Sometimes a treatment, such as receiving a high school diploma, is assigned to students if their scores on two inputs (e.g., math and English test scores) are above established cutoffs. This forms a multidimensional regression discontinuity design (RDD) to analyze the effect of the educational treatment where there are two running variables…

This study explores three understudied facets--quadratic effects, change over time, and gender as a moderator--of the otherwise well-documented relationships between statistics anxiety and academic performance. Using pre- and post- course survey data among a sample of 111 undergraduate students in Social Statistics courses at a U.S. Midwestern…

The purpose of this study was to explore potential effects of a 12-week therapeutic mentoring program targeting social, emotional, and behavioral concerns in 52 children and adolescents between 11 and 17 years of age. Self-reported scores on a norm-referenced behavioral questionnaire were tracked across the span of a mentoring program, and then…

Accurate placement into an initial college mathematics course is a key step toward the successful completion of college mathematics and, eventually, a college degree. Conversely, misplacement in mathematics may lead to a reduced likelihood of course completion and degree attainment. This study investigated the ability of two placement models to…

Twenty-first century and higher-learning skills such as critical thinking are highly desired for new college graduates entering the workplace, especially with rapid changing technology and a more globalized economy. As a result, the importance of critical thinking development at higher education institutions has increased. The purpose of this…

Authentic assessments used in response to accountability demands in higher education face at least two threats to validity. First, a lack of interchangeability between assessment tasks introduces bias when using aggregate-based scores at an institutional level. Second, reliance on written products to capture constructs such as critical thinking…

Examiner effects and content specificity are two well known sources of construct irrelevant variance that present great challenges in performance-based assessments. National medical organizations that are responsible for large-scale performance based assessments experience an additional challenge as they are responsible for administering…

This study examines the relationships between school funding and students' college preparation, postsecondary enrollment, and postsecondary degree attainment, adding to the literature on how money matters in education. The author addresses how past school funding levels among Illinois public high schools may have been associated with students'…

When students chatter in class it can be disruptive, but could that chatter also have some redeeming qualities? We asked students to keep track of their social interactions in a particular class. On days when students had more social interactions than usual, they reported a greater sense of belonging, which was, in turn, related to greater class…

Racial/cultural awareness workshops constitute a salient form of co-curricular diversity engagement in higher education. Although these workshops are generally quite short in duration (often no more than two hours), previous research suggests that workshop participation is associated with undergraduate civic growth. The current study uses…

The Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE) is a widely used method of assessment in medical education. Rater cognition has become an important area of inquiry in the medical education assessment literature generally, and in the OSCE literature specifically, because of concerns about potential compromises of validity. In this study, a novel…

In higher education, many of the new teaching interventions are introduced in the format of audio-visual files distributed through the Internet. A pedagogical tool consisting of questions listed as learning objectives and answers presented using online videos was designed as a supplement for a molecular biology course and made available to a large…

A variety of computerized interactive learning platforms exist. Most include instructional supports in the form of problem sets. Feedback to users ranges from a single word like "Correct!" to offers of hints and partially to fully worked examples. Behind-the-scenes design of such systems varies as well --from static dictionaries of…

This is an extended conference proceedings report [Long Paper] based on a shorter contributed report at the same conference. A variety of computerized learning platforms exist. In mathematics, most include sets of problems to complete. Feedback to users ranges from a single word like "Correct!" to offers of hints and partially- to…

The main purpose of this study was to examine the validity of the Teacher Intentions to Integrate Technology in Education Scale using pre-service teacher samples from three countries on three continents--Turkey, Spain and the United States. Study participants were 550 pre-service teachers from three universities in Turkey, Spain and the USA (219,…