SIBTEST is a differential item functioning (DIF) detection method that is accurate and effective with small samples, in the presence of group mean differences, and for assessment of both uniform and nonuniform DIF. The presence of multilevel data with DIF detection has received increased attention. Ignoring such structure can inflate Type I error.…

This 2015 document was developed to help technical assistance (TA) providers and state staff define and limit the scope of data analysis for program improvement efforts, including the State Systemic Improvement Plan (SSIP); develop a plan for data analysis; document alternative hypotheses and additional analyses as they are generated; and…

The purpose of this monograph is to give readers a practical and theoretical foundation in learning analytics in higher education, including an understanding of the challenges and incentives that are present in the institution, in the individual, and in the technologies themselves. Among questions that are explored and answered are: (1) What are…

We discuss the learning goals, content, and delivery of a University of Plymouth intensive module delivered over four weeks entitled MATH1608PP Understanding Big Data from Social Networks, aimed at introducing students to a broad range of techniques used in modern Data Science. This module made use of R, accessed through RStudio, and some popular…

Scientific results are communicated visually in the literature through diagrams, visualizations, and photographs. In this thesis, we developed a figure processing pipeline to classify more than 8 million figures from PubMed Central into different figure types and study the resulting patterns of visual information as they relate to scholarly…

When students, parents, educators, and partners have the right information to make decisions, students excel. By forming research partnerships, state education agencies (SEAs), policymakers, practitioners, and education researchers at universities and other research institutes can work together to use research to provide the best education…

This study takes a novel approach toward understanding success in a math course by examining the linguistic features and affect of students' language production within a blended (with both on-line and traditional face to face instruction) undergraduate course (n=158) on discrete mathematics. Three linear effects models were compared: (a) a…

Graphics are often mistaken for a mere frill in the methodological arsenal of data analysis when in fact they can be one of the simplest and at the same time most powerful methods of communicating statistical information (Tufte, 2001). The first section of the article argues for the statistical necessity of graphs, echoing and amplifying similar…

Qualitative classroom data from video recordings and students' written work can play important roles in improving mathematics instruction. In order to take full advantage of these data sources, it is helpful to have a strong analytic lens to orient one's reflections on the data. One promising analytic lens is the National Research Council's five…

Spline growth modelling is a popular tool to model change processes with distinct phases and change points in longitudinal studies. Focusing on linear spline growth models with two phases and a fixed change point (the transition point from one phase to the other), we detail how to find optimal data collection designs that maximize the efficiency…

Programmatic text analysis can be used to understand patterns and reveal trends in data that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to uncover with manual coding methods. This work uses programmatic text analysis, specifically term frequency counts, to study nearly 10,000 chemistry thesis and dissertation titles from 1911-2015. The thesis and…

These pages aim to explain and interpret why the late Mika Seppälä, a conformal geometer, proposed to model student study behaviour using concepts from conformal geometry, such as Riemann surfaces and Strebel differentials. Over many years Mika Seppälä taught online calculus courses to students at Florida State University in the United States, as…

Scholarly personal narrative (SPN) extends the available methodologies by which researchers conduct the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). In this article, the authors define SPN, which interprets personal experience through scholarly frameworks, leveraging the power of reflective practice to understand the interpersonal dynamics of both…

This paper presents a critical analysis, from the point of view of a statistician, of the methodology used by Hattie in "Visible Learning," and explains why it must absolutely be called pseudoscience. We first discuss what appears to be the intentions of Hattie's approach. Then we describe the major mistakes in "Visible…

Humans possess a remarkable ability to recognise both simple patterns such as shapes and handwriting and very complex patterns such as faces and landscapes. To investigate one small aspect of human pattern recognition, in this study participants position lines of "best fit" to two-dimensional scatter plots of data. The study investigates…