes the role Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can play in improving access to education globally, and particularly to thousands of people in developing and developed countries. There is increasing concern, however, that the millions of displaced refugee learners throughout Europe, the Middle East, and other regions are still disadvantaged when it comes to engaging in learning through MOOCs. The reasons for this disadvantage range from a lack of appropriate infrastructure or other supporting structures, to a lack of contextualized content. So far, little attention has been paid to contextualized MOOC models, which may both impact policies and be adapted to the specific needs of these learners who often do not have the means to access many education opportunities. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose a frugally-engineered MOOC model that addresses the barriers of access and participation for refugees. This paper engages in an exploratory research methodology, using findings from the literature and expert opinions gathered through interviews. These findings lead to the development of what the authors call a Frugal MOOC Model which can be contextualized to meet the needs of refugee learners. The paper goes on to highlight the development of the Frugal MOOC Model as the first phase of an ongoing study. It concludes with recommendations for the next phase of the study: how to implement the newly developed model. © Athabasca University.Item Equivariant structure constants for hamiltonian-T -spaces(TUBITAK, 2014) Leung, Ho HonIf there exists a set of canonical classes on a compact Hamiltonian-T -space in the sense of R Goldin and S Tolman, we derive some formulas for certain equivariant structure constants in terms of other equivariant structure constants and the values of canonical classes restricted to some fixed points. These formulas can be regarded as a generalization of Tymoczko's results. © TÜBİTAK.Item Education policy in South Korea : a contemporary model of human capital accumulation?(Cogent OA, 2017) Hultberg, Patrik; Calonge, David Santandreu; Kim, Seong-HeeWe argue that South Korean families with children are today overinvesting in the level of education due to their high levels of expenditures on private after-school tutoring programs. This situation has evolved due to a combination of factors: a changing labor market, increasing housing and debt payments, as well as an educational “arms race” among Korean families with children. These changes are exacerbating both economic and social issues in Korean society, but are increasingly difficult to address due to issues of complementarity and coordination failures related to educational expenditures. Korea might be inexorably falling into a surprising “education trap.”. © 2017 The Author(s).