Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) now offer a variety of options for everyone to obtain a high-quality education. The purpose of this study is to better understand the behaviours of MOOC learners and provide some insights for taking actions that benefit larger learner groups. Accordingly, 2,288,559 learners' behaviours on 174 MITx courses were…

Academic achievement, often measured by GPA, has been extensively studied in the literature of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, including its impact on student persistence and success in college (Rask, 2010). However, most research has only looked at students' performance at a single point in time, such as their…

Affirmative consent initiatives advocate that college students understand sexual consent and refusal. There has been an influx of research focused on students' definitions or understanding of consent; however, research examining students' definitions of sexual refusals is limited. Additionally, different terminology (e.g., non-consent vs. sexual…

First-year seminar (FYS) courses tend to focus on preparing students for successful academic and social integration into the college environment. Many of the studies on FYS courses focus on measuring outcomes such as college grades, retention, and graduation rates. While there is notable documentation of several different types of FYS courses,…

This study explored substance use trajectories and associations with mental health among an ethnically/racially diverse college student sample before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We combined repeated cross-sections and panel data from a total of 3,247 college students assessed with an online survey in 2018, 2019, and in three waves in 2020.…

Task-specific goals play a critical role in self-regulated learning, yet little research has examined students' self-set goals for authentic study sessions. We propose high-quality goals that are useful for guiding task engagement and evaluating progress are specific about (a) time, (b) actions, (c) standards, and (d) content. In Study 1, we…

Badge use has rapidly expanded in recent years and has benefited a variety of applications. However, a large portion of the research has applied a binary "useful" or "not useful" approach to badging. Few studies examine the characteristics of the user and the impact of those characteristics on the effectiveness of the badging…

The purpose of this article was to explore student participation patterns in online discussion boards related to their characteristics and question types. The characteristics of students enrolled in an online course and the impact of types of discussion questions on student posts were examined. During the 16 weeks of a course, the participation…

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS CONDUCTED A STUDY TO DETERMINE IF DIFFERENT BEHAVIORAL PATTERNS APPEAR AMONG DIFFERENT TYPES OF COLLEGE STUDENTS--THE COLLEGIATE WHO PURSUES FUN, THE SKILL SEEKING VOCATIONAL STUDENT, THE KNOWLEDGE-FOR-ITS-OWN-SAKE ACADEMIC STUDENT, AND THE IDENTITY-CONSCIOUS NONCONFORMIST. DEMOGRAPHIC DATA, THE SCHOLASTIC APTITUDE TEST…

Patterns of psychoactive drug usage of students at a heterogeneous university were surveyed in 1968, and the Class of 1972 was twice resurveyed. Changes included increases in use of all drugs within the Class of 1972 and between juniors of 1968 and 1970 for popular drugs other than alcohol. Later starting students were somewhat less likely to be…

If the spontaneous remission phenomenon is genuine rather than an artifact, remission should show a relationship to the length of time elapsed. Thirty analyses of variance, treating judges and diagnostic categories independently, produced no evidence for a relationship between lapse of time and improvement. (Author)

Regular users of marijuana were not found to be significantly different from the other user groups except with respect to proportions of group members using stronger drugs. The distinctiveness of the regular user group and the non-user group suggests that those who do not use marijuana and stronger illicit drugs have been able to find…

Some study results are: (1) users are more alienated than nonusers; (2) alienation and drug use have increased over the Past decade; (3) users tend to be male upper classmen from higher socioeconomic and educational levels; and (4) the most alienated tend to be black female users from lower socioeconomic broken homes. (CJ)

This article contrasts with a sample of college students the youthful members of two expressively alienated forms of nonconformity: student activists committed to confrontation tactics to force social change and disaffiliated college dropouts withdrawn from incompatible social conditions. (Author)