Traditional student information systems were designed primarily to collect and manage records of course enrollment and credit hours earned, as well as other data elements needed to monitor each student's progress to graduation. Now, institutions want to monitor and improve the quality and equity of students' learning experiences in courses and the…

Across the international higher education sector, existing studies highlight that student evaluations of courses and teaching are biased and prejudiced towards academics and can cause mental distress. Yet student evaluation data is often used as part of faculty hiring, firing, promotion, award and grant decisions. That a data source known to be…

This institutional survey research was used to improve administrative policies at International Montessori Center (IMC), a private international kindergarten in Bangkok, Thailand. The main goal of the study was to gather input from school stakeholders regarding daily conditions and functions, with the ultimate goal of improved administrative…

This paper explores an emerging methodological approach called doppelganger as method. This method uses the idea of a doppelganger or double to explore the social world. It is specifically used to examine datafication, or the increase in the production and use of data and its impact on education. Doppelganger as method begins by locating doubles,…

Objective: After the discontinuation of School Health Policies and Practices Study (SHPPS) in 2016, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began exploring innovative ways to gather school health information using existing surveillance systems. School Health Profiles (Profiles) is a school-based system of surveys that monitors…

Since the 1990s, European school policy has been steered by management dreams that systematic monitoring and assessment would guide schools and society toward a future of greater quality, efficiency, and growth. This article, drawing on Jean Baudrillard, explores whether it makes sense to rearticulate this dream of optimization by assessment in…

Systems thinking (ST) is a holistic leadership approach that puts the study of wholes before that of parts. It focuses attention on how organization members act together in networks of interactions. This is done by researching organization members' mental models, which are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even mental pictures or…

Against a backdrop of acute global terrorist actions and international counter-terrorist initiatives, and newly marked involvement of UK universities in counter-terrorism with the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, this article reviews a wide multidisciplinary literature to provide a structural analysis of terrorism and counter-terrorism…

This paper briefly outlines three initiatives that the University of Toronto (U of T) Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering (FASE) has implemented as initial steps as the institution strives to be anti-racist and address Black inclusivity. These initiatives were based within K-12 outreach, race-based data collection and creating opportunities…

This feature focuses on the five areas an institution needs to know before implementing holistic measures. These include: what does a holistic review entail, how to be legally complaint, Sedlacek's noncognitive variables, applying student success measures, and the vital importance of training.

This article shares the findings of a study investigating institutional policy definitions of plagiarism at twenty English-speaking Canadian universities. The types of primary sources consulted for this study included: (1) university academic calendars for 2016-2017, (2) institutional policies on academic misconduct, and (3) student academic codes…

Objective: The present study extends research on campus smoking bans by examining where smokers are violating the policy at a large university in the southeastern region of the United States. Participants: The data collection was conducted by one graduate student from the university in August of 2014. Methods: A global positioning system device…

The growth of learning analytics as a means to improve student learning outcomes means that student data is being collected, analyzed, and applied in previously unforeseen ways. As the use of this data continues to shape academic and support interventions, there is increasing need for ethical reflection on "operational" approvals for…

In 2011, Washington was one of only eight states that did not have a charter school law in state policy heading into the Race to the Top (RTTT) competition. The RTTT competition incentivized local education agencies not only to allow charter schools, but also to increase or eliminate the cap on the number of charter schools that a state allowed to…

The importance of quality instruction in motivating students in higher education cannot be overemphasized. Without quality instruction, students' motivation to learn recedes. Five focus groups of graduate students aided the data collection for this study. More than one-third of the 119 participating graduate students involved in this study claimed…