A new indicator for higher education student performance

The debate on academic achievement is a heated issue that involves all the higher education contexts. This paper attempts to provide an indicator that can make the measurement of university student performance easier and that can be easily applied to different systems, making comparisons more fair. The Italian University System is used as a starting point to make several considerations on the current measures and to build up a new performance indicator. Then, a generalization for other marking systems is shown and finally a quantile regression is performed to investigate some determinants of the new performance indicator, also with respect to the current one.     

Modeling black student academic performance in higher education

Recent research has noted differences in the predictive efficacy of educational attainment models produced for whites as opposed to blacks; and called for more resolution in the findings on blacks in advance of further comparative analyses. The National Study of Black College Students (NSBCS) is employed to develop a model that distinguishes between high- and low-performing black undergraduates attending public, four-year institutions. In the NSBCS sample (N=695), discriminant function analysis identifies several institutional and student characteristics which are related to black students' educational outcomes. Specifically, students with both high occupational aspirations and high academic performances tend to be male, attend comparatively larger schools, and, to a lesser degree, be relatively well-adjusted upperclassmen. When academic performance is the sole issue, it is positively correlated with institutional quality, but the advantage belongs to black females. Contrary to the suggestions of previous research, black community sentiment did not have relationships with educational outcomes to the extent expected. These results suggest that future models of black educational attainment marry traditional Wisconsin-type measures with institutional and student attributes.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1983 meetings of the American Sociological Association, Detroit, Mich.     

The effect of blended learning on student performance at course-level in higher education: A meta-analysis

The present paper analyzes the impact of blended learning (BL) on the academic achievement of higher education students. A meta-analysis (k = 51 effect sizes) was conducted to perform a statistical synthesis of studies contrasting student performance in BL conditions with traditional classroom instruction. We include disciplines and instructors’ end-of-course evaluation method as moderating variables. The results show that BL demonstrates a small summary effect (g⁺ = 0.385, p < 0.001) compared to traditional teaching methods A significantly higher mean effect size was found in STEM disciplines (g⁺ = 0.496) compared to that of non-STEM disciplines (g⁺ = 0.210). Nevertheless, the weighted mean effect sizes reveal no significant differences regarding of end-of-course assessment methods, namely one-moment and multiple-component assessment. The finding confirms that BL is significantly associated with greater learning performance of STEM-disciplined students than with traditional classroom practice. Accordingly, discussion concerning the findings and implications for future research are elaborated.     

Using university rankings as a potential indicator of student experiences in American higher education

Students at America’s most renowned private universities face different acceptance rates, college wealth, class sizes, and potential graduate earnings even in comparison with students at the nation’s highest-ranking public institutions. The analyses that led to these findings frequently focused on national or state-wide comparisons of public versus private universities. This paper contrasts these studies by analysing a fixed group of colleges, those regularly listed in the global top 50 of research and reputation rankings. It argues that even within this small subset of colleges, the highest-ranking public universities have more in common with their similarly positioned private counterparts than with lower ranking public institutions; a finding reflected in assessments of private colleges. Subsequently, the paper finds that student experiences are more likely defined by a college’s reputational rank than by an institution’s public or private status, endowment, or acceptance rates, however, the same was found not to be true of potential graduate earnings.     

Multilevel analysis of student pathways to higher education

This study examined the relationship between academic preparation and post-secondary educational outcomes. To uncover the factors that influence secondary-level school course-taking patterns and outcomes, multi-level modelling was conducted using data from a nationally representative sample of US secondary-level school students from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002. Results indicated (1) significant effects from student, family and school predictors on course-taking patterns and (2) significant effects from course-taking patterns on enrollment in post-secondary institution types with math course-taking pattern having the largest impact. Implications for educators and administrators are discussed.     

An alienation-based framework for student experience in higher education: new interpretations of past observations in student learning theory

This article orients a recently proposed alienation-based framework for student learning theory (SLT) to the empirical basis of the approaches to learning perspective. The proposed framework makes new macro-level interpretations of an established micro-level theory, across three levels of interpretation: (1) a context-free psychological state (alienation), (2) a context-bound psychological state (student alienation), and (3) sociological processes from which these psychological states arise. Evidence for the viability of this macro–micro framework is, however, lacking, as is a clear path to seeking such evidence due to the framework’s complexity. The dichotomy of state and process implied by the framework reflects a recognised ‘dual interpretation’ of alienation, by which micro-level experiences are linked to behaviours through mediating macro-level psychological states. We use this dual interpretation together with Seeman’s (Ann Rev Sociol, 1975) six variants of alienation to construct a clear and well-ordered overall framework, and to hypothesize comprehensive explanations for the correlations observed between surface approaches to learning and five dimensions of learning experience emphasized in SLT. These five hypotheses are presented as succinct if…then statements, and assessed according to established qualitative criteria. Overall, the article prepares the way both for empirical verification of what is a complex theoretical structure, and for other future research in this vein.     

Enabling international student families: new empiricisms and posthumanist entanglements in higher education

ABSTRACT

This paper presents research on movements involved in the lives of international university students and their accompanying family members. Located in the framing of new empiricisms and new materialisms, a posthumanist approach is offered as a way to move beyond the limitations of a focus on the educational mobilities of individualised self-contained student subjects. The research this paper draws on engages a diffractive visual methodology involving interview encounters with women who each moved from Iran to Australia together with their partner and children. A materialist feminist approach enables the consideration of how a variety of entangled movements and animated affects shape the lives of international student families. The utility of this approach becomes the inspiration for thinking through the concept of ‘intra-active becoming in movement’. This brings a refreshed set of practices for designing higher education experiences for international students that resists the divisiveness of binary oppositions in Western thought.     

Strange new world: applying a Bourdieuian lens to understanding early student experiences in higher education

Occupational therapy pre‐registration education stands at the intersection of the fields of health and social care and higher education. UK Government agendas in both fields have seen an increase in the number of students entering with non‐traditional academic backgrounds, a group noted to experience particular challenges in negotiating the transition to, and persisting and succeeding within, higher education. Drawing on data from an ongoing longitudinal case study, a Bourdieuian lens is applied to exploring the early educational experiences of a group of these students during their first year of study and highlights a number of key issues, including the high‐value status of linguistic capital and its relationship to understanding the rules governing practices within the learning environment, the processes via which students manage to adapt to or interestingly, to resist, the dominant culture of the field, and some of the barriers to finding a foothold and legitimate position within the new field.     

'HELPA': a rapid means of student evaluation of lecturing performance in higher education

A procedure which allows academic staff to obtain rapid student assessment of lecturing performance has been developed and tested over a period of three years. A computer program has been devised which allows the data to be utilised in a variety of ways. These include self-evaluation, job applications, promotion applications or group discussions. The simplicity of the questionnaire and the ease of processing and documentation have been well received by both staff and students who, in our experience, are often reluctant to respond to more complex procedures. The'HELPA' protocol has been adopted by a number of individuals and departments within the Victoria University of Technology.     

Responding to crises in transnational education: new challenges for higher education

This paper is based on a case study of an Australian university involved in the delivery of transnational programs in an educational environment that has been increasingly characterized by commercial considerations. The researchers conducted focus group interviews with both general and academic staff to ascertain the personal, academic and administrative issues affecting the delivery of educational programs in Asia that arose as a result of one particular crisis in 2003: the SARS epidemic. The findings indicate that both administrative and academic staff felt personally and professionally challenged by the complexity of the issues involved in interrupting the pattern of transnational teaching. Potentially conflicting rationales emerged through the focus group discussions, with administrative staff expressing concern with maintaining services, while lecturers articulated a preoccupation with the safeguarding of assessment standards.     

The reverse transfer student: A growing factor in higher education

Study purposes were (a) to identify factors associated with academic performance of students enrolled at a four-year university and a two-year community college; and (b) to determine if students who (1) dropped out of a four-year university, (2) entered a two-year community college, and then (3) returned to the same four-year institution improved in academic performance. The 195 undergraduate subjects began their college careers at a large university and subsequently transferred to a community college, a type of student mobility referred to as reverse transfer student. Following a poor academic performance at the university, the students achieved satisfactorily at the two-year college. Students who later returned to the university improved their grades with each quarter's course work. Factors associated with academic performance at the two institutions were identified.     

Committed to learn: student engagement and care in higher education

Efforts to evaluate and improve student engagement have been pervasive in higher education over recent years. Critics argue, however, that troubling affinities are evident between student engagement efforts and a neoliberal agenda which emphasises accountability through performativity. Neoliberalism manifests in policies that focus on the economic benefit to individuals of higher education, rather than the broader social or intrinsic benefits. In this conceptual article, we draw on the work of Martin Heidegger and Nel Noddings in arguing that efforts aimed at promoting engagement and commitment to learn by students should include developing a capacity to care about others and things. Through the lens of care, our aim is to extend current notions of what engagement of students in their learning might look like. Challenging and supporting students entail encouraging them to take a stand on what they are learning and who they are becoming. This enriched conceptualisation has the potential to re-orient student engagement away from a narrow neoliberal agenda, while enabling students to realise the full benefits a higher education can provide.     

Measuring the impacts of administrative policies on student performance in higher education

In this study, we investigate the joint impacts of class size, modality of content delivery and instructor workloads on 1078 student performances from 2010 through 2014 in a required College of Business Administration Information Systems (IS) course at a public Midwestern university, controlling for 11 demographic and other factors that might impact student performance. Class size, modality of delivery and instructor assignments are strategic college decisions affected by and subject to administrative policies that can impact the probabilities of student performance. Using the Akaike Information Criteria (AIC) and Chi-square significance tests, we construct a parsimonious binary logit model of individual student performance in the IS course and examine the effects of the administratively controllable factors on student performance. We find that the class size and the assignment of instructors to teach the course significantly impact student performance while modality of delivery does not. We offer and evaluate administrative policy recommendations likely to improve student performances.     

Theorising student engagement in higher education

Student engagement has become problematic following the rise of mass and universal forms of higher education. Significant attention has been devoted to identifying factors that are associated with higher levels of engagement, but it remains the case that the underlying reasons for student engagement and, indeed, the notion itself of ‘student engagement’ remain weakly theorised. In this article, we seek to develop the theoretical basis for student engagement in a way that highlights the student's own contribution. We explore how learning involves students taking responsibility for action in the face of uncertainty, whether in pursuit of personal or communal concerns. Drawing on perspectives primarily from realist social theory, we suggest that student engagement may be shaped by extended, restricted and fractured modes of reflexivity and co‐reflexivity. In this way student engagement in higher education is theorised as a form of distributed agency, with the impact of a learning environment on this agency mediated by reflexivity. Reflexivity itself is further influenced by the tasks and social relations encountered by students in a given learning environment. The role that social relations play in students' responses to learning specifically offers a means to strengthen the moral basis for education. Our account provides an explanation as to why specific educational practices, such as those termed ‘high impact’, might lead to higher levels of student engagement within the wider context of a knowledge society. We thus offer insights towards new forms of educational practice and relations that have the potential to engage students more fully.     

A contractual approach to higher education performance: with an application to Australia

In an effort to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of higher education, some governments have redefined their funding relationships with universities as contracts rather than grants in order to develop stronger incentives for university performance. This paper explores this approach, as adopted in Australia, within a principal agent framework. It examines the conditions necessary for success in achieving government objectives as well as preserving university autonomy.     

An undergraduate student flow model: Australian higher education

The probability of completing and the time to complete an undergraduate course are likely to vary by the age and sex of the student, and the field of study undertaken. In this paper a Markov chain is used to model the movement of undergraduates through the higher education system in Australia. Given the age of the student when they commence a course, this model provides estimates of the probability of them completing the course. It also provides estimates for the mean time a student takes to complete the course, and mean time they spend in the higher education system.     

Repayment burdens of student loans for Vietnamese higher education

Expansion of high education in Vietnam will be undermined without an effective student, loans policy to assist with tuition and living costs. We show the significance of this issue is by, constructing a hypothetical loans system and calculating repayment burdens (RBs) (the proportion of, a graduate's income required to repay the debt) for male and female in four different parts of Vietnam, and with respect to two levels of loans. Importantly, the exercises examine RBs across the whole, distribution of income using unconditional quantile techniques. We find that RBs involving loans for, tuition only are likely to lead to significant RBs for poor graduates, with much higher loans being, associated with critical financial difficulties for perhaps the majority of debtors. This will result in high, default rates and consumption difficulties for borrowers, implying strongly that a student loan system, with such high RBs is unlikely to be successful in Vietnam.