Employability of graduates is a concern in many countries, including Malaysia, and the high unemployment rate among graduates is often attributed to their lack of English proficiency and communication skills. These two distinctive elements are often collated, and it is important to find out which is more important to employers. The study examined the employers’ views on the importance of English proficiency and communication skill for graduates to be employed in the Malaysian private sector. The data were from semi-structured interviews conducted with 10 employers in the private sector who were in the position to recruit staff. The 21,433-word interview transcripts were analyzed. The results revealed that employers in the Malaysian private sector view language proficiency and communication skills as separate qualities. The employers are willing to consider employing candidates with average English proficiency if they have good communication skills, except for jobs which require more communication in English such as customer service and marketing. The results also revealed that good communication skills can increase employability and opportunities for career advancement. The findings highlight the communication skills that universities need to emphasize so that their graduates have the necessary skills to perform well in employment interviews and in their work.

While emergency airway management training is conventionally conducted via face-to-face learning (F2FL) workshops, there are inherent cost, time, place and manpower limitations in running such workshops. Blended learning (BL) refers to the systematic integration of online and face-to-face learning aimed to facilitate complex thinking skills and flexible participation at a reduced financial, time and manpower cost. This study was conducted to evaluate its effectiveness in emergency airway management training. A single-center prospective randomised controlled trial involving 30 doctors from Sarawak General Hospital, Malaysia was conducted from September 2016 to February 2017 to compare the effectiveness of BL versus F2FL for emergency airway management training. Participants in the BL arm were given a period of 12 days to go through the online materials in a learning management system while those in the F2FL arm attended a-day of face-to-face lectures (8 h). Participants from both arms then attended a day of hands-on session consisting of simulation skills training with airway manikins. Pre- and post-tests in knowledge and practical skills were administered. E-learning experience and the perception towards BL among participants in the BL arm were also assessed. Significant improvements in post-test scores as compared to pre-test scores were noted for participants in both BL and F2FL arms for knowledge, practical, and total scores. The degree of increment between the BL group and the F2FL arms for all categories were not significantly different (total scores: 35 marks, inter-quartile range (IQR) 15.0 – 41.0 vs. 31 marks, IQR 24.0 – 41.0, p = 0.690; theory scores: 18 marks, IQR 9 – 24 vs. 19 marks, IQR 15 – 20, p = 0.992; practical scores: 11 marks, IQR 5 -18 vs. 10 marks, IQR 9 – 20, p = 0.461 respectively). The overall perception towards BL was positive. Blended learning is as effective as face-to-face learning for emergency airway management training of junior doctors, suggesting that blended learning may be a feasible alternative to face-to-face learning for such skill training in emergency departments. Malaysian National Medical Research NMRR-16-696-30190 . Registered 28 April 2016.

Social media marketing is gaining momentum in recent years due to its ability in reaching out to the target audience in a short period of time. Many forms of social media marketing strategies have been introduced and tested and one that is widely used is Internet memes. Despite its widespread use, there is a need to know if iconicity of memes would be affected when they are used in local contexts. Iconicity refers to the match between form (images and texts) and meanings. This paper reports findings from a qualitative study that investigated the iconicity of memes used in marketing by analysing their language features in relation the feedback obtained from the target respondents namely Malaysian youths. A total of 50 respondents were involved and they were told to rate 30 memes in terms of their level of understanding and interpretation. The subsequent in-depth interviews were conducted on five respondents. The findings show that most of the memes were high in terms of iconicity and only seven of them were low. The predominant language features were also analysed and memes with low iconicity tend to use complex sentences, full of short forms and slangs as well as imperative words. The findings from this study may not be generalised but it has provided insightful outcomes for local businesses in planning their social media marketing especially those that plan to capitalise on the rising trend of Internet memes.

TikTok is a popular video-sharing social media platform that encourages its users to upload bite-sized content for entertainment purposes. In recent years, the platform is filled with videos meant for micro-learning, ranging from tutorials to meaningful challenges. Among those videos are voice-over challenges where users need to virtually duet with another user and perform a voice-over based on given texts. This article reports a case study that aimed to identify the usefulness of TikTok voice-over challenges in helping English as a Second Language (ESL) students to learn speaking skills. The study included 60 undergraduates who participated in twelve voiceover challenges within two months. Upon completing the challenges, they had to fill in an online questionnaire that gathered their views on the usefulness of the tasks and the problems they faced. The results revealed that students regarded the TikTok challenges as useful since they could improve their pronunciation and intonation, partake in turn-taking as well as motivate them to speak English more frequently. Several notable problems with its implementation are also shared in this article. Despite the small sample size, this study has shown promising outcomes on the use of TikTok voice-over challenges as speaking tasks for ESL learners.

Conventional usability testing is usually conducted with several individual participants. In recent years, however, group usability testing is gradually gaining attention. Such approach involves several-to-many participants performing tasks simultaneously, with one to several testers observing and interacting with the participants. This approach is able to generate many useful data within a short period of time. In light with the need to further improve the approach, this paper presents a modified version of a group usability testing and how it can be feasibly used to evaluate the usability of a non-immersive virtual reality-based learning environment. The proposed modified group approach aims to minimize the possibility of data loss during the usability testing process. The effectiveness and efficiency of this modified method was compared to the original approach of group usability testing. The results indicate that the modified group usability testing is more effective and efficient than the original approach as it can collect more critical and significant data with lesser time, cost and effort consumption