Mohd Aidil Riduan Awang Kader

Discovering Small Business Start up Motives, Success Factors and Barriers: A Gender Analysis

Abstract Starting a business can be a mind challenging and mentally torturing. However, understanding common start up problems and key success factors can help entrepreneurs get off the right path. This paper presents an insight into which male and female entrepreneurs differ in terms of motives to start business, key business success factors and the underlying obstacles. A questionnaire was designed to collect information on entrepreneurs’ profile and the respective measurement variables and analyzed using basic descriptive analysis and Chi Square test to capture gender differences in the opinions. Respondents of this study were selected among 150 participants of the Regional Conference on entrepreneurship in Pahang State. Findings indicate women are more likely to engage into business if their family matters are still can be prioritized, which is less likely to be a man issue. Meanwhile, men perceived innovation and risk taking activities are less likely to influence performance of their business than what women thought they should have to be. Further, it seemed more challenging for women to succeed in business without knowledge and skills competency compared to men. However, men found dealing with business malpractice posed a great challenge in business where women are less experienced with it. The findings of this study could serve as baseline information for current and entrepreneurs to be as well as for policy makers for purpose of outlining gender-based entrepreneurship policy and program.

Game-Based Approach in Teaching and Learning: Fun, Knowledge or Both? A Case Study of MDAB Students

“Program Mengubah Destini Anak Bangsa” (MDAB) is a pre-diploma program with the aim to provide higher education experience to Bumiputera students who come from low-income family and have minimal qualification to pursue studies at tertiary level. This program fulfills and realizes their dream and hope of becoming university students since they were not selected to further studies in other higher education institutions. Most of the students are categorized as average students. They hardly understand the content of the subjects and conventional approach in teaching and learning found ineffective. Therefore, the use of games as an interesting and fun method of teaching and learning was introduced in order to improve students’ understanding. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the use of games in teaching and learning process and student’s academic performance. Furthermore, this chapter aims to investigate the factors that contribute to the use of games in teaching and learning for management subject. In order to achieve these objectives, quasi-experimental research design has been conducted to compare the test score between students who had involved with the games (treatment group) during class period and students who were not involved with the games (control group). Questionnaires were also distributed to the treatment group in order to identify the factors that contribute to the use of games in teaching and learning process. It was found that factors such as perceived usefulness, ease of use, and soft skills improvement had contributed to the use of games in teaching and learning process. Furthermore, there was relationship between the use of games in teaching and learning process and students’ academic performance.

Short Message Service (SMS) Usage Among People with Visual Impaired: An Empirical Study

This study aims to examine the factors influencing the adoption of SMS among people with visual impaired and to investigate the SMS adoption as a main mechanism for sending messages among them. Cross-sectional data from 133 individuals with visual impaired who are using SMS were collected and used structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the possible predictive relationships among the variables in the conceptual framework and hypotheses developed. Our findings demonstrate that usefulness is the main factor that influencing the adoption of SMS among people with visual impaired. Nonetheless, there is insufficient empirical evidence to support the relationship between ease of use, enjoyment, and perceived fees. This study also found that SMS is the main mechanism for sending messaging for visual impaired community. The benefits such as ease of use should not be neglected in the development of new functions and enhancement of service features especially for visual impaired community.