Causal inference involves determining whether a treatment (e.g., an education program) causes a change in outcomes (e.g., academic achievement). It is well-known that causal effects are more challenging to estimate than associations. Over the past 50 years, the potential outcomes framework has become one of the most widely used approaches for…

Modeling and predicting student learning in computer-based environments often relies solely on sequences of accuracy data. Previous research suggests that it does not only matter what we learn, but also how we learn. The detection and analysis of learning behavior becomes especially important, when dealing with open-ended exploration environments,…

In the United States, education policy calls for every student to graduate from high school prepared for college and a career. National legislation has mandated programs of study (POS), which offer aligned course sequences spanning secondary and postsecondary education, blending standards-based academic and career and technical education (CTE)…

Maintaining and cultivating student engagement is critical for learning. Understanding factors affecting student engagement can help in designing better courses and improving student retention. The large number of participants in massive open online courses (MOOCs) and data collected from their interactions on the MOOC open up avenues for studying…

Student success and drop-out predictions have gained increased attention in recent years, connected to the hope that by identifying struggling students, it is possible to intervene and provide early help and design programs based on patterns discovered by the models. Though by now many models exist achieving remarkable accuracy-values, models…

Despite the overwhelming evidence that higher education data are nested at various levels, single-level techniques such as regression and analysis of variance are commonly used to investigate student outcomes. This is problematic as a mismatch in methodology and research questions can lead to biased parameter estimates. The purpose of this study…

Objective: This study examines how accurately a small set of short-term academic indicators can approximate long-term outcomes of community college students so that decision-makers can take informed actions based on those indicators to evaluate the current progress of large-scale reform efforts on long-term outcomes, which in practice will not be…

This article uses a logistic probability distribution approach to examine the effect of lecture attendance, aptitude test results, individual heterogeneity and pedagogic intervention on student performance for first-year microeconomics and second-year macroeconomics modules at a leading South African university. The research was motivated by the…

Improving graduation rates is one of the biggest missions in many universities across the country and it is surely the case on the campus of this institution. The work here presents a statistical tool box to use early academic performance as a predictor for graduation with logistic regression and machine learning techniques. The methods described…

Textual data, as a key carrier of learning feedback, is continuously produced by many students within course forums. The temporal nature of discussion requires students' emotions and concerned aspects (e.g. teaching styles, learning activities, etc.) to be dynamically tracked for understanding learning requirements. To characterize dynamics of…

Recent methods to improve generalizations from nonrandom samples typically invoke assumptions such as the strong ignorability of sample selection, which is challenging to meet in practice. Although researchers acknowledge the difficulty in meeting this assumption, point estimates are still provided and used without considering alternative…

This study analyzes the effect of age-based retention on school achievement at different stages of education. I estimate an instrumental variable model, using the predicted probability of retention given month of birth as an instrument, while simultaneously accounting for the effect of month of birth on maturity at the time of testing. The…

A particularly controversial topic in current education policy is the expansion of the charter school sector. This paper analyzes the spillover effects of charter schools on traditional public school (TPS) students in New York City. I exploit variation in both the timing of charter school entry and distance to the nearest charter school to obtain…

Personalization, the idea that teaching can be tailored to each students' needs, has been a goal for the educational enterprise for at least 2,500 years (Regian, Shute, & Shute, 2013, p.2). Recently personalization has picked up speed with the advent of mobile computing, the Internet and increases in computer processing power. These changes…

Despite evidence that many schools and districts have considerable discretion when hiring teachers and the existence of an extensive literature on teacher quality, little is known about how best to hire teachers. This is, in part, because predicting teacher quality using readily-observable teacher characteristics has proven difficult and there is…