Academic advising is one of the key practices in U.S. higher education institutions for supporting students' success. However, the complexity of academic advising program structures, the difficulties in identifying appropriate outcome measures, and the lack of inclusion of multiple stakeholders' perspectives continue to challenge scholars to…

In the past few decades, we have seen a rapid proliferation in the use of quasi-experimental research designs in education research. This trend, stemming in part from the "credibility revolution" in the social sciences, particularly economics, is notable along with the increasing use of randomized controlled trials in the strive toward…

This paper focuses on self-assessment studies in the higher education field. In the assessment for learning perspective, self-assessment is related to reflection, metacognition, and self-regulation: all these aspects are considered as fundamental prerequisites for students' future professional development. Despite the recognition of…

While acknowledging that ethnography has been a rarely adopted approach in the field of higher education research, I will try to demonstrate the contributions that ethnographies have made to higher education studies. I will introduce readers to several of the most important and interesting ethnographic studies of university settings, focusing on…

The science-to-service problem continues to taunt the field of education (Fixsen, Blasé, Naoom, & Wallace, 2009). As an academic discipline, the field requires knowledge generation that adds to or deepens theoretical understandings. As a profession, knowledge generation that solves local problems and supports continuous improvement is…

This commentary reflects on the contributions to learning analytics and theory by a paper that describes how multiple theoretical frameworks were woven together to inform the creation of a new, automated discourse analysis tool. The commentary highlights the contributions of the original paper, provides some alternative approaches, and touches on…

This article contains a second-order meta-analysis and an exploration of bias in the technology integration literature in higher education. Thirteen meta-analyses, dated from 2000 to 2014 were selected to be included based on the questions asked and the presence of adequate statistical information to conduct a quantitative synthesis. The weighted…

In the social sciences, inquiry into the relationship between storytelling and politics is based on a notion of historical continuity. One problem is the possible trap of inevitability inherent in this notion--that something which happened "had to happen". Hannah Arendt's conception of political theory as storytelling overcomes this trap,…

This is a dissertation in three essays. The first essay traces changes over time in three factors that drive students' sensitivity to changes in tuition prices and presents an argument that these factors have changed differently for access to higher education and choice among alternative institutions. The essay explores the application of a…

In this article, the authors discuss the utility of combining quantitative and qualitative methods in conducting intersectional analyses. First, they discuss some of the paradigmatic underpinnings of qualitative and quantitative research, and how these methods can be used in intersectional analyses. They then consider how paradigmatic pragmatism…

The integration of ideas, methods, and data from diverse disciplines has been a transformative force in science and higher education, attracting policy interventions, program innovations, financial resources, and talented people. Much energy has been invested in producing a new generation of scientists trained to work fluidly across disciplines,…

A relationship between experimental and statistical controls is considered in an effort to show how this relationship affects the power of an experiment. Statistical rather than experimental controls are often used to reduce the effect of subjects at the extremes of individual difference. This results in attrition of actual experimental subjects.…

Using a recent study that examined the effectiveness of a particular approach to improving individual university teaching as a case study, this paper examines some of the challenges inherent in educational research, particularly research examining the effects of interventions to improve teaching. Aspects of the research design and methodology and…

This paper explores the concept of educational psychology as a "linking science" between (1) theory and research in psychology and learning and (2) the educational arena of the schools. A linking science is defined as a special structure that intervenes between scientific theory and practical application. The author's first major point is that a…

Uses a hypothetical example of an institutional review board's concerns about a speech communication faculty member's research project to illustrate current issues that speech communication administrators, departmental faculty, and graduate students need to consider as their human-subjects based research becomes increasingly overseen by external…