Unravelling the complexities of distance education student attrition

This paper reports on an investigation into the complexities of student attrition in a distance education course. Deep‐seated factors involved in the attrition process are disclosed as the particular qualitative research process that was employed mapped student responses through the course of interviews. These tabulations reveal interesting patterns of change as students volunteer explanations for their decisions.     

Bilingual education and student performance in Guatemala

Bilingual education is often seen as one means of improving the educational attainment of indigenous children in developing countries. This paper presents the results of an evaluation of the National Bilingual Education Program serving approximately one-third of the indigenous primary school students in Guatemala. Findings show that program inputs of teacher training and instructional materials have had a significant effect on student achievement and a slight positive effect on promotion, repetition and drop-out rates. The superior performance of boys over girls and a teacher-centered approach to instructional delivery suggest that improvements should be made before expansion of the program.     

Teacher and student perceptions of intermediate assessment in higher education

Universities introduce intermediate assessment because it is understood to have positive effects on student behaviour and achievement. Yet, how intermediate assessment is perceived might be conditional for its success. The current study investigates both teachers’ and students’ perceptions of intermediate assessment. Teachers and students were interviewed and Student Evaluations of Teaching were examined. Results indicate that both teachers and students had generally positive perceptions of intermediate assessment. However, the two groups provided different reasons for their positive perceptions. Teachers and students agreed that intermediate assessment helps students to keep up with their study work. Moreover, teachers mentioned that they could assess various knowledge and skills with intermediate assessment, whereas students preferred intermediate assessments to test the same knowledge and skills as the final exam. This finding suggests that teachers and students in our study had different goals for intermediate assessment.     

The problem of student attrition in higher education: An alternative perspective

Student attrition continues to be a significant and costly challenge for higher education institutions across the globe. In Australia, universities cite the importance of addressing student attrition through strategic statements and policy documents, and expend time and resources on the problem. Despite vast expenditures, they have made little impact on student attrition, which continues to negatively impact reputation and revenue. Using a regional Australian university as a case study, this paper analyses a student exit survey to identify the complex and inter-related array of factors that contribute to student attrition. It was found that attrition would be better conceptualised as a wicked problem, which is one that cannot be strategically addressed using traditional approaches to problem-solving. The practical implications of these findings reinforce that current approaches to attrition are likely to fail. Therefore, the wicked nature of the attrition problem needs to be taken into account when developing strategies or policies within higher education.     

Teacher credentials and student achievement: Longitudinal analysis with student fixed effects

We use a rich administrative dataset from North Carolina to explore questions related to the relationship between teacher characteristics and credentials on the one hand and student achievement on the other. Though the basic questions underlying this research are not new—and, indeed, have been explored in many papers over the years within the rubric of the “education production function”—the availability of data on all teachers and students in North Carolina over a 10-year period allows us to explore them in more detail than has been possible in previous studies. We conclude that a teacher's experience, test scores and regular licensure all have positive effects on student achievement, with larger effects for math than for reading. Taken together the various teacher credentials exhibit quite large effects on math achievement, whether compared to the effects of changes in class size or to the socio-economic characteristics of students.     

Teacher commitment and its effects on student achievement in American high schools

This study explored the effects of teacher commitment on student achievement. Three teacher commitment dimensions of organizational, professional, and student commitment were derived. The three-dimensional teacher commitment measurement model was tested by a confirmatory factor analysis. Then, the relationships among individual and organizational variables, teacher commitment, and student achievement were analyzed by a 2-level hierarchical linear modeling method. As the results, the greater portions of teacher commitment and student achievement variances were within schools. The individual and organizational variables had differential impacts on each teacher commitment dimension. Finally, while teacher commitment effects on student achievement were differentially found depending on teacher commitment dimensions at the individual level, there was no evidence to support significant impacts of teacher commitment on student achievement at the organizational level.     

Application of machine learning in higher education to assess student academic performance,at-risk,and attrition: A meta-analysis of literature

Education and Information Technologies - Recently, machine learning (ML) has evolved and finds its application in higher education (HE) for various data analysis. Studies have shown that such an...     

Predicting tertiary academic performance in terms of student cognitive and non-cognitive variables

Conclusion The ability to achieve such good predictions suggests that there are subject-independent replicable endemic relationships amongst the variables in question. Further successful attempts at prediction across populations of Biology students, across disciplines, and across types of institutions of higher education would further strengthen the validity of this hypothesis underlying academic performance in higher education.     

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.     

Declining trends in student performance in lower secondary education

Student performance is related to motivation to learn. As motivation generally declines during lower secondary education, one might expect performance to decline as well during this period. Though, until now, it has been unclear whether this pattern exists. In the present study, we examined student performance during the early years of secondary education from a developmental perspective. Participants were 1544 Dutch secondary school students across three grades (grades 7 to 9). To investigate student performance trends, we analysed report card grades by using hierarchical linear modelling with two levels (level 1, time point; level 2, student). Potential moderators to be examined were (1) gender, (2) school type and (3) initial level. A linear decline in report card grades from grade 7 to 9 was found for boys and girls, in all school types, and regardless of initial level. Two variables moderated the steepness of the decline: school type and initial level. Gender and school type had a main effect on performance level. The same pattern was observed for the subset of ‘core subjects’—Dutch, English and mathematics. Motivational and cognitive factors that may explain the performance decline are discussed.     

Representations of student performance data in local education policy

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - The use of data for governance purposes has been widely recognised as a way for national authorities to coordinate their activities across...     

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.     

The effects of student higher education grants

This review article identifies basic issues involved in the subsidy of higher education in the United States. Specifically it evaluates the contributions in the papers by Schwartz and by Ehrenberg and Luzadis to improve our understanding of these issues.     

Knowing,performing and holding queerness: LGBTIQ+ student experiences in Australian tertiary education

Abstract

This paper explores LGBTIQ+ students’ experiences of knowing, performing and holding queerness in a tertiary educational environment. Through interviews conducted with LGBTIQ+ students at a large Australian metropolitan university, we examine the students’ engagement with other LGBTIQ+ students in the tertiary educational space. Although originally intending to explore LGBTIQ+ students’ experience of violence, harassment and abuse on campus, the study identified a number of themes concerning the normalisation of a set of beliefs, practices, presentations and performances. Drawing on frameworks of hetero/homo and trans-normativity, we explore how LGBTIQ+ students articulated concerns in knowing, performing and holding ‘authentic’ queerness. We find LGBTIQ students experienced barred access to knowledge, hostility and dismissal by other LGBTIQ+ students when they were either perceived as too queer, or not queer enough. Behind these interactions and at the heart of these tensions is the notion of an authentic queer identity in a post-gay era and the continuous challenges all LGBTIQ+ students face within a heteronormative society. New insights into how LGBTIQ+ students negotiate, manage and shape their interactions in a higher educational settings are provided, and the implications for tertiary educational institutions, in particular the need to support a diverse LGBTIQ+ community, are discussed.     

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.     

The effects of new science curricula on student performance

This study summarizes the results of a quantitative synthesis of the retrievable primary research dealing with the effects of new science curricula on student performance. This study synthesizes the results of 105 experimental studies involving more than 45,000 students and utilizes the quantitative synthesis perspective to research integration known as meta-analysis (Glass, 1976). A total of 27 different new science curricula involving one or more measures of student performance are included in this meta-analysis. Data were collected for 18 a priori selected student performance measures. The results of this meta-analysis reveal definite positive patterns of student performance in new science curricula. Across all new science curricula analyzed, students exposed to new science curricula performed better than students in traditional courses in general achievement, analytic skills, process skills, and related skills (reading, mathematics, social studies and communication), as well as developing a more positive attitude toward science. On a composite basis, the average student in new science curricula exceeded the performance of 63% of the students in traditional science courses.