Performance of students across assessment methods and courses using Correlation analysis

In many universities, a student has to take several mandatory courses and some elective courses which the student can individually choose. Many a time, elective course contents are not clear and prerequisites are not seriously considered. In this paper, we show that it is possible to get insight into the student’s performance in the electives offered, by the knowledge of student’s past performance in related courses. Data of similar students, who have recently graduated, is used to build a decision support system (DSS) using decision tree and fuzzy logic. Rules are extracted that establish the relationship between prerequisites and elective courses and their performance. Current course performance is entered into this elective course DSS (E-DSS), which can predict suitable electives and how the student might perform in those electives. Satisfactory results are obtained from the tests, and it is found that the students who performed successfully well at the required prerequisite courses have also performed well in the related elective courses.

PurposeSince accreditation bodies emphasize program-level learning goals, there is often less focus on measuring learning at the course level. This study aims to offer a method for using experiential learning exercises to measure student engagement and learning outcomes in cross-cultural relations courses by highlighting which learning outcomes to assess, how to measure the achievement of these learning outcomes, what students learn and the measurement process.Design/methodology/approachData was collected from three sections of the (control group) and (experiment groups). Chi-square independence and analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests were employed to examine the significant association between these groups.FindingsStudents perform alike when exposed to various experiential learning methods. However, the lack of experiential learning might hinder students’ understanding of the course material. Consequently, the performance in both learning objectives from the control group was significantly lower than students in the experiment groups.Originality/valueThis study presents an approach for merging assurance of learning into integrated business courses, and how to use experiential learning exercises as instructional tools for improving and measuring learning. When course-level assessments focusing on developing relevant competencies are well-implemented, they can strengthen related program-level goals.

The current stage of Georgia-Russia relations began in 2012, when the "Georgian Dream" party came to power and introduced changes in the foreign policy course. In order to understand the current course of bilateral relations, it is important to analyze the processes that have taken place between the parties since 2012. The purpose of the scientific work is to analyze the bilateral relations after the "Georgian Dream" came to power, to present the existing problems and challenges, to investigate the nature of these relations, as well as the influence of geopolitical developments on the relations. While writing the scientific work, we used the systematic methods of historical-comparative, event and content analysis. Achievements. Since 2012, relations between Georgia and the Russian Federation have registered a dynamic growth in several areas, changing the character and course of relations, the Russian Federation has become one of the leading economic states of Georgia, but politically, the existing problems the ongoing conflicts with Abkhazia and Ossetia in bilateral relations remain unresolved.

University student networks are recognised to be linked with student performance. Yet, no literature review seems to address student networks together with student learning or achievement. This paper focuses on the quantitative studies conducted since 2000 that relate to this issue. This literature review highlights five research domains: (1) the links between student and peer performance within face‐to‐face networks; (2) the effects of networks’ components (e.g., centrality) on student learning and achievement within face‐to‐face networks; (3) the impacts of online social network use on student performance; (4) the effects of social presence and of interactions within e ‐learning; and (5) the effects of e‐learning networks components. This literature review underlines inconsistent findings within each of these research domains. This paper leads to a discussion on the methodological issues that might explain these inconsistencies and to research questions still to be covered when studying student networks in relation with education outcomes. Context and implication Rationale for this study Academic success is not to be taken for granted. There is a need for understanding why some students succeed and others fail at university. Many studies focused on the relationships between achievement at university and student networks. To this day, no literature review exists regarding those links. Furthermore, in social networks analysis (SNA), scientists developed quantitative methodologies to describe networks. SNA techniques include, for instance, computing nodes’ centrality. There is a need to discuss how such quantitative methodologies are and could be implemented in education research. Why the new findings matter This knowledge about relationships between college students’ networks and learning, performance or academic achievement should help develop and implement policies that promote student success at university. Implications for educational researchers and policy makers Education researchers have to be cautious about some methodological challenges encountered when studying networks. Also, alternative centrality measures—that is, those less investigated or not investigated—might be valid candidates for representing the importance of students within networks. With respect to educational policy development: Mixing student abilities within classes appears to be a better option than grouping those abilities, but student prior performance has to be taken into account, as linked to the student type that would most benefit from heterogeneity of performance; Educational practitioners should ensure the sharing and dissemination of relevant and accurate resources and information in student (online) networks; We encourage education professionals to analyse how one might effectively integrate online social platforms into instruction, and to educate students about the adverse effects of misusing these platforms; We recommend education practitioners pay attention to students’ isolation feelings in e‐learning settings; In e‐learning settings, education professionals should ensure that less active students access learning materials and should encourage active participation of students in collaborative tasks.

The main purpose of this meta-analysis study is to investigate how formative assessment practices promote student learning in Turkey. 32 studies with 47 effect sizes that met the specified criteria such as using true experimental or quasi-experimental design and measuring learning outcomes were included as the final analysis in the meta-analytical review method. The overall mean effect size of the study was obtained as .72 (SE= .07, p< .05). Further investigation through subgroup analysis showed that the effect sizes made a significant difference on different types of formative feedback. The effect of features of formative assessment interventions on student learning indicated that student initiated formative feedback (d=1.16) and mixed feedback (d=.83) had a large effect, which was followed by a medium effect of adult initiated formative feedback (d=.69) and a small effect of computer initiated formative feedback (d =.42). On the other hand, education level and publication type had no effect on student academic performance in the study. These findings support the positive effect of formative assessment practices on student learning. Such a result suggests that increasing the number of different types of formative assessment practices in the classrooms would promise a considerable contribution to student learning.

Collaborative filtering has been used in predicting personalized students’ grades in courses at higher educational institutions. The traditional collaborative filtering through student-to-student correlation is based on similarity between students with respect to their grades in all courses that they have taken. However, courses are not completely independent each other. Given a course, the grades of its prerequisite, corequisite and similar courses will affect the grade of the course more than the grades of other unrelated courses will.
 We propose a course attribute-aware student-to-student collaborative filtering-based grade prediction method that incorporates course-relevant attributes such as prerequisite courses, corequisite courses and similar courses for enhanced grade prediction. To predict the grade of a target course C for a target student S, we identify all direct and indirect prerequisite and corequisite courses of C and compute two types of similarity values between C and other courses, i.e., a) the collaborative course-to-course-based similarity values via the Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) and b) the semantic textual course content description-based similarity values via the Cosine similarity on the numeric vector representations of the course content descriptions via Doc2Vec. The course attribute-aware student similarity between S and other students for C is computed as a weighted similarity measure such as the Weighted Pearson correlation coefficient (WPCC) by assigning appropriate weights on each direct/indirect prerequisite course of C, each direct/indirect corequisite course of C, and each course based on two types of similarity values between C and the course. The weights can be adjustable and tuned for optimization.

Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

A curriculum is a set of related courses that constitutes the basis of a degree program. The required courses of a curriculum generally build student knowledge and skills particular to the field. In most cases, these are cumulative, meaning that as students go through their studies, they put their new knowledge on top of earlier ones, hence leading to the notion of prerequisite courses that must precede a given course. As accreditation practices gain widespread acceptance, and as uniformity among peer institutions is promoted to facilitate mobility, each course is assigned a set of learning outcomes. The learning outcomes of a prerequisite course are seen to encapsulate the skills necessary to take the downstream course. This study follows our efforts regarding the substantial revision of engineering courses throughout our college. As the task is quite involved, we developed a flexible linear programming-based tool to help the decision-making process by quickly evaluating alternative curricula. This study aims to provide an effective decision-making tool to accommodate many “what if” scenarios which would provide options to the decision-makers and help them detecting inconsistencies and oversights. This paper describes our approach and our experiences.

With the growing research on deviance, researchers have increasingly identified the two forms of deviance (i.e., positive and negative workplace deviance). In today's competitive environment, organizations must strive to balance these two types of deviance to find their sustainability. Today's cutthroat business environment demands a workplace that encourages employees to be creative and find new ways to work harder and smarter. Ethical leaders play a motivational inspiration for their co-subordinates, allowing them to be positively deviant and try to make processes better and more efficient. But it is not always easy to maintain such a positive environment within the organization as some employees may misuse this freedom and even harm the organization or its people. With the changing generations, today's young mind, (i.e., millennials) consider the positive and healthy competition which boosts their productivity. Thus, managing workplace wellness is part of the sustainable workplace environment.

Today, international competition is growing rapidly, and enterprises must always remain ahead of the competition to ensure their survival. Therefore, firms must keep pace with dynamic conditions and rapid changes, be innovative, and adapt to new systems, techniques and technologies. In a competitive market environment, customers are becoming more conscious and tend to demand a particular number of customised products at a particular speed. Furthermore, fluctuations in national economies and in the global economy create significant risks. Because of all of these factors in today's competitive environment, firms have begun to make radical changes in their management and production structures. They must also reduce costs to maintain their current position in the market.

Due to the impact of quarantine measures against COVID-19, the quality of education in the country’s schools has decreased. This issue is relevant and is on the agenda from the administration of the Head of State to university rectors and teachers, school principals and educators, students and their parents. Most of the participants in the discussion believe that too little money is allocated to the school. This article examines the impact of government spending on education and on students’ academic achievements. According to the literature review, it was revealed that an increase in financial support for secondary schools from the state will lead to an increase in the quality of education. To solve these research questions, we used a correlation analysis between student academic performance and government spending, and household spending. On the basis of the selected variables, a correlation analysis was carried out by the method of rank correlation of the relationship between student performance and the amount of state funding for education. The study concluded that the success of students in education is influenced by non-financial factors, such as educational standards and appropriate teaching methods. At the same time, a paradoxical situation has been revealed, almost every year the government increases annual spending on education in secondary schools, but student academic performance is constantly falling. In addition, there was no strong statistical relationship between student performance and the amount of State funding for education. Therefore, the question arises about the effectiveness of the use of allocated public funds for education.

Because statistical analysis requires the ability to use mathematics, students typically are required to take one or more prerequisite math courses prior to enrolling in the business statistics course. Despite these math prerequisites, however, many students find it difficult to learn business statistics.In this study, we use an ordered probit model to analyze the impact of alternative prerequisite math course sequences on the grade performance of 1,684 business and economics statistics students at a large Midwestern university. In addition, we show how imposing a minimum grade requirement of C- for the math prerequisite course would influence student success in the business statistics course. Although several studies have examined the impact of different math skills, our study is the first to provide a detailed analysis of the impact of different prerequisite math course sequences on student performance in business statistics. We demonstrate that, other things the same, taking more math credit hours, taking math courses that emphasize calculus, and imposing a minimum grade of C- on the prerequisite math course have significant positive impacts on student grade performance in the business and economics statistics course.

Given the debate in tertiary institutions on the use of technology for assessments due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, we compare the performance of accounting students in proctored paper-based and online exams. We examine exam scores across different demographic variables to provide early insights into the impact of these demographics on student performance. Our exploratory analyses indicate that students perform better in proctored online assessments than invigilated paper-based ones. The differences in student performance between these two assessment methods are associated with distinct factors, such as in-person and distance study modes, and student nationality. In summary, the findings of this study provide support for the adoption of online technology in managing exams.

Students and faculty alike would like to know what factors are related to success in college courses. The purpose of this study was to evaluate factors that relate to a student’s success in Animal Physiology I (Phys I), an upper-level animal science course at the University of Arkansas. Student data were confidentially collected and coded. Data collected were student high school grade point average (HSGPA); composite ACT score; English, reading, math, and science subscores on the ACT; and student grades in English composition I and II, college algebra, chemistry, biology, microbiology, animal physiology II, and reproductive physiology. Prematriculation performance confirmed that students with higher HSGPA and (or) ACT scores had better grades in animal physiology I. However, ACT subscores were not more informative than the ACT composite score. Performance in prerequisite courses (chemistry and biology) was significantly related to student grades in Animal Physiology I. Student grades in related courses indicated the same results, that is, students that do well in high school tend to have better grades in college, including in Animal Physiology I.

Today's world lays more emphasis on embedded product design which necessitates the inclusion of hardware courses like Digital Electronics, Computer Organization and Microcontrollers in the curriculum for undergraduate program in Computer Science. These pre-requisite courses introduced in the lower semesters pave the way for students to develop keen interest, skill and proficiency in the area of Embedded system design. But students of Computer Science generally lack interest in hardware related courses, a fact which has been observed time and again by teachers handling these courses. Therefore the challenges that lay before the course instructors was to make the students take interest in these courses and also to make them industry ready so as to compete with peers from other engineering branches in the domain of Embedded Systems. This paper discusses the experience of the authors in teaching the course on Digital Electronics laboratory. In order to handle the challenges mentioned above, after much debate and discussion, amongst all stake holders, it was decided to apply structured enquiry based learning strategy. Structured enquiry is a form of pedagogical practice that facilitates students' to build on previous learning and provide a strong foundation for further learning in relation to the objectives defined. This approach was also found to enhance the quality of teaching as a result of which students' ability to conduct investigations of technical issues consistent with their level of knowledge and understanding improved. Here we present a set of activities, their related outcome based assessment techniques and outcome based strategies applied to the laboratory course on Digital Electronics in Computer Engineering at the III Semester level. The course was designed to consist of initially, conducting simple exercises to provide hands on experience and use of appropriate modern engineering tools to simulate the designed circuit for the given problem statement after which it was prototyped. Along with the regular lab experiments, student' teams were made to work on course projects which required them to design and build projects. This promoted their self-learning, improved their knowledge of digital circuit design well beyond that directly taught in lectures, improved students' creative thinking, applied logic ability and practical thinking. This paper discusses the attempts made by the course teachers to achieve these goals. The first step was to set appropriate course outcomes (COs). The subsequent step was to align the COs to suitable Program Outcomes (POs) through relevant competencies (CAs) and performance indicators (PIs). Later rubrics were written to assess the attainment of each of the Program Outcomes. This activity resulted in enhanced motivational levels amongst students, increased their involvement in the team and improved their knowledge due to self learning.