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As an institution that has invested in e-learning infrastructure and technology for e-learning delivery, Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak conducted The Digital Educator Series as a means of embracing this educational disruption. In particular, this paper reports on the first three courses held under the Digital Educator Series that aims to equip teachers with practical and effective online teaching to school teachers in Sarawak. While the training is still in effect, preliminary results are shared, and implications for practice and recommendations for further research are considered.

Approximately 136 questionnaires containing close-and open-ended items were distributed to the teacher participants of the Digital Educator Series. Close-ended items were designed to gather general information about their perceptions of online teaching and learning. Items were constructed to gather insights on familiarity with online teaching and learning, perceived usefulness of platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Google Classrooms. The open-ended items were designed to gather information on areas of improvement for the courses and professional development needs of teachers for online teaching.

The findings revealed very mixed responses in terms of teachers' familiarity with online teaching and learning. Nonetheless, it was encouraging that the majority of teachers felt positively about the impact and usefulness of the courses in the Digital Educator Series and have expressed that would like to learn more about online teaching pedagogy. Teachers reported the greatest familiarity with Google Classroom and were very positive about the applicability the Google Classroom Course (91.2%) in their own teaching practice. Conversely, all of the participants reported they were unfamiliar with Microsoft Teams. Accordingly, the teachers did not perceive its applicability to be as high as the Google Classroom. The qualitative findings further corroborated this and expressed the need for specific professional development programmes that include pedagogical and technological support. Overall, the teachers are strongly focussed in their professional development in order to improve their online teaching,

Like other research, this too has its limitations. The sample size in this study was restricted to those who attended the Digital Educator Series training. Hence the results of this study, whilst have been enriching, and to a certain extent are supported by the current literature, the accuracy of the description may be unique to this particular group of individuals, within this particular setting. Additionally, the study only relied on self-reports from both the questionnaire and the semi-structured interviews. This study accepts that self-reports have shortcomings. Not all experiences of the courses would have been readily accessible through the teachers' conscious reflections. This makes it difficult to construct a complete picture of the experience, challenges and identify all salient factors within a particular workshop or training.

Although the adoption of teaching and learning to online platforms is undoubtedly the way to maintain continuity of learning for students, it has also unveiled glaring inequities in Sarawak. Therefore, continuous and personalised professional development needs to be provided, focussing on pedagogical and technological support. There is a need to embrace these changes as a long-term response that will develop and improve over the next few years. That response should include better infrastructure, policies for quality improvement, accessibility standards and strategic plans for continuous access in the future. This includes advocating for platforms that can fit into the core technology environment and for teachers to adopt an innovative mindset.

In light of the complex and multifaceted challenge of transitioning to online learning in Sarawak Malaysia, it was evident that the need for innovative solutions to optimize educational endeavours has become accelerated. To ensure that students are well-supported and widening participation and access to education, it is imperative that the education disruption be embraced. This starts with addressing teachers' digital literacy through a professional development programme of online reaching.

The purpose of this paper is to explore students’ perception and use of English in higher education (HE) institutions in Malaysia. In doing so, it aims to better understand the relationship between students’ perception of English and academic self-efficacy, particularly since English is used as a medium of instruction in HE institutions.

Approximately, 980 questionnaires were distributed to four HE institutions to explore relationships and patterns of students perceived English language proficiency and academic self-efficacy as potential variables shaping their academic performance. About 838 students participated.

The findings revealed that although students did not rate their English proficiency very highly, they placed high value on English in regards to their academic performance and job prospects upon graduation. More importantly, the findings also show that the majority of the students had high academic self-efficacy beliefs in L2, and were more accurate at calibrating their efficacy beliefs with subsequent performance in academic settings, unlike typical research findings on Asian students as generally holding lower self-efficacy beliefs. This finding was evidenced by the strong and positive relationship between perceived English language competence and academic self-efficacy in L2.

It is imperative that students’ academic self-efficacy beliefs be enhanced as it has been revealed to mobilise motivation and cognitive resources. It is also necessary to offer targeted support services specifically designed to further help students to improve their English academic skills.

In this study, rewards offered by instrumental motivation in terms of increased academic literacy and career appear to supersede the motive of identification with the L2 language community. It is likely that students in Malaysian HE institutions are becoming increasingly motivated to study due to their own visions and desires, rather than as a result of external requirements. Such findings should be capitalised since self-efficacy is predictive of academic performance.

The authors explore the nature of commitment, job satisfaction and job characteristics, and the nature of the interrelationships among these variables concerning expatriate employees in Saudi Arabia. An examination of a sample of 504 expatriate employees reveals that these employees are, by and large, indifferent with respect to their perceptions of commitment, job satisfaction, and job characteristics. In addition, the results provide strong support for (1) the influence of job satisfaction on commitment, (2) the influence of job variety on commitment, and (3) the influence of job autonomy, identity, and feedback on job satisfaction.

The author describes how he entered the marketing field and describes his contributions in four sections: articles written, books published, students nurtured, and executives consulted and trained. He describes his contributions to the marketing field in nine areas: marketing theory and orientations, improving the role and practice of marketing, analytical marketing, the social and ethical side of marketing, globalization and international marketing competition, marketing in the new economy, creating and managing the product mix, strategic marketing, and broadening the concept and application of marketing.

This study aims to present a detailed investigation into the approaches of academic librarians in Trinidad and Tobago in pursuing continuing professional development (CPD) activities. The paper also examines the extent of their participation in CPD at both the institutional and external levels in contributing to the development of their careers.

The instrument used was a questionnaire which assesses the effectiveness of the librarians in their involvement in and attitude toward CPD activities.

The paper demonstrates the active role and willingness of academic librarians in Trinidad and Tobago in providing and participating in CPD training and support to library and information personnel at both the national and international levels.

The paper underscores the effectiveness of a group of academic librarians in Trinidad and Tobago who pursue and provide a high level of CPD activities to professionals.

An engaged workforce has never been more important than it is now. Research continues to reveal a strong link between engaged employees and employee performance. Consequently, different strategies continue to be developed to enhance employee engagement (EE) in organisations. Unfortunately, many of these strategies have not worked due to the lack of trust that some employees may have towards organisational leaders. Thus, it is argued that the first step in building an effective EE is building trust, which will erode all sorts of suspicion of the intention of leaders in the organisation. Unfortunately, the literature is not clear about how to build such trust, especially in developing countries where the organisational environment is much different from that in developed ones; making the applicability of models in the developed world quite difficulty in these countries. How can public sector leaders build trust in the organisations in an environment where informality appears to be the norm? The purpose of this paper is therefore to ascertain how trust can be built in public organisations.

In order to answer the research questions, as well as obtain in-depth understanding of what is being done, the authors used the mixed methods approach in the data collection for the paper. In using mixed method data collection, the authors took both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Both qualitative and quantitative data were, however, collected concurrently. This was done for the sake of convenience, as there is little study on how to build trust or, even, EE in the Ghanaian context. The authors set out to explore these issues, and the only way for the authors to do so was to undertake the data collection simultaneously.

The paper examined critically four main areas to help leadership build trust: credibility, fairness, respect and communication. The study shows that both managers and employees firmly believe in building trust. Leaders were able to discuss the efforts they make to ensure that issues concerning trust building are addressed. At the same time, employees also agreed on the need to strengthen these variables.

The research identifies areas on which both leadership and employees can continually work to help bridge the gap between them if public organisations are to reap the benefits of EE. The authors are convinced that if the issues discussed here are addressed, and parties work on them, individuals will succeed in their own areas, but so will the organisations, which in turn will help in the development of he country.

From a theoretical perspective, it extends the work on EE, and offers new insight into this emerging concept from a developing countries perspective, where informality in the public sector is common. Most of the research on trust and EE has been either qualitative or quantitative in nature. Using the mixed methods approach means the authors will be explaining how both can help us better understand the “how” in building trust in the public sector. Thus, the paper is one of the few papers that have used the mixed methods approach to examine how trust can be built in public organisations.