First-generation college students face internal and external obstacles impacting their persistence and degree completion. This study examined what positive and negative factors and to what degree these factors impact first-generation college students' persistence and degree completion at the Appalachian institution based on academic classification…

Engineering identity is a rapidly evolving construct within engineering, primarily due to its link to engineering persistence. Yet, most engineering identity research has been qualitative in nature or has described individuals within the analytical technique as coming from a single population. This study is the first to allow for the detection of…

For the growing worldwide economy to be successful, science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) workers are needed. Once recruited to pursue a STEM major, the challenge is keeping these students on track. A large diverse workforce is needed in these fields, but past research has shown students from rural settings are disadvantaged when…

Increasing access and inclusion for underrepresented minorities in economics has been a focus for many in the discipline. Despite this, researchers have largely left two avenues of investigation that may provide insight into this issue unexplored: the role of community colleges and the role of reclassification of economics programs. I address the…

Background: As a non-cognitive trait, grit plays an important role in human learning. Although students higher in grit are more likely to perform well on tests, how they learn in the process has been underexamined. Objectives: This study attempted to explore how students with different levels of grit behave and learn in an exploratory learning…

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have recently become attractive at most universities, and the number of MOOCs has risen significantly, particularly in India. Despite their popularity, previous research has revealed a low course completion rate and a scarcity of research on the factors that influences learners' retention in MOOCs. Therefore, it…

One of the main aims of Core Maths qualifications when they were introduced into the post-16 curriculum in 2014 was to help students develop their understanding of maths and its application to different subject areas, particularly in relation to further study (e.g., higher education). In this article, we explore whether Core Maths is fulfilling…

MOOCs have emerged as an important form of Open and Distance Learning. The success of a MOOC platform depends on the support services and the motivational environment that it provides. This paper presents a comprehensive picture of the literature on the motivations that drive learners to enroll in MOOCs, published between the years 2011 to 2020.…

Student dropout is a major concern in studies investigating higher education retention strategies. However, studies investigating the optimal time to identify students who are at risk of withdrawal and the type of data to be used are scarce. Our study consists of a withdrawal prediction analysis based on classification trees using both…

This study presents a systematic review of the literature on the predicting student retention in higher education through machine learning algorithms based on measures such as dropout risk, attrition risk, and completion risk. A systematic review methodology was employed comprised of review protocol, requirements for study selection, and analysis…

The impetus of this study is to investigate students' attitudes towards online language learning based on their previous academic experiences and year of study, including the decision to major or minor (i.e., motivation). A total of 975 students completed a survey questionnaire consisting of background information, Likert scale items, and…

This study examined the influence of students' age, gender, ethnicity, and classification, as well as student-faculty interactions, on perceptions of belonging among undergraduate students with disabilities enrolled in a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), with predominantly Hispanic enrollment. Both students with disabilities (SWD) and Hispanic…

We present an educational data analytics case study aimed at the early detection of potential dropout in Computer Engineering studies in Cuba. We have employed institutional data of 456 students and performed several experiments for predicting their permanency into three (promotion, repetition, and dropout) or two classes (promoting, not…

The first purpose of this study was to examine the associations between students' motivational characteristics and their language-specific grit for learning English. Second, this study aimed to investigate how students' language-specific grit and motivational characteristics related to their achievement in English. While examining the presence of…

Multilayer perceptron neural networks, Gaussian naive Bayes, and logistic regression classifiers were compared when used to make early predictions regarding one-year college student persistence. Two iterations of each model were built, utilizing a grid search process within 10-fold cross-validation in order to tune model parameters for optimal…