Digital educational technologies offer the potential to customize students' experiences and learn what works for which students, enhancing the technology as more students interact with it. We consider whether and when attempting to discover how to personalize has a cost, such as if the adaptation to personal information can delay the adoption of…

The adaptive learning problem concerns how to create an individualized learning plan (also referred to as a learning policy) that chooses the most appropriate learning materials based on a learner's latent traits. In this article, we study an important yet less-addressed adaptive learning problem--one that assumes continuous latent traits.…

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…

The 3-year graduation rate is a rarely measured metric in higher education compared to its 4- or 6- year graduation rate counterparts. For the first time in college (FTIC) students to graduate in three years, they must come with certain skills, abilities, plans, supports, or motivations. This project considers two distinct but interrelated ways of…

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…

Purpose: Educational institutions are caught between increasing their offer rates and attracting and retaining those prospective students who are most suited to course completion. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the influence of demographic and psychological constructs on students' preferences when choosing to study in a particular…

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…

The purpose of this study was to investigate a new methodology for detection of differences in middle grades students' math anxiety. A mixture partial credit model analysis revealed two distinct latent classes based on homogeneities in response patterns within each latent class. Students in Class 1 had less anxiety about apprehension of math…

Peers have a paradoxical influence on each other's educational decisions. On one hand, students are prone to conform to each other's ambitious educational decisions and, on the other hand, are discouraged from ambitious decisions when surrounded by successful peers. In this study I examine how peers influence each other's decision to apply to an…

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is an influential and rapidly growing nationwide network of charter schools serving primarily disadvantaged minority students. Prominent elements of KIPP's educational model include high expectations for student achievement and behavior, and a substantial increase in time in school. KIPP is being watched…

The Pittsburgh Promise is a scholarship program that provides $5,000 per year toward college tuition for public high school graduates in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who earned a 2.5 GPA and a 90% attendance record. This study used a difference-in-difference design to assess whether the introduction of the Promise scholarship program directly…

Using a conjoint survey of 161 students at South Dakota State University (SDSU), we mapped a probability-of-enrolment curve for SDSU students, consistent with demand theory. A quasi-demand curve was created from the conditional-logit model. This study shows that along with the price of tuition fees, distance from home, availability of majors, and…

The methods and models for categorical data analysis cover considerable ground, ranging from regression-type models for binary and binomial data, count data, to ordered and unordered polytomous variables, as well as regression models that mix qualitative and continuous data. This article focuses on methods for binary or binomial data, which are…

Graduation outcomes are analyzed at public and private baccalaureate colleges and universities in the United States. The purpose is to determine the effect of institutional characteristics on a binary indicator of college graduation. The effect of the percentage of Pell grant recipients on graduation outcomes is of primary interest, controlling…

School districts required under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to provide supplemental educational services (SES) to students in schools that are not making adequate yearly progress rely heavily on the private sector to offer choice in services. If the market does not drive out ineffective providers, students may not gain through SES participation.…