Problem Roulette (PR), an online study service at the University of Michigan, offers points-free formative practice to students preparing for examinations in introductory science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses. Using four years of PR data involving millions of problem attempts by thousands of students, we quantify the benefits…

The Official ACT® Self-Paced Course, Powered by Kaplan® is a test preparation solution in partnership between Kaplan and ACT. In April of 2022, the authors surveyed users of the self-paced course who took the ACT test between August 2020 and February 2022 to better understand: (1) ways the solution helped them when they took the ACT; (2) what…

This study aims to characterize how students enrolled in a test preparation product, ACT® Online Test Prep (AOP), use that product. Following Geiser (2012), Masyn (2013), and Morin (2016), the authors use latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify students' engagement profiles using four engagement measures: activity, time, practice ACT score, and…

A plethora of research spanning several decades has attempted to understand predictors of retention and graduation in undergraduate bachelor's degree programs. The topic is no less important today, as larger and larger swaths of the American population attend college each year. Studies have demonstrated that key demographic variables, indicators…

The number of applications to postsecondary institutions continues to increase year over year, and in most cases, the number of applications exceeds the number of students admitted. The use of standardized tests continues to grow to help in these admissions decisions. Due to both high usage rates and the changing demographics of our nation's…

The research summarized in this paper examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on student performance on the ACT[TM] test. The author compares scores during the three years preceding the pandemic (2018, 2019, and early 2020) to scores in 2021 and 2022 while accounting for changes in the tested population across years. For students tested in…

Two set of studies were conducted to better understand grades and grading practices in physics courses, and how these might influence demographic representational disparities in physics. The first study investigates the relationships between grades and the student-level factors of standardized test scores, (binary) gender, underrepresented…

Answering a call put forth decades ago by the higher education community and the federal government, we investigated the impact of US college coursework on student learning gains. Students gained, on average, 3.72 points on a 66-item test of quantitative and scientific reasoning after experiencing 1.5 years of college. Gain scores were unrelated…

This study employs hierarchal linear modeling to examine whether high school grade inflation occurred between 2010 and 2021, including for students who were tested during the pandemic. The study does so while simultaneously accounting for student and school characteristics. This is the first study, to the current authors' knowledge, that makes use…

We derived an index of high school academic rigor by optimizing the prediction of first-year college GPA based on high school courses taken, grades, and indicators of advanced coursework. Using a large data set (n~108,000) and nominal parameterization of high school course outcomes, the high school academic rigor (HSAR) index capitalizes on…

"Getting Prepared 2020" examines patterns of developmental education for Minnesota public high school graduates from the classes of 2012 to 2019 who enrolled in Minnesota postsecondary institutions. This report provides insight into the academic readiness of Minnesota public high school graduates. Developmental education adds to the…

We have studied the impact of incoming preparation and demographic variables on student performance on the final exam in the standard introductory calculus-based mechanics course at three different institutions. Multivariable regression analysis was used to examine the extent to which exam scores can be predicted by a variety of variables that are…

Online education continues to evolve and grow dramatically at colleges and universities across the globe. Today's society is comprised of people who are increasingly busy with work and family obligations and who are looking for more flexible and expedited avenues for higher education. Institutions seek to meet these new demands by offering online…

Concerning the underrepresentation of female students in computer science (CS) classes at the K-12 level and math-intensive STEM fields, this study investigated the relationship between female students earning less credits in CS courses during high school and their STEM major choices. Data were drawn from a nationally representative sample of U.S.…

The Big Five Inventory (BFI) measuring the 5-factor personality model was given to 440 science and engineering students in introductory physics classes at a large US university. Science and engineering students showed similar personality characteristics as would be expected from measurements of the general population, with women scoring…