Previous studies revealed that many students cannot perform well when it comes to word problem-solving questions. There are various problem-solving strategies that can be applied to help students to overcome the problem. Visualisation techniques in learning have been used to help students enhance their conceptual understanding of the mathematical problem-solving and the use of bar model visualisation technique is one of the strategies. This study aims to investigate students’ achievement in mathematical problem-solving after applying the Bar Model and to explore students’ experiences while applying the technique. This study employed a pre-experimental design of the quantitative research. There were 32 participants of year three students. The instrument used in this research consists of questions of pre-test and post-test and a semi-structured interview. Data were analysed using SPSS 20.0 software and thematic analysis. The test results showed that there is a significant difference in participants’ mathematical problem-solving achievement. The analysis of semi-structured interview transcripts revealed that level of understanding and motivation influence students’ performance. Findings of this study showed that students perform better after the implementation of the Bar Model in mathematical problem-solving. This study can provide an alternative or guidance for teachers to improve students’ mathematical problem-solving skills.

The role of women in economic development and the global environment is vital for progressing them towards the United Nations sustainable development goal (SDG-5) that emphasized the need to empower women in every walk of life. The study examines women’s autonomy in the sustainable development agenda under China’s open innovation system from 1975 to 2019. The study employed an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, vector autoregressive (VAR) Granger causality, and innovation accounting matrix to estimate parameters. The existing data are summarized and collated in the context of China to explain as a correlational study. The results show that women’s autonomy moderated with technology spills over to decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and substantiate the hump-shaped relationship between them. The increased spending on research and development (R&D) activities, patent publications, and renewable energy consumption empowers women to be equipped with the latest sustainable technologies to improve environmental quality. The pollution haven hypothesis verifies a given country, where trade liberalization policies tend to increase polluting industries to set up their plants that engaged in dirty production that exacerbate GHG emissions. The causality estimates confirmed that technological innovations and renewable energy consumption leads to women’s autonomy. In contrast, females’ share in the labor force participation rate leads to an increase in renewable energy consumption. Thus, it is evident that there is a positive role of women in the country’s sustainable development.

Social and economic systematic changes create a new pattern of industrial structure and profession; technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is deeply connected to industrial upgrading and digital transformation because of its high relevance to cultivate emerging professional talents. Information literacy inevitably becomes the prevailing condition of sustainable development of TVET. Through a literature study, this systematic review selected and studied 61 journal articles related to information literacy in the TVET context in China from Web of Science (WOS) databases and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) between 2014 and 2023. The main findings include; (a) technological, social and educational circumstances influence which receive extensive attention from researchers, (b) frequent use of narrative inquiry method with lack of empirical studies, (c) themes identified of information literacy among TVET institutions in China shows significant differences as compared to the themes of information literacy in higher education, and the reasons underlying this finding has been critically analysed. This review may interest academics, decision-makers and trainers in improving information literacy education among TVET institutions in China in line with the sophisticated demands of the industry and community.

CONCEIVE-DESIGN-IMPLEMENT-OPERATE (CDIO) APPROACH FOR AN INNOVATIVE CAPSTONE PROJECT

Nowadays, the competitions among countries to recruit engineering students as workers do not focus on talents, but also on the reserve of it. The advancement of education in engineering field plays a big part in enhancing comprehensive domestic strength because the scientific revolution will contribute to important modifications of the industrial landscape. Therefore, Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate (CDIO) understanding and techniques are required for enhancing this field of education particularly for innovation of capstone project. Thus, this study was identified student knowledge and skills consist of teamwork, problem-solving, and communication skills of the CDIO in capstone project involved two faculties which are Faculty of Biosciences & Medical Engineering (FBME) and Faculty of Electrical Engineering (FKE) at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). Our respondents consist of 28 and 30 of third-year students from FBME and FKE respectively. Besides, this study also was identified the importance of the CDIO approach in the innovative capstone project. The method that used was a quantitative survey by using 5 Likert scale questionnaires. The average mean for all research questions indicated that the majority of respondents agreed that the CDIO knowledge and skills in the capstone project are important in engineering education. Hence, the engineering students must possess not only the skills such as teamwork, problem-solving, and communication but also needs more knowledge that helps them to employability and adapt to real-world engineering problems.

Educational Trainer kit (ETK) is one of the teaching methods to strengthen the acquisition of knowledge and technical skills. ETK addresses prevalent issue in the conventional teaching approach which hampers students from recalling and retaining what they have learnt in the classroom. Due to the importance of ETK, this paper shares the findings of a research pertaining to the effectiveness of ETK in enhancing teamwork and problem solving skills among engineering students. The respondents were 80 students from Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Politeknik Ibrahim Sultan, Johor Bahru and Politeknik Merlimau, Melaka. This quantitative research used survey questionnaire as the research instrument. The findings were analysed using SPSS version 17.0 and were presented in terms of percentage, mean score and standard deviation. The total average of mean score of each research question showed a total average of above 95.5% (strongly agree and agree). The results indicated that a significant majority of the respondents agreed that ETK successfully enhance their teamwork and problem solving skills, and it is important to have ETK that is infused with current technology. These results proved that ETK which is embedded with current technology is an effective method to strengthen and enhance the acquisition of knowledge and technical skills of engineering students. Therefore, it is imperative that polytechnics rigorously plan and develop more ETKs for effective classroom teaching and learning activities.