This study has examined the problems’ related to communicative ecology of pilgrim sojourners in Saudi Arabia and its impact on the levels of their satisfaction with the services provided in a probability sample of 439 Pakistani pilgrims. The sojourners’ communication ecology in problem situations comprises eleven communication sources. Of these, contacts with family/friends and co-pilgrims made top of the list followed by such community organization sources like information counters, tour operators, and the Pakistani Hajj mission officials. The mediated sources of contacts with the ethnic newspaper (the Urdu language newspaper), and the mainstream Saudi mass media ranked the 3rd and the 4th. The Internet and the digital billboards were each cited in less than 10 percent of the responses. Stepwise multiple regressions revealed that the most important sources of impact on satisfaction were: contact with community organizations, family/friends and co-pilgrims, the ethnic newspaper, an.....

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The implementation of scenography in the creation of artistic and creative works are in correlation are also important components in theatrical process of a theatre production. This is because components of scenography puts together elements of visual design and creative ideas in abstract, realistic and experimental forms based on the concepts and themes of the manuscripts that will be staged. The study therefore demonstrates the role of scenography in producing a theater production at the Malaysian Art School of Johor which is effective with the application of teaching and learning patterns that focus on building creative and innovative thinking skills through exploration activities to enhance the ability to create and produce quality ideas. The results of this study show the significance of scenography exploration through appropriate approaches to ensure the understanding of the processing of the scenography element amongst instructors and students in the early stages of the arts sci.....

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Parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often experience a lower quality of life, which impacts on their children’s care, functioning and outcome and requires assessment and monitoring. Malaysia is a country presenting with an increasing prevalence of ASD and needs a linguistically and culturally appropriate quality of life measurement for parents of children with ASD. The Quality of Life in Autism Questionnaire (QoLA) is a validated ASD-specific quality of life measure in English. This paper describes the translation and the cross-cultural adaptation process of the QoLA from English into Malay. The translated Malay version of QoLA exhibited reasonable levels of internal consistency, cross-cultural validity, face and content validity; and is ready to be used with Malay speakers..

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Present studies have advocated the role of digital games in significantly enhance students’ learning. In this regard, this paper examines the needs of digital mobile games in the development of Arabic language learning application. The data were collected using a need analysis questionnaire administrated to 123 students enrolled in elementary Arabic language courses in three universities, Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, and International Islamic University Malaysia. The IBM SPSS Statistics 24 software was used to conduct descriptive quantitative analyses of the data collected. The results indicate that the digital game is an interactive tool which could create an exciting learning environment. The students highly agree on the use of digital games in the classroom and allow students to have fun and develop their creativity through digital game-based learning. Therefore, this paper reports the findings of the need analysis stage, regarding the use mobi.....

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Business development is a growing area of emphasis in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), however, developing and launching a new business is often a complex task for the aspiring women entrepreneurs. Most of the key skills needed to run an independent business such as the finance, marketing, operational logistics and family support can present challenging barriers to long-term success. The purpose of this article is to investigate the enablers and barriers toward the success of women in entrepreneurial activities in UAE. A qualitative research using one-onone interviews and focus group were led among thirty successful women entrepreneurs from different fields operating in the UAE. The outcome of this research highlights the fact that UAE Government plays an important role in supporting women entrepreneurs, but the cultural barriers are seen as major obstacles.   ..

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Virtual agents are animated, life-like characters used in virtual learning environment to facilitate learning tasks. Since social relationship between the virtual agent and learner is important, the design of virtual agent appearance should be emphasised. The realism level of virtual agent may cause distress to the users, especially when the character mimics human; which is based on the uncanny valley phenomenon highlighted by Mori in 1970. Therefore, the virtual agent effectiveness in terms of promoting positive emotion is influenced by the character’s realism. Moreover, learners’ acceptance of the virtual agent depends on their emotion towards it, which is recognised through their stimulus. Hence, emotional valence and arousal is expected to affect students’ emotion in learning. Therefore, this paper proposes a conceptual framework to be the guidelines in the development of animated virtual agents to maximise students’ positive emotions in learning. The Mayer’s Cognitive Th.....

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Referring to digital entertainment games, digital game-based learning (DGBL) has been evolved in several ways such as by integrating avatar to assist the students to learn on their own. However, what type of avatar would be preferred by the learners in DGBL? There were dearth studies conducted on how the realism level of an avatar in DGBL would influence the emotions of a learner since emotions experienced during a learning process provide clues to the process of learning. Likewise, there are fewer studies in identifying the relationship between level of realism with different elements of emotions (valence and arousal) and aspect of motivation. Hence, based on theories, principles and literature overview, a conceptual framework was outlined. This framework illustrates the emotion as the potential mediating effects between realism level of an avatar and motivation of a learner in the game...

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Pembelajaran teradun merupakan satu pengintegrasian pendekatan bersemuka dan menggunakan teknologi. Pendekatan ini masih belum meluas digunakan dalam proses pengajaran dan pembelajaran bahasa Arab. Oleh yang demikian, kajian ini betujuan untuk mengenal pasti tahap penerimaan pembelajaran teradun kursus Bahasa Arab dalam kalangan pelajar Sarjana Muda di Universiti Malaysia Kelantan berteraskan model penerimaan teknologi (TAM). Satu set soal selidik telah diedarkan kepada 120 orang pelajar yang mendaftar kursus bahasa Arab telah dipilih secara rawak untuk mengambil bahagian di dalam kajian tinjauan ini. Data berbentuk kuantitatif dianalisis secara deskriptif dengan menggunakan perisian IBM SPSS Statistic 24. Hasil dapatan menunjukkan pendekatan pembelajaran teradun memberi kesan yang positif kepada proses pembelajaran pelajar. Pelajar juga mendapat manfaat daripada pembelajaran teradun ini dan mahukan pendekatan ini dijalankan sepanjang semester berjalan...

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In this work, the characterization of calix [4] arene (C4) and calix [8] arene (C8) were studied using LangmuirBlodgett (LB) technique, surface potential meter and UV-Visible spectrometer. The surface pressure - area isotherms demonstrated stable Langmuir C4 and C8 monolayers formed at the air/water interface. Several properties such as limiting area per molecule and molecule radius of C4 and C8 were determined using different spreading volumes in LB technique. Besides that, effective dipole moments and maximum surface potential of C4 and C8 were determined from surface potential values. In addition, UV-Vis spectroscopy stated that the peak absorbance of C4 occurred at 275nm with one “shoulder” peak exists at 283nm, whilst peak absorbance of C8 occurred at 287nm. Surface topography for C4 and C8 thin layer also been observed. This study wasper formed to determine several basic properties of these calixarenes for future works.  ..

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Today’s wedding expenses kept increasing and have created difficulties for many parties especially the couple who wants to get married. As an alternative, most couple have obtained loans or financing from banks. There are many studies debating the issue and conclude that this situation has not only resulted in the high rate of indebtedness of the young generation, but also has led to divorces. Therefore, the objective of this study is to identify the main reason as to why bridal couple get loans or financing from the bank, the amount of financing taken, the repayment period and the types of banks offering loans or financing. The questionnaire was used as a research instrument to obtain the required information. A total of 204 respondents were selected through a snow ball sampling technique. The findings of descriptive analysis showed that the main reason couple get a loan or bank funding because they have no money at all to perform a wedding ceremony. In addition, the repayment perio.....

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