Investigating Variation in Learning Processes in a FutureLearn MOOC

Studies on engagement and learning design in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have laid the groundwork for understanding how people learn in this relatively new type of informal learning environment. To advance our understanding of how people learn in MOOCs, we investigate the intersection between learning design and the temporal process of engagement in the course. This study investigates the detailed processes of engagement using educational process mining (EPM) in a FutureLearn science course (N = 2086 learners) and applying an established taxonomy of learning design to classify learning activities. The analyses were performed on three groups of learners categorised based upon their clicking behaviour. The process-mining results show at least one dominant pathway in each of the three groups, though multiple popular additional pathways were identified within each group. All three groups remained interested and engaged in the various learning and assessment activities. The findings from this study suggest that in the analysis of voluminous MOOC data there is value in first clustering learners and then investigating detailed progressions within each cluster that take the order and type of learning activities into account. The approach is promising because it provides insight into variation in behavioural sequences based on learners’ intentions for earning a course certificate. These insights can inform the targeting of analytics-based interventions to support learners and inform MOOC designers about adapting learning activities to different groups of learners based on their goals

Preparing adolescents attending progressive and no-excuses urban charter schools to analyze, navigate, and challenge race and class inequality

Background/Context: Sociopolitical development (SPD) refers to the processes by which an individual acquires the knowledge, skills, emotional faculties, and commitment to recognize and resist oppressive social forces. A growing body of scholarship has found that such sociopolitical capabilities are predictive in marginalized adolescents of a number of key outcomes, including resilience, academic achievement, and civic engagement. Many scholars have long argued that schools and educators have a central role to play in fostering the sociopolitical development of marginalized adolescents around issues of race and class inequality. Other scholars have investigated school-based practices for highlighting race and class inequality that include youth participatory-action research, critical literacy, and critical service-learning. Objective of Study: The present study sought to add to the existing scholarship on schools as opportunity structures for sociopolitical development. Specifically, this study considered the role of two different schooling models in fostering adolescents' ability to analyze, navigate, and challenge the social forces and institutions contributing to race and class inequality. Setting: The six high schools participating in the present study were all urban charter public high schools located in five northeastern cities. All six schools served primarily low-income youth of color and articulated explicit goals around fostering students' sociopolitical development. Three of these high schools were guided by progressive pedagogy and principles, and three were guided by no-excuses pedagogy and principles. Research Design: The present study compared the sociopolitical development of adolescents attending progressive and no-excuses charter high schools through a mixed methods research design involving pre-post surveys, qualitative interviews with participating adolescents and teachers, and ethnographic field notes collected during observations at participating schools. Results: On average, adolescents attending progressive high schools demonstrated more significant shifts in their ability to analyze the causes of racial inequality, but adolescents attending no-excuses high schools demonstrated more significant shifts in their sense of efficacy around navigating settings in which race and class inequality are prominent. Neither set of adolescents demonstrated significant shifts in their commitment to challenging the social forces or institutions contributing to race and class inequality. Conclusions: Both progressive and no-excuses schools sought to foster adolescents' commitment to challenging race and class inequality, but focused on different building blocks to do so. Further research is necessary to understand the pedagogy and practices that show promise in catalyzing adolescents' analytic and navigational abilities into a powerful commitment to collective social action-the ultimate goal of sociopolitical development

Resilience and Resistance: How First Generation College Students Leverage Community Cultural Wealth and Social Capital to Successfully Transfer from a Community College to a Selective Four-year Institution

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of how first generation college students leverage both traditional forms of social capital and community cultural wealth in the process of transferring from a California community college to a selective four-year institution, using a Critical Race Theory (CRT) paradigm, and a framework including Stanton-Salazar’s (1997) network analytic theory and Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth. The current study adds to the literature by critically analyzing the post-secondary education experiences of first generation community college transfer students, focusing on the students’ strengths and gaining a better understanding of what institutional and community based resources they drew on to successfully navigate the transfer pathway. This mixed methods study was situated at UC Berkeley and included 115 survey respondents and 15 individual interviews. All participants were first generation college students who had transferred to UC Berkeley from a California community college. Qualitative analysis was intentionally centered in this study in order to address elements of community cultural wealth that previous survey instruments have not adequately captured. Survey results are presented through descriptive analysis, drawing on a critical quantitative survey design. Findings show that students leveraged a variety of resources including institutionally based support through faculty, counselors and specialized support programs, and community based supports such as family, peers and students’ own online research to navigate the transfer pathway

Educational Data Mining to Predict Bachelors Students’ Success

Predicting academic success is essential in higher education because it is perceived as a critical driver for scientific and technological advancement and countries’ economic and social development. This paper aims to retrieve the most relevant attributes for academic success by applying educational data mining (EDM) techniques to a Portuguese business school bachelor’s historical data. We propose two predictive models to classify each student regarding academic success at enrolment and the end of the first academic year. We implemented a SEMMA methodology and tried several machine learning algorithms, including decision trees, KNN, neural networks, and SVM. The best classifier for academic success at the entry-level reached is a random forest with an accuracy of 69%. At the end of the first academic year, an MLP artificial neural network’s best performance was achieved with an accuracy of 85%. The main findings show that at enrolment or the end of the first year, the grades and, thus, the student’s previous education and engagement with the school environment are decisive in achieving academic success. Doi: 10.28991/ESJ-2023-SIED2-013 Full Text: PD

Network of Folx: Applying the Use of Community Cultural Wealth to the Experiences of Black First-Generation HBCU Students

Despite improvements in the rates of college admission over the past few decades, college persistence and graduation rates continue to be problematic, particularly for marginalized students—students of color and students from low-income and/or first-generation families at all institutional types. When attention is shifted to Black first-generation students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), persistence research neglects to include how Black first-generation college students own their educational experience to gain access to college and persist through graduation nor does the research examine cultural factors that help these students persist through the college-going process. Building from both student persistence and community cultural wealth frameworks, the purpose of this study is to examine the lived pre-college experiences of Black first-generation HBCU students

The Critical Social Ecology of Student Success in Higher Education: A Transformative Mixed Methods Study of Undergraduates\u27 Experiences and Outcomes at the City University of New York (CUNY)

Ensuring success in higher education among historically underserved students is integral to social equity and mobility in the United States today. Scholars have called for research examining the complexity of factors determining educational pathways of students encountering circumstances that hinder progress toward a college degree in the context of broad-access public four-year universities and two-year community colleges, institutions most affected by declining federal and state support for higher education. The current research proposed a multidisciplinary applied model of underserved college student success to examine factors constraining and promoting the educational outcomes and social opportunities of undergraduate low-income, first in family to attend college, and students of color at the City University of New York (CUNY). This model guided the design and implementation of a transformative mixed methods study focused on centering student perspectives and elevating issues of social justice. A cross-sectional survey was administered at three four-year colleges and three community colleges of CUNY (N=635), while individual interviews with first in family students at the focal senior colleges (N=10) and focus group discussions with students at the community colleges (N=47) were conducted concurrently. Findings indicated the structural realignment of public higher education exerts a negative influence on the trajectories of underserved students, particularly the current conditions of college teaching and learning. Implications of this research for broad-access public higher education institutions will be discussed

Patterns of persistence of Latinas in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degree programs : a mixed method study

The U.S. demographics are changing, with Latinos leading the nation in population growth. Meanwhile, reports of a nation lacking a strong STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) workforce flood the media. With claims that the fastest growing careers will require some sort of mathematical, technological or scientific training, it is not surprising that national attention has been focused on increasing the number of STEM graduates through policies such as The America Competes Act (2007) and initiatives such as Race to the Top (2014). Trends in postsecondary enrollment are changing; Latina/o enrollment has increased, with many Latinas/os choosing a STEM major upon entry, but failing to persist to graduation in these degrees. An increased body of research has focused on minorities in STEM, Latinas/os in higher education, and STEM graduates, yet the literature specific to Latinas in STEM fields is lacking. Latina females outnumber males in postsecondary enrollment and graduation, yet few enroll and even fewer graduate in STEM fields. The limited number of Latinas seeking careers in STEM thus raises questions about why Latinas fail to enroll in STEM majors and what needs to be done to increase their enrollment and persistence in STEM careers. As such, this study will conduct a thorough analysis using a mixed methods approach to examine the factors and experiences that can positively impact enrollment and persistence for Latinas seeking STEM careers.Educational Administratio

The Impact of Curricular Learning Communities on Furthering the Engagement and Persistence Of Academically Underprepared Students at Community Colleges

This study examined the impact of basic skills curricular learning communities on academically underprepared community college students to determine if participation in such programs significantly contributed to student persistence from year one to year two. The conceptual framework that informed this study was Tinto\u27s (1993) longitudinal model of student departure. In addition, the research on student engagement (Kuh, 2003b) served as a backdrop for considering how the basic skills curricular learning community programs may have influenced students\u27 perceptions of their institution (support and encouragement) and their experiences (preparation, engagement with instructors, engagement with classmates, and feedback) and, in turn, contributed to student persistence. Sponsored by the Lumina Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, this study served as the quantitative analysis for the Pathways to Student Success initiative (Engstrom & Tinto, 2007), a multi-institution sample that included both self-reported data, collected by the survey instrument, and enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC). The study included data from 13 community colleges with basic skills curricular learning community programs. All 13 colleges a) had a learning community program which linked a non-credit bearing basic skills course to at least one other course; b) had a learning community program for some duration and had institutional data to demonstrate its effectiveness in increasing student engagement and persistence; c) represented various types of structures and organization of programs to meet the needs of academically underprepared students; and d) served student populations considered at risk for not completing a degree/certificate. Each participating institution identified a learning community group and comparison (non-learning community) group to be surveyed in Fall 2003; in these comparison groups, the students\u27 academic skills and individual characteristics were to resemble those of students in the learning community group. The use of a valid and reliable survey instrument allowed for analysis across institutions and group (learning community versus comparison groups). The survey instrument used in this study was a modified version of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) instrument (CCSSE, 2010) which helped to measure participation in a variety of educationally purposeful activities and the supportive nature of the institutional environment, commonly referred to as engagement. Finally, persistence data, collected from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), was used to track student enrollment from one academic year to the next. The NSC is a non-profit organization that provides student degree and enrollment verification services. The survey data and persistence data were used to determine the effectiveness of curricular learning communities for academically underprepared students in meeting two primary objectives: to increase student engagement and to increase student persistence. The results revealed no practical differences in levels of student engagement between basic skills curricular learning community and comparison group participants. One engagement variable--personal encouragement and support--significantly and positively contributed to student persistence from year one to year two. Being in a basic skills curricular learning community significantly and positively contributed to student persistence, with participants being 1.272 times more likely to persist than those students in the comparison group; however, the analysis did not allow for causal conclusions between curricular learning community participation, student engagement, and persistence. The inclusion of group (learning community or comparison group) and engagement variables in the logistic regression model did not substantially increase correctly predicting student persistence. The results and limitations of this study suggest the need for continued research on basic skills curricular learning communities as an intervention strategy designed to strengthen the academic skills of underprepared students, facilitate student engagement, and foster student persistenc

The Instructional Experiences of Latinx Community College Students in a Developmental Mathematics Course Taught by an Adjunct Faculty at a Hispanic-Serving Institution

In spite of the high failure rate of Latinx students in developmental courses taught at community colleges in the United States, little is known about how mathematical instruction contributes to this problem. Less is known about how adjunct instructors teach these courses or about their students’ accounts of their experiences. This dissertation investigated instruction in a developmental mathematics course taught by an adjunct faculty at a Hispanic-serving community college by (1) describing the student-instructor, student-student, instructor-content, and student-content interactions (Cohen, Raudenbush, & Ball, 2003); (2) documenting student perceptions of those interactions, their instructional experiences; and (3) analyzing the way in which these varied interactions and perceptions could be explained by the wealths students brought to the course (Yosso, 2005) and the systems in which students were situated (Bronfenbrenner, 1977; 1994). Three modes of instruction were enacted in the course, lecture (the most common), individual student work time, and student presentations. The instructor led the student-instructor interactions by checking, correcting, or validating students’ work. Student-student interactions occurred only when students compared answers. The instructor-content interactions revealed mathematics as a disjoint set of problems solved with prescribed sets of steps. The student-content interactions consisted of practicing work already demonstrated by the instructor. Students’ instructional experiences described a caring instructor who wanted them to succeed and hoped for more time to explore and practice problems and less time watching their instructor lecture, more interaction with peers, and more support to create a classroom community. The microsystems in which students were situated—school, work, and home—influenced one another; various exosystems—instructor’s teaching experience, supports available from the mathematics department for adjunct faculty, adjunct instructor’s out of class obligations, and departmental course scheduling—had direct and indirect effects on instruction and on the students’ instructional experiences and mediated the ways that students and the instructor adapted to and interacted with each other during instruction. Students’ reported levels of aspirational, navigational, and social wealth interacted in ways that seem to influence their course outcomes: students with narrow aspirational wealth but broad navigational and social wealth knew how to find supports and balance the demands of the course whereas students with broader aspirational wealth and narrower navigational and social wealth thought that by attending the course and doing what was expected would result in positive outcomes. These demonstrations of cultural wealth aligned with the course outcomes: students in the first group who subverted the classroom cultural norms and pressed for changes passed; students in the second group who tended to align to and accept the classroom cultural norms failed. Thus, merely attending class and doing the work as instructors ask students to do may not be sufficient to pass a developmental class. The indirect influences of the exosystems require students to develop broader levels of social and navigational capital in order to be successful; this can be done by repeating college courses, an undesirable path or by providing explicit support to broaden students’ navigational and social wealth. Engaging students during instruction could support these efforts, making explicit the supports and resources necessary to succeed. Finally, mathematics departments might need to re-evaluate the content of developmental courses and provide more and varied opportunities for adjunct faculty to receive support while teaching these courses.PHDEducational StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145887/1/acawley_1.pd