Machine learning (ML) techniques have been successfully applied to a wide array of applications. This dissertation aims to take application data handling into account when developing ML-based solutions for real-world problems through a holistic framework. To demonstrate the generality of our framework, we consider two real-world applications: spam…

Email has become a prominent communication tool for principals. Although principals have reported benefits of communicating via email, they have also indicated that it has intensified their workload. Specifically, principals have indicated that they receive a large volume of email, which contributes to extending and fragmenting their workdays.…

Amid the increasing digitisation of schools, relatively little work has examined the ways in which digital technologies are reconfiguring the work of school principals. With an approach based on the sociology of work, this paper draws on 19 in-depth interviews with Australian school principals to examine their everyday experiences of digital…

Background: Addressing chronic absenteeism is a policy priority, with 36 states and Washington D.C. referencing attendance in ESSA accountability plans (Jordan & Miller, 2017) and a body of research establishing the connections between attendance, achievement, and social development (e.g., Gottfried, 2014; Ginsburg, 2014). The need to find…

This How-To Guide is designed for school staff who want to implement a personalized messaging intervention to improve student attendance. During the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years, the National Center for Rural Education Research Networks (NCRERN) partnered with 47 rural districts in 16 states across the United States to pilot and test…

To confront the challenge of high levels of student absenteeism, a network of rural districts in New York and Ohio embarked on a continuous improvement process with the National Center for Rural Education Research Networks (NCRERN) in the 2020-21 school year. In this paper, we present a case study from this Rural Research Network, describing how 8…

CalFresh benefits can help college students make ends meet while attending college, but not all eligible students apply. One contributing factor may be that students are not aware they are eligible. Therefore, outreach efforts informing them of their eligibility could help increase take-up rates. To test this, we designed and conducted two…

Purpose: The increasing number of online courses in higher education has provided students with convenience and flexibility. However, some adverse effects also come with online learning, including negatively affecting student beliefs in themselves and their perceptions of the instructor. Both are important factors for academic success. Grounded in…

Test input has often been taken as a given in test design practice. Nearly all guides for test designers provide extensive coverage of how to design test items but pay little attention to test input. This paper presents the case that test input plays a crucial role in designing tests of soft skills that have rarely been assessed in existing tests.…

We estimate how much the average grade of students enrolled in introductory macroeconomics changes when the professor sends a reminder email. We utilize observational data to implement a difference-in-differences strategy and identify the plausibly causal effect of email nudges on the student's grade. The professor's reminder email boosts…

This study draws from personality psychology and linguistics of written communication to explore the characteristics of self-selected well-written email communications (N=273) solicited from Polish managers who organized and supervised the (remote) work of their units during the COVID-19 period. The focus is on the writing of managers with…

What subject lines and messages in an e-mailed invitation maximize cooperation for a web survey? Answering this question is ever more important as survey researchers increasingly turn to web surveys to reduce costs. We test respondents' preferences for subject lines and messages in an e-mailed invitation to participate in a Consumer Assessment of…

Multitiered support for professional development (MTS-PD) is a framework for applying a three-tiered support system to teacher classroom management professional development through targeted training and coaching. In this study, we conceptually replicated two prior MTS-PD studies. Following a school-wide training on behavior-specific praise (BSP),…

Background: In 2019, Arkansas had the nation's fourth-lowest reading scores (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2019). Grounded in evidence that parents and guardians can play a pivotal role in developing their children's reading proficiency (Carnegie Council on Advancing Adolescent Literacy, 2010), the Arkansas Department of Education…

Engagement with online media among learners is closely linked to language proficiency and cultural comprehension, offering a platform for enhancing English language skills. This has given rise to the field of online informal learning of English (OILE), with numerous studies exploring learners' habits in this domain and indicating positive impacts…