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Engineering educators have been increasingly taking the learning style theories into serious consideration as part of their efforts to enhance the teaching and learning in engineering. This paper presents a research study to investigate the learning style preference of the mechanical engineering students in Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN), Malaysia by means of the Personality and Learning Styles instruments. Descriptive statistical method was used to analyze the collected samples (n = 122). The findings of this study revealed that the preference style for engineering students are more towards spontaneous, pragmatic and concrete style of learning. This is consistent with the previous research findings on the learning preference for engineering students in UNITEN using Honey and Mumford Learning Style Questionnaire (LSQ) and Felder and Silverman Index of Learning Style (ILS) instruments. Therefore, it is important for the engineering educators to be aware of the students learning preferences by adjusting the teaching and learning strategies to unleash the learning potential of the students. Multi-approaches in teaching and learning are recommended to accommodate different students learning preferences while widening the students learning capabilities in engineering education.

Pictorial mood assessments reduce the barriers of age, culture, gender and language fluency in the course of psychiatric assessments. This study sought to validate the Ottawa Mood Scales, a pictorial form of mood assessment questionnaire among non-native English speaking young adults in Malaysia. Since the Ottawa Mood Scales has not been previously validated, the convergent validity of the Ottawa Mood Scales was measured against the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS), an established mood assessment instrument. A total of 129 young adults (aged 18–34) were recruited and completed an online survey with the Ottawa Mood Scales and PANAS questionnaires. Exploratory factor analysis indicated that the Ottawa Mood Scales has a one-dimensional structure and that a four-item model demonstrated higher reliability than the original 5-item model. Scores on the Ottawa Mood Scales items positively and significantly correlated with scores on the negative PANAS subscale, which supports the validity of the Ottawa Mood Scales in measuring the negative effect. The Cronbach's α was.793 for the four-item model of the Ottawa Mood Scales indicating acceptable reliability in this Malaysian young adult sample. It was concluded that the Ottawa Mood Scales could have utility in assessing mood disorder symptoms in young adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]