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As new English-medium universities open their doors in the Arabian Gulf andsome Arabic-medium universities switch to using English as the language ofinstruction, instructors in all disciplines face the challenge of teaching theircourses in English to students who have learned (and who are continuing tolearn) English as a foreign language. This article reviews theories and practicesfrom the field of Applied Linguistics and Teaching English as a SecondLanguage (TESOL) which can help content-area instructors understand andreach these learners.

Second language acquisition research has produced several concepts ofinterest to content-area instructors. Krashen’s theory of comprehensible inputfocuses on the language used by the instructor, while Swain’s of comprehensibleoutput emphasizes providing opportunities for students to produce language. Cummins differentiates between two types of language proficiency: BasicInterpersonal Communication Skills (BICS), which are needed for dailyinteractions, and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP), which isrequired for academic tasks. Interlanguage and first language interference mayalso influence students’ second language production in classroom settings.

Specific classroom practices for improving students’ language comprehensionand facilitating content learning are recommended. These include modifyingspeech, using visual aids, utilizing a variety of questioning techniques, andextending the time instructors wait for students to respond. Instructors canemploy strategies, such as mind-mapping and quickwriting, to activate students’linguistic and conceptual schemata at the beginning of a lesson. Scaffoldingprovides structure and support for students to complete tasks until they are ableto realize them on their own. Collaborative/cooperative learning lowers students’affective filters and offers opportunities for participation and language practice. Graphics illustrate some of the suggested practices.

Governmental financial reporting is prepared for accountability and decision-making purposes and is directed to a wide range of users, including citizens. However, this may sound easier than it actually is as citizens without specific accounting knowledge may find it difficult to understand the financial information prepared by governments. The study analyzes citizens' perceptions toward infographics as well as their ability to improve accounting understandability by nonaccounting experts compared to the traditional financial statements.

The paper presents the results of an exploratory analysis conducted with the participation of a group of citizens in three European countries through a questionnaire.

The results show that infographics improve accounting understandability by nonaccounting experts compared to the traditional financial statements. However, infographics alone are not enough to succeed in making nonaccounting literate citizens experts in fully understanding accounting information.

The novelty of the research consists in its ability to give voice to citizens' preferences regarding the way the financial information is presented, which has been largely neglected by previous studies. In parallel, it analyzes the effect of accounting knowledge on accounting understandability. Moreover, it is the first study that analyzes the use of infographics in public sector financial reporting.

Teaching presentation skills is by no means an easy task. To teach such skills effectively, a teacher must help the students to learn how to (1) design and organize the presentation contenteffectively; (2) strengthen their verbal and nonverbal communication skills;and (3) master the use of visual aids. Often, the traditional face-to-face classroom setting falls short when the lecturer has to teach more than 100 students how to observe small details of body language and vocal skills. In this case, a blended learning mode — a hybrid of face-to-face and online learning — may be a better option than a pure face-to-face learning mode (Fang, Chow & Soo, 2012).

The purpose of this paperis to demonstrate how blended learning can be implemented to teach university students' presentation skills. In the spring term of 2013, ENGL A122F: Presentation Skills, a five-credit course for full-time undergraduate students, was first delivered via a blended learning approach at the Open University of Hong Kong. Attempting to combine the best features of the online and face-to-face modes of teaching, the blended delivery course incorporated video and interactive web-based components into the course outline.

In this paper, I share my experience of how presentation skills can be taught through video lectures and assessed through the online learning environment (OLE), alongside traditional teacher-led lectures and tutorials. Also, I discuss how the blended learning approach, compared with the traditional face-to-face teaching mode, can not only facilitate propositional knowing, but also help learners to achieveexperiential knowing, and presentational knowing (Heron & Reason, 2006). Last but not least, the paper reflects on students'feedback, as well as the challengeswhen implementing the blended learning mode.

This study was conducted to address the methodical shortcomings and high associated cost of understanding the use of new, poorly understood architectural spaces, such as makerspaces. The proposed quantified method of enhancing current post-occupancy evaluation (POE) practices aims to provide architects, engineers and building professionals with accessible and intuitive data that can be used to conduct comparative studies of spatial changes, understand changes over time (such as those resulting from COVID-19) and verify design intentions after construction through a quantified post-occupancy evaluation.

In this study, we demonstrate the use of ultra-wideband (UWB) technology to gather, analyze and visualize quantified data showing interactions between people, spaces and objects. The experiment was conducted in a makerspace over a four-day hackathon event with a team of four actively tracked participants.

The study shows that by moving beyond simply counting people in a space, a more nuanced pattern of interactions can be discovered, documented and analyzed. The ability to automatically visualize findings intuitively in 3D aids architects and visual thinkers to easily grasp the essence of interactions with minimal effort.

By providing a method for better understanding the spatial and temporal interactions between people, objects and spaces, our approach provides valuable feedback in POE. Specifically, our approach aids practitioners in comparing spaces, verifying design intent and speeding up knowledge building when developing new architectural spaces, such as makerspaces.

All too often leadership programs are developed in relative isolation; that is, they tend to be either academic or practitioner in nature. Arguably, much more effective leadership programs are possible through collaboration between academics and practitioners. This application brief describes one such successful collaboration to develop an inspirational leadership workshop based upon the leadership experiences of retired four-star U.S. Army General Tommy Franks. The result is an award winning leadership workshop designed for both students and professionals.

This study aims to propose a tailored Lean Six Sigma framework providing an accessible Lean Six Sigma methodology for compound feed manufacturers with the aim of mitigating rising costs and increasingly complex demands from customers.

A Lean Six Sigma framework was designed combining Lean value stream mapping and Six Sigma structured problem-solving with a case study in an Irish compound feed manufacturer.

The study found that the Lean Six Sigma implementation framework provided a simplified approach, which fitted the resource availability within compound feed manufacturing.

The study is limited by the constraints of a sole case study in providing empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the framework. Nevertheless, a conceptual Lean Six Sigma model is proposed, which will assist compound feed manufacturers implementing a continuous improvement approach.

This paper proposes a simplified approach to the implementation of Lean Six Sigma in agricultural compound feed manufacturers and in small and medium-sized organisations. This is the first such study in Ireland and will add to the body of work on Lean in agriculture and aid other agri-businesses and compound feed manufacturers in understanding how Lean Six Sigma can benefit.

The purpose of this paper is to describe an online faculty development pilot course on how to engage students online. A framework was used, referred to as the Trifecta of Student Engagement, for the design of the course. The Trifecta of Student Engagement proposes that students, in order to be fully engaged in a course, need to be engaged with their course content, with their peers and with their instructor. The course has three units of content that each correspond to the Trifecta of Student Engagement. This course has gone through one pilot with faculty and has impacted students and faculty positively.

An online faculty development course was piloted with eight faculty members across a range of disciplines who participated in the program. After taking the course, they had to apply the Trifecta of Student Engagement framework to a course they taught and share what they did via written report, webinar, or web presentation. This study summarized the faculty participants’ written reports and presentations as well as provided a qualitative evaluation on the impact this course had on students and faculty.

After faculty applied the Trifecta of Student Engagement framework to courses taught, faculty saw an improvement in student engagement, satisfaction, learning and achievement. Three faculty surveyed students to determine their engagement and satisfaction and found students to respond positively to the use of tools and activities for student-to-content engagement, student-to-student engagement and student-to-instructor engagement. Two faculty examined student grades to determine if there were changes in student outcomes. One professor saw average grades increase by 11 percent. Another professor saw grades improve by 8 percent. She also found that student assessment of learning increased by 0.57. Both faculty attributed the improvement to the effectiveness of the teaching strategies employed.

This research is limited to the eight faculty who participated in the pilot. Some faculty used methods to attempt to measure the impacts of their teaching practices by surveying students and looking at student performance data. A second pilot is needed for additional faculty to take the course and apply the Trifecta of Engagement framework to generate more data for impact.

Institutions looking to create an online teaching professional development course for faculty can utilize the Trifecta of Student Engagement framework for their course design. Additionally, faculty can read about tools and strategies that they can immediately apply to create more student-to-content engagement, student-to-student engagement and student-to-instructor engagement.

Faculty can be more intentional in how they engage students in their online course experience.

This paper adds to the literature on faculty development regarding student-centered teaching practices. Other institutions looking to create a faculty development course or program that utilizes a student-centered framework may find aspects of this paper useful for their own online teaching professional development initiatives.

Despite the institutional calls to include the development of non-technical skills as objectives in accounting curriculum and the attempts to do so, a gap between the level of skills exhibited by graduates and those needed to succeed as a professional is still perceived. One of the possible causes could be students' overconfidence, defined as a very optimistic assessment of their own abilities. The main objective of the paper is to assess the existence of overconfidence.

Two samples, students and employers were surveyed regarding the exhibited level of accounting graduates in a set of 22 non-technical skills, highlighted as relevant in the literature. This enabled a comparison of the opinions of employers with the perceptions of students concerning the demonstrated level of such skills.

The results of this study support the existence of students' overconfidence. In all the skills students score their ability higher than employers do with those differences being statistically significant in 21 out of 22 skills. Employers who are in closer contact with entry level accountants perceive even lower exhibited skills levels in graduates.

Overconfident students would be less motivated to actively participate in activities designed to improve skills resulting in underachievement and in lower performance. This low performance in highly valued skills could potentially harm their employability.

Although the literature focussing on non-technical skills in accounting is prolific there are few papers comparing the views of employers and students, and there are no previous studies focussing on overconfidence.

This paper aims to introduce a model using a digital twin concept in a cold heading manufacturing and develop a digital visual management (VM) system using Lean overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) tool to enhance the process performance and establish Fourth Industrial Revolution (I4.0) platform in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

This work utilised plan, do, check, act Lean methodology to create a digital twin of each machine in a smart manufacturing facility by taking the Lean tool OEE and digitally transforming it in the context of I4.0. To demonstrate the effectiveness of process digitisation, a case study was carried out at a manufacturing department to provide the data to the model and later validate synergy between Lean and I4.0 platform.

The OEE parameter can be increased by 10% using a proposed digital twin model with the introduction of a Level 0 into VM platform to clearly define the purpose of each data point gathered further replicate in projects across the value stream.

The findings suggest that researchers should look beyond conversion of stored data into visualisations and predictive analytics to improve the model connectivity. The development of strong big data analytics capabilities in SMEs can be achieved by shortening the time between data gathering and impact on the model performance.

The novelty of this study is the application of OEE Lean tool in the smart manufacturing sector to allow SME organisations to introduce digitalisation on the back of structured and streamlined principles with well-defined end goals to reach the optimal OEE.

Agribusinesses seek university graduates who have leadership ability. Role playing, one method of teaching leadership skills, is used in a university agricultural policy course. It has been a fun and effective leadership learning tool. Students improve their communication skills, conduct in-depth research about a topic of their choice, and develop a better understanding of other sides of issues. Graduates who have gone into leadership positions cite role playing as an important part of their leadership development.