Postsecondary education is awash in data. Postsecondary institutions track data on students' demographics, academic performance, course-taking, and financial aid, and have put these data to use, applying data analytics and data science to issues in college completion. Meanwhile, an extensive amount of higher education data are being collected…

This guide presents examples and instructions for data analyses colleges can conduct to better understand student enrollments and completions in particular programs. Such analyses can help colleges scrutinize representation of historically marginalized groups in programs leading to greater opportunity after graduation. There is an equity…

The COVID-19 outbreak emphasizes the need for alternative methods for data gathering and collaboration among researchers in a virtual research environment. One experimental design that is well suited in a social distancing research context is the single-case experimental design (SCD). SCDs can handle disruptions as: (a) they do not require large…

States often turn to a data masking procedure called microsuppression in order to reduce the risk of disclosing student records when sharing data with external researchers. This process removes records deemed to have high risk for disclosure should data be released. However, this process can induce differences between the original data and the…

States often turn to a data masking procedure called microsuppression in order to reduce the risk of disclosing student records when sharing data with external researchers. This process removes records deemed to have high risk for disclosure should data be released. However, this process can induce differences between the original data and the…

This chapter aims to answer some of the questions that emerge when carrying out educational ethnography in a blended learning environment. The authors first outline how Virtual Ethnography (VE) has been developed and applied by other researchers. Then, to better illustrate the approach, they describe a doctoral research project that implemented…

Students who take an online course, such as a MOOC, use the course's discussion forum to ask questions or reach out to instructors when encountering an issue. However, reading and responding to students' questions is difficult to scale because of the time needed to consider each message. As a result, critical issues may be left unresolved, and…

This completely updated edition of "The Almanac of American Education" helps users understand and compare the quality of education at the national, state, and county levels. Compiled from official U.S. government sources, this book contains historical and current data, insightful analysis, and useful graphs that provide compelling…

Group design research studies can provide evidence to draw conclusions about "what works," "for whom," and "under what conditions" in special education. The quality indicators introduced by Gersten and colleagues (2005) have contributed to increased rigor in group design research, which has provided substantial…

Adults with learning disabilities (LD) face educational and employment challenges and may also have other disabilities and health conditions. Little is known about these adults' numeracy skills and how they use numeracy at work or home. The article's objective was to investigate numeracy skills and skill use for U.S. adults with LD. The author…

The project described in this article focused on the school's environment and students' connections with the school. The project took place in a large, comprehensive high school with eight 12th grade students, one with intellectual disabilities, three with learning disabilities, two with autism spectrum disorders, and two with health impairments.…

The purpose of this action research study was to investigate the actual motivation for application to graduate school for first-generation and international students from historically marginalized communities (HMCS). The specific goal was to augment data on college advisory work, recruiting, and marketing, and look at the wants and needs of…

Close reading has long been heralded as a humanities-specific methodology with significant potential for SoTL. This essay fills a gap in SoTL literature with a full case study demonstrating what, exactly, close reading shows us about our data that social science-based quantitative and qualitative analyses may not. Close reading-based analysis of…

For the past two decades, educational intervention research has rallied around the common goal of determining "what works in education" to inform education practice and policy (U.S. Department of Education, 2017). To study individual, contextual, and implementation processes and their interaction with educational interventions requires…

As the use of plastics expands, microplastic concentrations increase in aquatic environments and negatively impact water, soil, and animals inhabiting these areas. Microplastic research frequently incorporates citizen science to assist in data collection and environmental education. These projects provide opportunities for greater societal…