The Center for Disease Control (CDC) did not allow elementary aged students to receive the vaccination for COVID-19 (which will be referred to as the pandemic) until the Spring of 2021. This created two environments: the face-to-face learning environment and the virtual learning environment. Teachers were thrown into a situation in which they had…

The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group design study was to measure the effects of both types of manipulatives on student mathematical understanding of 1st and 4th grade, Title I students. This data is needed for teachers to make informed decisions regarding their instructional choices. 270 participants…

The current study aimed to explore the COVID-19 impact on reading achievement growth by Grade 3-5 students in a large urban school district in the U.S. and whether the impact differed by students' demographic characteristics and instructional modality. Specifically, using administrative data from the school district, we investigated to what extent…

Collaborative learning helps to construct a learning situation in which students solve problems together, and their learning effectiveness is promoted. However, collaborative learning often has the problem of unequal participation of learners. Therefore, this study combines the collaborative learning mode of the virtual environment of digital…

The COVID-19 pandemic initially resulted in an unanticipated and near-universal shift from in-person to virtual instruction in spring 2020. During the 2020-21 school year, schools began to re-open and families were faced with decisions regarding the instructional mode for their children. We leverage administrative, survey, and virtual-learning…

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an unanticipated, near-universal shift from in-person to virtual instruction in the spring of 2020. During the 2020-21 school year, schools began to reopen, and families were faced with decisions regarding the instructional mode for their children. We leverage administrative, survey, and virtual-learning data to…

The current study aimed to explore the COVID-19 impact on the reading achievement growth of Grade 3-5 students in a large urban school district in the U.S. and whether the impact differed by students' demographic characteristics and instructional modality. Specifically, using administrative data from the school district, we investigated to what…

This study explored diverse students' literacy development in Grades 3-5 in a literacy club. It also served as a self-study to examine how I developed and facilitated this literacy club. This study focused on a group of diverse students engaged in a literacy club across two study phases. The first phase consisted of an after-school literacy club…

The purpose of this comparative, quantitative study was to explore the relationship of interim test scores among remote and in-person learners, low-income students, and students with disabilities. In March 2020, a portion of students enrolled in a K-12 school in Northeast Tennessee was moved into remote learning until the end of the school year in…

This dissertation consists of three papers. In each paper, I leverage a different quantitative method to study a downstream effect of technology on educational outcomes. In the first paper, I study the impact of an online math learning program on 3rd through 5th grade math achievement in Louisiana. Employing Zearn Math usage metrics and…

In March of 2020 the COVID-19 Pandemic changed the world in education as we knew it. Schools, along with businesses and public venues around the world shut their doors in order to attempt to slow the spread of the virus. Just because the brick-and-mortar buildings were being closed did not mean that schooling would stop. Teachers and students from…