This paper presents a multidimensional model of variation in writing quality, register, and genre in student essays, trained and tested via confirmatory factor analysis of 1.37 million essay submissions to ETS' digital writing service, Criterion®. The model was also validated with several other corpora, which indicated that it provides a…

Do my students understand? The question that lingers in every instructor's mind after each lesson. With the focus on learner-centered pedagogy, is it feasible to provide timely and relevant guidance to individual learners according to their levels of understanding? One of the options available is to collect reflections from learners after each…

This article starts with a brief analysis of what it means to be an intellectual within the US tradition of critical pedagogy. Pointing toward important socio-technological transformations which have taken place in the past few decades, the article situates the concept of the intellectual into the contemporary postdigital context. The article…

Low retention rates in college is a policy concern for US postsecondary institutions, and writing is a critical competency for college (Graham, 2019). This paper describes an exploratory writing analytics study at six 4-year universities aimed at gaining insights about the relationship between college retention and writing. Findings suggest that…

The ability to efficiently optimize or re-optimize an algorithm for high performance on a particular processor architecture is crucial in a wide spectrum of engineering and scientific applications. To help bridge the gap between fully automated optimization, which does not reliably produce optimal code, and fully manual optimization, which is…

The challenge of learning programming in a MOOC is twofold: acquiring programming skills and learning online, independently. Automated testing and feedback systems, often offered in programming courses, may scaffold MOOC learners by providing immediate feedback and unlimited re-submissions of code assignments. However, research still lacks…

Despite the numerous support systems, academic performances in many South African higher institutions continue to experience challenges while some are declining in throughputs. Some of the support mechanisms seem to be black boxed, notwithstanding the deteriorating situation. Thus, there is "prima facie" evidence that the factors that…

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are increasingly used in manufacturing, transportation, health, and other industries. To develop these complex interdisciplinary systems, highly qualified CPS engineers are required who possess sound engineering knowledge and excellent transferable skills. Academic institutions offer a range of modules and curricula to…

The world is changing at an incredible rate, and different processes are using technology more and more every day. One of the most widely used applications of artificial intelligence today is to simplify employee tasks and office automation. In the future, robots can, like an author, produce articles or create conferences and instructional videos.…

The present study examined the extent to which adaptive feedback and just-in-time writing strategy instruction improved the quality of high school students' persuasive essays in the context of the Writing Pal (W-Pal). W-Pal is a technology-based writing tool that integrates automated writing evaluation into an intelligent tutoring system. Students…

The present study examined the extent to which adaptive feedback and just-in-time writing strategy instruction improved the quality of high school students' persuasive essays in the context of the Writing Pal (W-Pal). W-Pal is a technology-based writing tool that integrates automated writing evaluation into an intelligent tutoring system. Students…

Reading comprehension tasks are commonly used for developing students' reading ability. In order to adaptively recommend reading comprehension materials to students engaged in computerized testing, the information in an item bank (a collection of test items stored in a dataset) must be effectively indexed. Familiarity with the topics present in…

There are thousands of participants in different programming MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) which means thousands of solutions have to be assessed. As it is very time-consuming to assess that amount of solutions manually, using automated assessment is essential. Since task requirements must be strict for the solutions to be automatically…

In recognition of the capability of text-mining models to quantify aspects of language use, some creativity researchers have adopted text-mining models as a mechanism to objectively and efficiently score the Originality of open-ended responses to verbal divergent thinking tasks. With the increasing use of text-mining models in divergent thinking…

This paper presents the results of an exploratory study that examined engagement approaches of contract cheating services on the Twitter platform. The literature portrays the grey academic market as an invisible hand that magically delivers academic content at the click of a button, which leaves a wide gap in our understanding of their outreach…