Educational data mining constitutes a recent research field which gained popularity over the last decade because of its ability to monitor students' academic performance and predict future progression. Numerous machine learning techniques and especially supervised learning algorithms have been applied to develop accurate models to predict…

With technological advances, distance education has been frequently discussed in recent years. The learning environments used in this course usually generates a great deal of data because of the large number of students and the various tasks involving their interaction. In order to facilitate the analysis of the data, the authors researched to…

In his proposal for comparative education, Marc Antoinne Jullien de Paris argues that the comparative method offers a viable alternative to the experimental method. In an experiment, the scientist can manipulate the variables in such a way that he or she can see any possible combination of variables at will. In comparative education, or in…

With the adoption of Learning Management Systems (LMSs) in educational institutions, a lot of data has become available describing students' online behavior. Many researchers have used these data to predict student performance. This has led to a rather diverse set of findings, possibly related to the diversity in courses and predictor variables…

This study examined the prediction of dropouts through data mining approaches in an online program. The subject of the study was selected from a total of 189 students who registered to the online Information Technologies Certificate Program in 2007-2009. The data was collected through online questionnaires (Demographic Survey, Online Technologies…

Researchers in career and technical education often ignore more effective ways of reporting and treating missing data and instead implement traditional, but ineffective, missing data methods (Gemici, Rojewski, & Lee, 2012). The recent methodological, and even the non-methodological, literature has increasingly emphasized the importance of…

Affecting university rankings, school reputation, and financial well-being, student retention has become one of the most important measures of success for higher education institutions. From the institutional perspective, improving student retention starts with a thorough understanding of the causes behind the attrition. Such an understanding is…

The use of data mining for the analysis of data collected in natural settings is increasingly recognized as a legitimate mode of enquiry. This rule-inductive paradigm is an effective means of discovering relationships within large datasets--especially in research that has limited experimental design--and for the subsequent formulation of…

Learning environments aim to deliver efficacious instruction, but rarely take into consideration the motivational factors involved in the learning process. However, motivational aspects like engagement play an important role in effective learning-engaged learners gain more. E-Learning systems could be improved by tracking students' disengagement…

Categorizes different theoretical justifications of data fusion into two approaches, examines their implications, analyzes some unsuccessful data fusion experiments, and proposes two conditions for effective data fusion. Results indicate that the efficacy and inter-scheme dissimilarity are good predictors for effectiveness of data fusion.…

A focus of grazing management courses is the cause-effect relationships between grazing livestock distribution and environmental and management variables. A learning module for the classroom was developed to enable students to actively study livestock distribution by analyzing recently collected data from an on-ranch situation. Data were collected…

In 1965 the Court of Appeals of Kentucky ruled that all property should be assessed at 100 percent of fair market value. In compliance with the court decision, the county assessors began reassessing properties in January 1966. A great controversy arose over the new assessment procedures and problems. This study evaluates the results of the 1966…