This paper reports the findings of a research using marks of students in learning activities of an online module to build a predictive model of performance for the final assessment of the module. The objectives were (1) to compare the performances of students of two cohorts in terms of continuous learning assessment marks and final learning…

Organizational commitment is a major determinant of organizational effectiveness and desirable employee attitudes and behaviours. Highly committed academic staff are the backbone of universities since they play an important role in the success of their institutions. This study investigated factors associated with organizational commitment among…

Online education continues to become an increasingly prominent part of higher education, but many students struggle in distance courses. For this reason, there has been considerable interest in predicting which students will succeed in online courses and which will receive poor grades or drop out prior to completion. Effective intervention depends…

Many researchers have explored the relationships between the likelihood of graduating from college and demographic and pre-college factors such as gender, race/ethnicity, high school grade point average (GPA), and standardized test scores. However, additional factors such as a student's college major, home address, or use of learning support in…

Factors associated with motivation and satisfaction aid in understanding the processes that enhance achievement and productivity. Siegle and McCoach (2005) proposed a motivational model for understanding student achievement and underachievement that included self-perceptions in three areas (meaningfulness [goal valuation], self-efficacy, and…

This study was designed to investigate the factors that affect master's student persistence in the United States. More specifically, this study explored whether the following factors: students' background, institution's, academic, environmental and psychological influences, had a significant effect on whether a master's student persisted and/or…

In light of the issue related to consensus about the definition of dispositions and the larger issue pertaining to the absence of a model to predict the growth of pre-service teachers in their knowledge, skills, and dispositions that Teacher Performance Expectations (TPEs) specify, the purpose of this study is two-fold. First, the authors aim at…

The increasing competition for graduate students among business schools has resulted in a greater emphasis on graduate business student retention. In an effort to address this issue, the current article uses survival analysis, decision trees and TreeNet® to identify factors that can be used to identify students who are at risk of dropping out of a…

The Learning Potential Assessment Device and Instrumental Enrichment are two much needed improvements in education. Used in tandem, they rectify previous problems of testing and teaching by providing an unbiased assessment device which does not rely on labels for categories of learners. (VM)

An extensive body of research indicates that men on the average achieve higher scores in mathematics than women. Despite this extensive research, conclusions about sex differences in mathematics achievement have suffered from various inadequacies in the use of measures of association among coursework experiences, sex, and other correlates of…

Since a great number of variables influence future educational outcomes, forecasting possible trends is a complex task. One such model, the cross-impact matrix, has been developed. The use of this matrix in forecasting future values of social indicators of educational outcomes is described. Variables associated with educational outcomes are used…

The 4th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2011) brings together researchers from computer science, education, psychology, psychometrics, and statistics to analyze large datasets to answer educational research questions. The conference, held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, July 6-9, 2011, follows the three previous editions…

The effectiveness of a state-mandated set of evaluation criteria to identify potential dropouts is evaluated in this study. The selection criteria, based on unsatisfactory academic performance, excluded special education and limited language proficient students. Data analysis of school records and various test scores of 55,666 students in grades…

A LEARNING MODEL TO IDENTIFY FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE DIFFICULTY OF A PROBLEM ITEM WAS SUPPORTED EMPIRICALLY, AND INDICATED THAT THE NUMBER OF STEPS REQUIRED TO SOLVE A PROBLEM WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT VARIABLE IN PREDICTING BOTH ERROR PROBABILITY AND RESPONSE LATENCY. THE MODEL, IN ORDER TO ESTABLISH DIFFERENTIAL PREDICTIONS OF DIFFICULTY IN…