This study used administrative data from Wisconsin Virtual School to identify patterns of student engagement in online courses (defined as the amount of time students were logged in to their course each week and how this varied over time). The study also examined whether the patterns were associated with course outcomes (defined as the percentage…

Background: Cluster randomized experiments that assign intact groups such as schools or school districts to treatment conditions are increasingly common in educational research. Such experiments are inherently multilevel designs whose sensitivity (statistical power and precision of estimates) depends on the variance decomposition across levels.…

Post-recession Federal policy initiatives, such as secondary/postsecondary career pathways and gainful employment higher education accountability standards, prioritize the alignment of education practices with market-driven outcomes. Using longitudinal student record data merged from college and state K-12 data systems with the Unemployment…

Student enrollment in online courses has increased in the past 15 years and continues to grow. However, little is known about students' education experiences or online course outcomes. These are areas of particular interest to the Midwest Virtual Education Research Alliance, whose goal is to understand how to support student success in online…