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This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of Language Enhancement Program (LEP) activities in enhancing the oral communication skills of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students at King Khalid University.

A mixed-method study design was used. Simple random sampling techniques were adopted to recruit the study participants. For the survey, a total of 58 male students were recruited and for interviews, 20 male students were selected. The 58 participants were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. The traditional method was adopted to teach the control group, while LEP activities were conducted to teach the experimental group.

A post-test was conducted to examine the oral communication skills of the participants of the experimental group. The scores of both groups were analyzed using a t-test value at a significant level of 0.05. The content analysis method was adopted to assess the enhancement of the oral communication of the students enrolled in the LEP. The questionnaires and interview results showed that the LEP program has a central focus on improving students' oral communication skills.

It is limited to the EFL students at King Khalid University.

LEP is a good program and can be implemented in Saudi Universities.

Students can interact with one another through the LEP activities that promote their English proficiency as well as their personality characteristics.

The paper spells out the role of LEP activities in improving students' oral communication in English and students' opinions about LEP activities in enhancing their English language in different types of communicative contexts. Further, it suggests some pedagogical implications for overcoming the difficulties faced by EFL students in various communicative contexts.

This article focuses on the assessment of entrepreneurship competence by selected vocational teachers in Italy. The exploratory research question addresses the extent to which entrepreneurship assessments are competence based, and the research seeks to identify fully fledged assessment programmes with both a formative and summative component, and the use of assessment rubrics. It also explores the extent to which entrepreneurship competence is referred to in school documentation and later assessed, and the tools and strategies used for such assessment.

This case study is part of a larger European research project promoted by Cedefop; in Italy it focused on six selected vocational IVET and CVET programmes and apprenticeship schemes. It used a wide range of instruments to ensure triangulation and multiple perspectives: analysed policy documents and undertook online interviews with experts and policy makers. At VET providers' premises it deployed: analysis of school documents; observations of learning environments; interviews and focus groups with (in schools) teachers, directors and vice directors, learners and alumni (in companies) instructors, company tutors and employers, apprentices and alumni.

Assessment tasks were rarely embedded within fully fledged assessment programmes involving both formative and summative tasks, and assessment rubric for grading. Most of the time, entrepreneurship programmes lacked self-assessment, peer assessment and structured feedback and did not involve learners in the assessment process. Some instructors coached the students, but undertook no clear formative assessment. These findings suggest institutions have a testing culture with regard to assessment, at the level of both policy and practice. In most cases, entrepreneurship competence was not directly assessed, and learning outcomes were only loosely related to entrepreneurship.

One limitation concerned the selection of the VET providers: these were chosen not on a casual basis, but because they ran programmes that were relevant to the development of entrepreneurship competence.

At the policy level, there is a need for new guidelines on competence development and assessment in VET, guidelines that are more aligned with educational research on competence development. To ensure the development of entrepreneurship competence, educators need in-service training and a community of practice.

So far, the literature has concentrated on entrepreneurship education at the tertiary level. Little is known about how VET instructors assess entrepreneurship competence. This study updates the picture of policy and practice in Italy, illustrating how entrepreneurship competence is developed in selected IVET and CVET programmes and apprenticeships.

The aim of this study is to understand the effect of class configurations in an active learning classroom (ALC) on students' self-perception of experiences and learning outcomes, namely participation, performance, motivation and creativity.

A self-administered survey (N = 131) was conducted in seven classes from the varied disciplines of communication, interior design and architecture. During the first half of the semester, all selected courses were conducted in traditional classrooms, whereas those in the second half were conducted in an ALC. ALC was designed to be used with several furniture configurations which could be easily set up by members of the learning community themselves. The survey was conducted at the end of semester before final exams, when students have a clear idea of the experiences in both the traditional and the new (ALC) classrooms, having spent equal time in each of these learning environments.

The main finding of the study is that students were eager to have future classes in the ALC rather than in traditional settings since the students experienced better learning outcomes in the ALC. During the second half of the semester, students who were in classes conducted following active learning (AL) pedagogies, with its supportive spatial configurations, were more aware of the learning outcomes facilitated by the physical environment. Further, the authors found that the increase in the number of furniture configurations has a statistically significant positive impact on learning outcomes.

AL pedagogy is often studied as a way of teaching and rarely with its associated classroom environments. In most of the existing studies, the configuration of furniture has often been overlooked within an AL environment by a learning community. This study fills the gap in emphasising the spatial aspects of the ALC by focusing on the specific pedagogy being followed.

This study aims to evaluate the quality of a speech and language therapy (SLT) swallow service provided to adults with intellectual disability (ID) by exploring the process and outcome factors; to explore the process of what is done to and for the patient including identifying dysphagia, choking and pneumonia risk, typical interventions and management; examine clinical outcomes; and explore the relationship of outcomes with risk factors, satisfaction with the service and the impact of the service on the number of choking incidents and admissions to acute hospital with swallow concerns.

There were three specific work packages: (1) collecting and scrutinising patient data from the clinical record for adults with ID referred to the SLT swallow service over a six-month period. The researcher created aims, defined the limits to achieve the aims, designed a standardised data collection form, set out where data was in the clinical record, piloted, set limits for collection and trained reviewers; (2) gathering experience and satisfaction surveys from patients, caregivers and referrers over the six-month study period; and (3) monitoring choking adverse incident reports and hospital admission with swallow concerns for the whole ID population.

Choking and hospital admission were the main reasons for referral, and pneumonia risk significantly predicted dysphagia impairment. The research highlighted common dysphagia risk factors, interventions and recommendations for this population. The SLT swallow service is a quality service that is highly valued by patients, their caregivers and referrers. The service achieves significant clinical improvements, helps identify dysphagia and provides management to reduce associated risks.

This study found common dysphagia risk factors, interventions and recommendations; it also found that the therapy outcome measures/Royal College of Speech and Language Therapy online outcome tool was a meaningful outcome measure, and that pneumonia risk significantly predicted dysphagia impairment, all of which could inform the identified dysphagia research priorities for this population.

Naming usual care in treatment and recommendations could help ensure a fair service and could help form quality indicators. People with ID, their caregivers and staff generated valuable ideas for improvement, and further involvement work could create a logic model for the service. Other future work could explore the use of screening tools, increase multidisciplinary team working, improve access to instrumental assessments, raise awareness of swallowing and promote important oral health and medication reviews. By using this information to shape quality improvement work and policies, one can work toward addressing high health-related inequalities and preventable deaths associated with dysphagia in this vulnerable population.

It may be useful to raise awareness that adults with ID age earlier and that one should not exclude them from older people’s services because of an age threshold, often set higher than their life expectancy. This study highlighted a possible inequality of access issue for adults with ID who do not have direct care or day care staff. There is a need to increase access to awareness training so caregivers and general practitioners can recognise swallow difficulties and know how to make a referral for a swallow assessment.

Overall, the evaluation of the swallow service to adults with ID suggests that SLT have a quality service for adults with ID that is highly valued and provides significant clinical improvements. By building on these strengths, SLT could extend the reach, influence and impact of their services to help those adults with ID who have emerging swallow difficulties or who do not access the service.

Utilizing datasets of Ecuador, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico and Peru from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies survey from 2017 to 2018, this study aimed to develop and validate a profile indicating core workplace skills in developing countries.

DeVellis' guide of scale development navigated the development of the profile. Multiple techniques including item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and multigroup confirmatory factor analysis were used on a sample of 7,166 participants to validate the profile of core workplace skills in developing countries.

A resultant five-dimensional profile with 18 items was developed: oral communication skills, reading skills, math skills, information and communication technology skills and learning skills. The estimates of composite reliability showed the profile was reliable. The validity estimates of the profile were obtained from several sources including content, convergent, discriminative and construct validity. The measurement invariance was also held for the profile.

Based on the researcher's knowledge, the study is the first attempt to develop a profile to indicate core workplace skills in developing countries. The profile theoretically framed the core workplace skills in developing countries and provides a new measure for identifying, evaluating and thus improving core workplace skills in developing countries for different stakeholders in the era of Education 4.0.

The current literature on school teacher-created summative assessment lacks a clear consensus regarding its definition and key principles. The purpose of this research was therefore to arrive at a cohesive understanding of what constitutes effective summative assessment.

Conducting a systematic literature review of 95 studies, this research adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. The objective was to identify the core principles governing effective teacher-created summative assessments.

The study identified five key principles defining effective summative assessment creation: validity, reliability, fairness, authenticity and flexibility.

The expansiveness of education research is such that not all relevant studies may have been identified, particularly outside of mainstream databases. This study considered only the school environment, so contextual limitations will exist.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study contributes original insights by proposing a holistic definition that can facilitate consensus-building in further research. The assimilation of core principles guided the development of quality indicators beneficial for teacher practice. The comprehensive definition, key principles and quality indicators offer a unique perspective on summative assessment discourse.

As global issues such as climate change, economic growth, social equality and the wealth gap are widely discussed, education for sustainable development (ESD) allows every human being to acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values necessary to shape a sustainable future. It also requires participatory teaching and learning methods that motivate and empower learners to change their behavior and take action for sustainable development. Teachers have begun rating pupils based on peer assessment for open evaluation. Peer assessment enables students to transition from passive to active feedback recipients. The assessors improve critical thinking and encourage introspection, resulting in more significant recommendations. However, the quality of peer assessment is variable, resulting in reviewers not recognizing the remarks of other reviewers, therefore the benefits of peer assessment cannot be fulfilled. In the past, researchers frequently employed post-event questionnaires to examine the effects of peer assessment on learning effectiveness, which did not accurately reflect the quality of peer assessment in real time.

This study employs a multi-label model and develops a self-feedback system in order to use the AIOLPA system in the classroom to enhance students' learning efficacy and the validity of peer assessment.

The research findings indicate that the better peer assessment through the rapid feedback system, for the evaluator, encourages more self-reflection and attempts to provide more ideas, so bringing the peer rating closer to the instructor rating and assisting the evaluator. Improve self-evaluation and critical thinking for the evaluator, peers make suggestions and comments to help improve the work and support the growth of students' learning effectiveness, which can lead to more suggestions and an increase in the work’s quality.

ESD consequently promotes competencies like critical thinking, imagining future scenarios and making decisions in a collaborative way. This study builds an online peer assessment system with a self-feedback mechanism capable of classifying peer comments, comparing them with scores in a consistent manner and providing prompt feedback to critics.

The purpose of this study is to examine relevant demographic and socio-economic factors as they relate to progress towards intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and intercultural sensitivity for ethnic-minority Latinx middle school English learners (ELs) using a mobile-assisted funds-of-knowledge-featured writing practice.

Through the theoretical lens of funds of knowledge, this three-year study implemented a survey-based quasi-experimental design centered on the Latinx ELs’ ICC development with the implementation of an intercultural sensitivity questionnaire (Chen and Starosta, 2000). The authors first investigated the relationship between ELs’ intercultural sensitivity and associated demographic and socio-economic factors. The authors then examined the changes of ELs’ intercultural sensitivity. Over ten weeks, the intervention group completed five funds-of-knowledge-featured narrative essays using pen and paper and mobile-based writing tools alternatively.

Findings indicated that ELs’ intercultural sensitivity increased as they advanced to a higher-level grade from sixth to eighth. The embedded mobile-assisted funds-of-knowledge writing practice as intervention promoted ELs’ intercultural sensitivity in interaction engagement, respect of cultural differences, interaction enjoyment and interaction attentiveness. Among the variables, interaction enjoyment was portrayed the most. ELs who reported not speaking English at home were statistically significant in this experiment.

This study acknowledges the robust and variance of funds of knowledge as a niche to address the interculturality and hybridity of ELs’ cultural practices accumulated through Latinx ELs’ family socialization and social development using mobile-assisted writing practice. This study could provide implications for optimizing inclusive experience to promote computer-assisted language learning in a contemporary, postcolonial global world.