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What and when: the role of course type and timing in students' academic performance

Published: 25 April 2016 Publication History

Abstract

In this paper we discuss the results of a study of students' academic performance in first year general education courses. Using data from 566 students who received intensive academic advising as part of their enrollment in the institution's pre-major/general education program, we investigate individual student, organizational, and disciplinary factors that might predict a students' potential classification in an Early Warning System as well as factors that predict improvement and decline in their academic performance. Disciplinary course type (based on Biglan's [7] typology) was significantly related to a student's likelihood to enter below average performance classifications. Students were the most likely to enter a classification in fields like the natural science, mathematics, and engineering in comparison to humanities courses. We attribute these disparities in academic performance to disciplinary norms around teaching and assessment. In particular, the timing of assessments played a major role in students' ability to exit a classification. Implications for the design of Early Warning analytics systems as well as academic course planning in higher education are offered.

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  • (2024)Temporal and Between-Group Variability in College Dropout PredictionProceedings of the 14th Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference10.1145/3636555.3636906(486-497)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
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      LAK '16: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge
      April 2016
      567 pages
      ISBN:9781450341905
      DOI:10.1145/2883851
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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      Publication History

      Published: 25 April 2016

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      Author Tags

      1. disciplinary fields
      2. early warning system
      3. time based learning analytics
      4. undergraduate education

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      LAK '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 36 of 116 submissions, 31%;
      Overall Acceptance Rate 236 of 782 submissions, 30%

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      • (2024)Temporal and Between-Group Variability in College Dropout PredictionProceedings of the 14th Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference10.1145/3636555.3636906(486-497)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2024
      • (2022)Connecting the dots – A literature review on learning analytics indicators from a learning design perspectiveJournal of Computer Assisted Learning10.1111/jcal.1271640:6(2432-2470)Online publication date: 26-Jul-2022
      • (2021)Modeling Consistency Using Engagement Patterns in Online CoursesLAK21: 11th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference10.1145/3448139.3448161(226-236)Online publication date: 12-Apr-2021
      • (2021)Is this Degree for Me?Exploring computing students’ study decisionsProceedings of the 23rd Australasian Computing Education Conference10.1145/3441636.3442310(96-105)Online publication date: 2-Feb-2021
      • (2021)Construction of Online Distance Learning Risk Prediction Model Based on Data Mining2021 Tenth International Conference of Educational Innovation through Technology (EITT)10.1109/EITT53287.2021.00020(58-62)Online publication date: Dec-2021
      • (2021)User-Centered Design for a Student-Facing Dashboard Grounded in Learning TheoryVisualizations and Dashboards for Learning Analytics10.1007/978-3-030-81222-5_9(191-212)Online publication date: 17-Dec-2021
      • (2020)Using Convolutional Neural Network to Recognize Learning Images for Early Warning of At-Risk StudentsIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2020.298825313:3(617-630)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2020
      • (2020)An Integrated Framework Based on Latent Variational Autoencoder for Providing Early Warning of At-Risk StudentsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2020.29648458(10110-10122)Online publication date: 2020
      • (2019)Systematic Literature Review of Predictive Analysis Tools in Higher EducationApplied Sciences10.3390/app92455699:24(5569)Online publication date: 17-Dec-2019
      • (2019)Improving Predictive Modeling for At-Risk Student Identification: A Multistage ApproachIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2019.291107212:2(148-157)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2019
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