The authors generated exact probability distributions for sample sizes up to 35 in each of three groups ("n" less than or equal to 105) and up to 10 in each of four groups ("n" less than or equal to 40). They compared the exact distributions to the chi-square, gamma, and beta approximations. The beta approximation was best in…

This study employs a uniquely multi-factorial, large-scale design to investigate baseline differences and the effects of a singular outdoor educational program on environmental attitudes, knowledge and behavior among primary and secondary school students educated in four different countries. Statistical modelling approaches employed country of…

This paper evaluates the effects of a high school curriculum reform on students' probability to enroll at university and to choose a Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) major. The reform increased the difficulty of graduating from high school by increasing the instruction time in core subjects and by raising the graduation…

Magnet schools are one of the largest sectors of choice schools in the United States. In this study, we explored the heterogeneity in magnet-school effects on student achievement by examining 24 magnet schools, funded under the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP), in 5 school districts across 4 states. The magnet effects were synthesized…

The aim of this study is to evaluate learning and acquisition strategies used by second/foreign language learners. This study is a comparative investigation of learning and acquisition strategies of successful and less successful language learners. The main question of the study is to investigate if there is a relationship between the learners'…

Learning outcomes assessment has been widely used by higher education institutions both nationally and internationally. One of its popular uses is to document learning gains of students. Prior studies have recognized the potential imbalance between freshmen and seniors in terms of their background characteristics and their prior academic…

Motivated by our meta-analytic dataset involving survival rates after treatment for critical leg ischemia, we develop and apply a new multivariate model for the meta-analysis of study level survival data at multiple times. Our data set involves 50 studies that provide mortality rates at up to seven time points, which we model simultaneously, and…

Using German data, we examined the effects of one specific type of acceleration--grade skipping--on academic performance. Prior research on the effects of acceleration has suffered from methodological restrictions, especially due to a lack of appropriate comparison groups and a priori measurements. For this reason, propensity score matching was…

Previous studies have indicated that dependencies between nonadjacent elements can be acquired by statistical learning when each element predicts only one other element (deterministic dependencies). The present study investigates statistical learning of probabilistic nonadjacent dependencies, in which each element predicts several other elements…

Recent empirical and theoretical work has depicted a close relationship between visual attention and visual working memory. For example, rehearsal in spatial working memory depends on spatial attention, whereas adding a secondary spatial working memory task impairs attentional deployment in visual search. These findings have led to the proposal…

Postdoctoral programmes have recently become an important step leading from doctoral education to permanent academic careers in the social sciences. This paper investigates the effects of a large and structured postdoctoral programme in the social sciences on a number of academic and non-academic outcomes of fellows. Propensity score matching is…

Modeling student knowledge is a fundamental task of an intelligent tutoring system. A popular approach for modeling the acquisition of knowledge is Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BKT). Various extensions to the original BKT model have been proposed, among them two novel models that unify BKT and Item Response Theory (IRT). Latent Factor Knowledge…

The three purposes of this study were to (a) describe fraction ordering errors among at-risk fourth grade students, (b) assess the effect of part-whole understanding and accuracy of fraction magnitude estimation on the probability of committing errors, and (c) examine the effect of students' ability to explain comparing problems on the probability…

Purpose: Health warnings printed on cigarette packets are an important vehicle in that they demonstrate and inform people of the threats and health risks related to smoking. Increasing the effectiveness of this vehicle is one of the purposes of this study. Research Methods: Since this research aims to describe the associations between dependent…

Interactive learning environments with body-centric technologies lie at the intersection of the design of embodied learning activities and multimodal learning analytics. Sensing technologies can generate large amounts of fine-grained data automatically captured from student movements. Researchers can use these fine-grained data to create a…