Greetings from Teesside University

As part and parcel of the UK visit, Prof Dr Normah visited the Forensic Science unit of the University of Teesside in Middlesborough UK. The Forensic Science unit is working very closely with the police department in the North Eastern area of the UK. The unit is supported by two amazing Crime Scene houses and an independent Digital Computer Forensic laboratory. There are a number of very experienced researchers who were formerly police officers. Currently, one of the faculty's staff is pursuing her phd program in forensic accounting at Teesside University.

Hello from London...

Prof Dr Normah is attending the Fraud Summit 2010 to be held in London on 17-19 March 2010. In addition to the summit, she will also be visiting some professors in the United Kingdom for possible research collaboration in the areas of Islamic Accounting & Financial Criminology. Some postings of this blog will be made from there this week...

Seminar on Leadership and Change

The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) invited four of our researchers to attend a CIMA seminar entitled The Role of Management Accountants in Leadership and Change at the One World Hotel Kuala Lumpur.
The speaker, Professor Robert Greenwood has extensive international consultancy experience in Higher Education, having successfully established Undergraduate and Postgraduate programmes in Hong Kong, China, Malaysia and Vietnam; and contributed to World Bank Projects in Turkey and DFID Projects in the Czech Republic.
He is the author of several accounting textbooks published by Gower and the AIA and numerous research papers published by IFAC, Journal of Enterprising Culture and the Czech Management Centre.
Professor Greenwood also holds two Professorships by Chinese Universities in recognition of his development of accounting education and joint research within these Universities. Most importantly the training sessions were fun and interactive. We certainly enjoyed the training. Thanks Prof Greenwood

Teaching and Learning Centre at ARI....

Associate Prof Dr Rohana Othman has indicated her interest to initiate a teaching and learning centre at ARI. As a director of teaching and learning at the university's Institute of Leadership & Quality Management (ILQAM), Dr Rohana is the right person to lead this centre. The centre will focus on action research related to university teaching and learning. This centre will best serve those lecturers who are keen to experiment new teaching and learning methodology. Now that the university is focussing on Problem-based learning (PBL), Outcome-based Education (OBE), Student-centre Learning (SCL), it is timely that ARI leads the way. ARI and faculty members can greatly benefit from this centre.

The Weekend Senate

The university senators attended the weekend senate to deliberate and discuss curriculum of various faculties. Basically the discussions were focused on transforming the traditional format to OBE-compliance format.
The good thing about the weekend senate is the fact we do not need to rush and the discussions were very focused. Within the OBE framework, there's a lot of need to do action research in teaching and learning. We need to develop an assessment tool to measure the effectiveness of the OBE-based curriculum. The most important fact is how do we measure the effect of the OBE curriculum on the students? How do we measure their ability in communication, enterprenuership, creativity and innovation?

A farewell Lunch Do for Jane Lazar

Thanks Associate Professor Jane Lazar for throwing a farewell lunch for all of us at the faculty. We will certainly miss her.
Jane has been with the university for more than thirty years and has contributed significantly for the development of the faculty. She promises to help out with the editing work for ARI's publications. After all she is the author of many accounting books. Her contributions will continue....

ARI Research Workshop

Prof Rashidah will be organising a half day research workshop tomorrow. Basically the workshop is to focus on preparing research proposals in the areas of financial criminology and Islamic Finance. Selected proposals will be financed by ARI & MOHE. Faculty members including post graduate students are encouraged to participate in the workshop.

Auditing Oversight Board Seminar

ARI in collaboration with the Malaysian Institute of Accountants and MAREF organized a one-day seminar on Auditing Oversight Board and Ethical Dimension at the Securities Commission, Kuala Lumpur. The need to reform the current audit oversight framework is important as the discovery of serious irregularities in financial reporting leading to the collapse of large globally-recognised firms over the years have raised concerns on the credibility of the audit profession, audit oversight and regulatory response, said Securities Commission's (SC) executive director Goh Ching Yin in an opening speech today(The Edge).

Congratulations to Three Docs

ARI and the Faculty of Accountancy wish to congratulate three more PhD-qualified lecturers who had just successfully completed their program: Associate Professor Dr Zaini Ahmad (An internal auditor's commitment to independence: Influence of role theory and audit-based monitoring mechanisms), Dr Hilwani Hariri (Non-audit service fee, audit tenure, audit competition and professionalism: The perspective of external auditor and government auditor)and Dr Sharifah Khadijah Syed Agil (Compliance to Code of Ethics: A mixed method study on Malaysian accounting profession).

Congratulations FRGS Recipients

ARI wishes to congratulate all researchers who have been successful in securing the fundamental research grant scheme UiTM received grants for 193 projects. From its eight submissions, ARI secured three successful grants. The three projects are namely "Effectiveness of Investment Tax Incentives on SME Performance: Pioneer Status and Investment tax Allowance" from PM Dr Rohaya Mohd Noor, Prof Dr Mustaffa Mohamed Zain and Nadiah Abd Hamid; "IFRS Implementation: The Deavelopment of Reporting Quality Index for malaysian Private Companies" from PM Dr Roshayani Arshad, Kamaruzzaman Muhammad, Nur Adura Ahmad Norudin and Maslinawati Mohamad and "Financial Fraud Risks and Internal Control System of Malaysian Companies: Extending the Fraud Triangle Theory to Fraud Diamond Theory" from Prof Dr Normah Omar, Intan Salwani Mohammed and Hesri Faizal Mohd Din. ARI hopes more members will submit their proposals for the forthcoming FRGS evaluation