As higher education has made the transition from elite to mass enrolments, the student body has become more diverse and online and blended learning have become more common. This study aimed to examine the impacts on attrition of admitting a more diverse student body with the shift towards online and blended learning. A hypothesised path model of…

No course exists in isolation, so examining student progression through courses within a broader program context is an important step in integrating course-level and program-level analytics. Integration in this manner allows us to see the impact of course-level changes to the program, as well as identify points in the program structure where…

This study used Control-Value Theory to examine the extent to which appraisals of control and value predicted students' intentions to complete their studies and whether the effects of these appraisals on completion intentions are mediated by the achievement emotions of enjoyment, frustration, anger and boredom. A sample of 158 Australian…

The Australian education system works well for most students. However, equitable access to secondary education is problematic for First Nations people living in remote communities. There is a strong emphasis on Year 12 completion as an indicator of successful engagement in remote First Nations education. This has been partly driven by Australian…

Higher education is being rapidly transformed by the growth in online learning, with an increasing number of universities worldwide offering degree programs in online, distance modes of study. Australian education has a long history of 'distance education', primarily offered by regional universities. With the digital communication advances of the…

Despite compelling qualitative arguments for scale and scope economies in university-level distance education, as distinct from traditional class-based face-to-face instruction, there is little rigorous quantitative evidence in support. In this paper, we explore the scale and scope economies of distance education using a multiplicatively separable…

While the impacts of COVID-19 on education are yet to be fully realised, the equity implications of pivoting to remote learning are already clear. The decision to close schools exposed significant vulnerabilities in the education system (particularly in the public school system), with equity cohorts particularly disadvantaged (Wilson & Mude,…

THigher education system has been globally evolving over time with the development of courses that offer distance online models of delivery to meet the changing needs of students in an era of technology-driven transformation. However, one of the biggest challenges of distance online education has been higher attrition rates mostly due to…

With almost one-third of young people unemployed or underemployed, it is important for early school leavers to gain skills that improve their employment opportunities. The role that vocational education and training (VET) plays is critical, particularly for young early school leavers. Through interviews and focus groups with young people and those…

Re-engaging young adults who have "dropped out" of school is an important and challenging task for educators. The purpose of this study was to explore the teaching practices that encourage young people to re-engage in further learning. Through interviews with teachers and students, the study identified five major interrelated teaching…

This study examined the validity of using teacher-administered educational and intelligence tests to screen students for learning disabilities (LDs). Twenty-seven Technical and Further Education (TAFE) students from regional Victoria who were enrolled in a program that was designed to reconnect school dropouts with education via TAFE participated…

The Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) is a very successful senior secondary school qualification introduced in the Australian state of Victoria in 2002. Applied learning in the VCAL engages senior students in a combination of work-based learning, service-learning, and project-based learning and aims to provide them with the skills,…

Apprentices with a learning disability can face significant barriers to completing their training. This paper explores what these apprentices, their lecturers and disability support staff see as the most effective strategies for helping them to overcome these difficulties. Instructional approaches which accommodate students' learning styles,…

In 2013, the Student Centre at The University of Tasmania began researching the development of distance learning support. A survey was designed as part of this endeavour, which attracted 1002 responses. The survey's broad context focused on the primary drawbacks and benefits of distance education in general and sought to identify emergent themes…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 11th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2014), October 25-27, 2014, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) and endorsed by the Japanese Society for Information and Systems in…