Continuous Improvement in the IMSE Program of Kuwait University

Continuous improvement of an engineering program is essential and a critical process. Development and implementation of such a process is not only required by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), but it is also a necessary condition for the maturation and development of any engineering program. This paper describes the process employed by the Industrial and Management Systems Engineering (IMSE) program at Kuwait University to continuously improve its program. The employed process includes identification of the lowest score among the seven student outcomes specified by ABET. Next, the courses in the IMSE curriculum addressing this student outcome are identified, and the instructors teaching these courses took remedial actions. In the following semesters, this outcome was measured, and it was found that there is a significant improvement on this outcome. Other engineering programs can benefit from the process described in this paper.

ELT & Social Media in Covid-19 Era: A Case Study

In March 2020, with the increasing confirmed cases of COVID-19 pandemic in the State of Kuwait, the Kuwaiti Cabinet decided to suspend face-to-face teaching in all schools and universities. The following month the Ministry of Education and Higher Education adopted Online instruction in both public and private educational institutions. The current quantitive research aims at examining the implementation of social media by Kuwait University students and potential implementation of high-tech facilities in language learning. About 400 male and female students from the English Department were surveyed. The researcher used SPSS to analyze students’ responses of the questionnaire. The findings demonstrated a substantial increase in the use of SM because of COVID-19. Questionnaire respondents illustrated positive attitude towards the implementation of SM. The future of SM in Kuwait is promising. The study recommends that education institutions, public and private, adopt various SM platforms to sustain and develop the teaching process.

Industrial and Management Systems Engineering Program Assessment Based on the New ABET Student Outcomes

The quality of engineering education has been improved by the accreditation criteria established by credentialing agencies. As a result, the Industrial and Management Systems Engineering program at Kuwait University has been maintaining accreditation by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology for over 15 years. Since the assessment process needs to be thorough and simple at the same time, this paper explains how the Industrial and Management Systems Engineering program at Kuwait University designed and implemented an efficient and effective process for the establishment and assessment of the new Student Outcomes required by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology. All the seven new Student Outcomes specified by Criterion 3 of the accreditation requirements are shown to be satisfied by using four different assessment tools, two of which are direct and the other two are indirect. All the results have been statistically verified by using hypothesis testing with a significance level of 0.01. The paper presents a simple and practical assessment method which can be used by other engineering programs that are in the process of implementing the new Student Outcomes.

Students' Perspective Towards Online Proctoring in Exams During Covid-19

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Covid-19 as a pandemic in early 2020. As a result, the organization has decided to close all educational institutions, and thereby conventional classroom learning has become obsolete. And as a consequence, exams taken online have become an essential part of an online assessment. The critical issue that arises is how to maintain online exam credibility and student honesty during online exams. In this work, we study the acceptance of online exams by Kuwait University students exposed to online proctoring during the lockdown. We proposed an acceptance model based on the TAM framework but with twelve constructs applied to three proctoring methods: AI proctoring, live human proctoring, and blended proctoring. The data is collected using an online survey from 478 college students. The partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method is used to process the collected data. The findings indicate that live-human and mixed proctoring provide a greater level of satisfaction than AI proctoring alone.

Antecedences of Continued Blended Learning Adoption Intentions: A Framework for Acceptance of Blended Distance Learning

Some organizations face significant shifts in their teaching settings and emerging teaching developments, and new technology-driven practices. Today’s students are raised in a technologically advanced environment, unlike their predecessors. Higher education institutions must find innovative ways to serve diverse instructional requirements, learning stages, methodologies, and preferences. Many students and educators were exposed to online education during the Covid-19 pandemic and started to adapt to new behavior for the new-normal blended learning. The authors suggest a model for assessing the effectiveness of blended learning programs in higher education institutions in this paper. The model was implemented and tested on Kuwait University students.

Editorial in English

We are pleased to introduce to our esteemed readers this special issue on the conference proceedings on “Occidentalism in Contemporary Cognitive Deliberation: Toward Objective Scientific Vision for Exploring the Other”. For decades Occidentalism has been receiving growing academic interest for its substantial importance in several domains. Dialog among civilizations and strategic relations between East and West is perhaps the most salient example. This Conference is the outcome of tireless work and close cooperation between Kuwait University, represented by the Journal of Sharia and Islamic Studies, and Qatar University College of Sharia, represented by the ISESCO Chair in Alliance of Civilizations. Scholars and researchers specializing in this field were invited to participate in the Conference. The Conference was held on ZOOM on 28/2/2021. This issue features the fruit of twinning between two well-established journals in the Arabian Gulf: Journal of Sharia and Islamic Studies at Kuwait University and Journal of College of Sharia and Islamic Studies at Qatar University. We are grateful to all those who contributed to this achievement and appreciate the efforts of the journal’s former editorial board. We thank the Almighty God for selecting our Journal for inclusion in the Arabic Citation Index (ARCI) on the Web of Science, this year. The Conference culminated in serious, insightful and well-founded studies on occidentalism Conference papers covered different aspects in Occidentalism discourse, such as Dr. Zahia Smail Salhi's “The Arab World and the Occident: Toward the Construction of an Occidentalist Discourse” and Dr. Youssef Ban El Mahdi's “Contemporary Arab Discourse of Occidentalism: A Reading in the Paradigms, Introductions and Results”. Furthermore, the Conference touched on the criticism of the intellectual foundations and legitimacy, such as in “Foundational premises for objective research in Occidentalism,” by Dr. Azzeddine Mamiche. The presence of Occidentalism in Eastern, Far-Eastern, and Latin experiences was also discussed in Dr. Mabrouk Mansouri's “The Deliberation of Occidentalism in Contemporary Global Thought: A Comparative Study of Japanese and Western thoughts”. The theoretical underpinnings of the subject were also explored as in Dr. Hassan Azzouzi's “The Need of Methodological Rules composing the Occidentalist Thought”. Moreover, Indian Occidentalism was present in “In Retrospect: Indian Occidentalism, Reference-corpus and Questions of Specificity” by Dr. Mohammad Sanaullah AlNadawi. Finally, religious identities were also discussed in “The Jewish Community between Orientalism and Occidentialism” by Prof. Muhammad Khalifa Hasan. From the findings of the Conference, select papers of which will be featured in this exceptional issue of our journal, we can conclude that geographical diversity is an undisputed reality, and cultural diversity is inevitable (Had your Lord willed, He would have made mankind one nation, but they continue to have their differences) [Hud 11: 118]. East and West are different in nature, roots, motives and aims. The great principles and lofty values, as elaborated by the Islamic perspective, are the available and accessible means to build relations, including:  Human Succession: Human beings are the successors of Allah on Earth. The have a religious obligation to fulfill the duties of succession, promote growth and prosperity on earth, spread justice, and avoid injustice, aggression, and bloodletting.  Human Unity: Humanity has one origin, and all human beings descend from a single common ancestor. Hence, there should be no inequality between races or repugnant racism. The criteria for excellence and preference shall be righteousness, good deeds and working for the common good (The noblest of you before Allah is the most righteous of you) [al-Hujurat 49: 13]. The difference is one of the main objectives of creation. It shall entail coming to know and cooperate with one another, rather than rivalry, antagonism, and arrogance.  Dialog and Coming to Common Terms: Dialog with the other is a civil imperative to build a compassionate human model. This is the premise for cultural exchange and cross-fertilization, the exchange of useful experiences serving the humanity of humans, and coming together to promote growth and prosperity on earth. Humanity has much in common regarding what could serve upright conduct and promote human welfare and prosperity on earth.  Utilizing the Islamic experience in knowing and building fair normal relations with other this could be found in the writings of religious scholars, comparative religion scholars, Muslim geographists and travelers. These writings have yielded a wide network of ties with the East and West and these efforts have contributed to the establishment of the just and prosperous Islamic civilization, as Muslims depended on the overriding Qur'anic rule (God does not forbid you to deal kindly and justly with anyone who has not fought you for your faith or driven you out of your homes: God loves the just. However, God forbids you to take as allies those who have fought against you for your faith, driven you out of your homes, and helped others to drive you out: any of you who take them as allies will truly be wrongdoers) [Al-Mumtahinah 60: 8-9]. Let us not prejudice the reader, as the cited studies are through and sufficient. The published papers encourage researchers to make their contributions, criticisms, questioning and additions, which will benefit all. It is worth noting that while this JCSIS special issue on “Occidentalist Thought in Contemporary Intellectual Discourse” is being published, Qatar University Press is preparing to publish the first parts of the “Encyclopedia of Occidentalism”; which is the first of its kind largest intellectual encyclopedia in the Arab and Islamic world that studies and focuses on the West. These encyclopedia’s entries have been written by more than eighty researchers from four continents (Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America). It is being issued in collaboration between a number of entities, including; the Qatari Committee for the Alliance of Civilizations (QCAC) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the ISESCO Chair in Alliance of Civilizations, and the College of Sharia and Islamic Studies at Qatar University.

Enterprising profile and career development of Kuwaitiyouth community

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to measure the impact of entrepreneurial profile dimensions on the career development of the youth community in Kuwait. Further, this study aims to measure the moderating effect of entrepreneurial education on entrepreneurial profile dimensions and entrepreneurial career development (ECD) relationship. Design/methodology/approach The study will use a quantitative research methodology. This study is focussed on measuring the impact of these eight entrepreneurial profiles, namely, self-efficacity; opportunity detector abilities; creativity; persistence; risk-taking propensity; sociability; planning abilities and leadership skills as independent variables on the ECD as a dependent variable. Entrepreneurship education is considered as moderating variable. A structured questionnaire is distributed to 200 students who study at the College of Business Administration, Kuwait University (KU), where 170 students responded positively and the response rate was 85%. The evaluation of the proposed model was done through structural equation modelling analysis. Findings The results will show how these dimensions impact the decision on the ECD. Research limitations/implications This research is conducted only in one college of KU and the findings cannot be used to generalise the impact of these dimensions on the career development of all young people of Kuwait. Originality/value There are very few studies about entrepreneurship in general in Kuwait and this research will be an additional value and contribution in this field for a particular context. It is the first effort to measure the impact of entrepreneurial profile dimensions on career development in Kuwait, and this research will be a good base for similar studies in other Gulf Cooperation Council Countries and beyond.

Knowledge and Attitude about Oral Cancer among Medical and Dental Students at Kuwait University: A Cross-sectional Study

Objective: This study aims to assess the knowledge and attitude about oral cancer among undergraduate medical and dental students at Kuwait University Health Sciences Center. Subjects and Methods: Using a structured questionnaire, a cross-sectional survey was conducted among 140 undergraduate Health Sciences Center students at Kuwait University, 70 were medical students and 70 were dental students. Students’ knowledge and attitude about oral cancer and its risk factors, in addition, their diagnostic concepts and opinions were assessed. Moreover, the students’ confidence in their ability to detect and refer clinically suspicious cases was evaluated and the responses were analyzed. Results: Of the 140 undergraduate dental and medical students surveyed, 131 returned the completed questionnaire (93.5% response rate). There was a statistically significant difference detected in the students’ knowledge about betel quid and smokeless tobacco as risk factors for oral cancer development. Also, there was a statistically significant difference in the students’ knowledge about the high-risk age group associated with oral cancer, the viral association with oral cancer, oral premalignant lesions, high-risk areas associated with oral cancer, and the warning features that can raise the suspicion of oral cancer. In addition, there was a statistically significant difference in the students’ confidence and ability to detect pre-malignant lesions and their opinion in their faculty curriculum development.Conclusion: This study highlighted the importance of increasing awareness and attitude towards oral cancer detection by both undergraduate dental and medical students who are considered to be the future primary care providers.