This study introduces an optimized ensemble deep neural network (Optimized Ensemble Deep-NN) to enhance the accuracy of predicting student grades. This model solves the problem of different and complicated student performance data by using deep neural networks, ensemble learning, and a number of optimization algorithms, such as Adam, SGD, and RMS…

As is rapidly becoming clear, data science increasingly permeates many aspects of life. Educational research recognizes the importance and complexity of learning data science. In line with this imperative, there is a growing need to investigate the factors that influence student performance in data science tasks. In this paper, we aimed to apply…

The increasing rate of permanent school closures in U.S. public school districts presents unprecedented challenges for administrators and communities alike. This study develops an early-warning indicator model to predict mass closure events -- defined as a district closing at least 10% of its schools -- five years in advance. Leveraging…

Automated detection of facial emotions has been an interesting topic for multiple decades in social and behavioral research but is only possible very recently. In this tutorial, we review three popular artificial intelligence based emotion detection programs that are accessible to R programmers: Google Cloud Vision, Amazon Rekognition, and…

When learning about scientific phenomena, students are expected to "mechanistically" explain how underlying interactions produce the observable phenomenon and "conceptually" connect the observed phenomenon to canonical scientific knowledge. This paper investigates how the integration of the complementary processes of designing…

Educators and researchers have analyzed various image data acquired from teaching and learning, such as images of learning materials, classroom dynamics, students' drawings, etc. However, this approach is labour-intensive and time-consuming, limiting its scalability and efficiency. The recent development in the Visual Question Answering (VQA)…

Recent trends in vaccine hesitancy have brought to light the importance of using accurate school vaccination data. This study evaluated the accuracy of a pilot statewide kindergarten vaccination survey in Oklahoma. School vaccination and exemption data were collected from November 2017 to April 2018 via the Research Electronic Data Capture system.…