We interrogate the opportunities and challenges of using mixed methods (MM) within a developmental evaluation (DE) context by drawing on two illustrative cases that investigated educational change in Canada. Methods: Multi-case design and cross-case analysis, with a focus on examining common patterns across the two cases, enabling new ways of…

A new lecture supporting system based on real-time learning analytics is proposed. Our target is on-site classrooms where teachers give their lectures, and a lot of students listen to teachers' explanation, conduct exercises etc. We utilize not only an e-Learning system, but also an e-Book system to collect real-time learning activities during the…

We propose a graph mining methodology to analyze the relationships among academic programs from the point of view of cooperative education. The input consists of student - job interview pairs, with each student labelled with his or her academic program. From this input, we build a weighted directed graph, which we refer to as a program graph, in…

Some universities administer standardized tests to estimate school effects on student learning. To that end, many of those institutions choose to gather cross-sectional data (freshmen and seniors in the same academic year) rather than longitudinal data. The effects of this decision on institutional assessment results are generally unknown. The…

Learning analytics can promote pedagogically informed use of learner data, which can steer the progress of technology mediated learning across several learning contexts. This paper presents the application of analytics to a mobile learning solution and demonstrates how a pedagogical sense was inferred from the data. Further, this inference was…

What are the challenges faced by a mid-south liberal arts college teacher education program, in its attempt to successfully meet the new Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) accreditation requirements? The Investigator studied the Educator Program Provider (EPP) during academic year 2015-2016. The challenges faced by the…

In the information age, one of the most influential institutions is education. The recent emergence of MOOCS [Massively Open Online Courses] is a sample of the new expectations that are offered to university students. Basing decisions on data and evidence seems obvious, and indeed, research indicates that data-driven decision-making improves…

Student feedback surveys are an important component of the continuous improvement cycle at the University of Newcastle. This article describes a recently adopted holistic approach to collecting, analysing, reporting and acting on student feedback on courses (units of study), programs (collection of courses leading to an award) and the student…

The monitoring and support of university freshmen is considered very important at many educational institutions. In this paper we describe the results of the educational data mining case study aimed at predicting the Electrical Engineering (EE) students drop out after the first semester of their studies or even before they enter the study program…

The Nigerian Government and other stakeholders invest heavily in Education. The Education system should therefore be held accountable to be sure that value is being given to justify the financial investments and the period of time spent schooling. This is only possible through the process of quality control of the Education system and it is…

The benefits accrued through the use of triangulation as both a design strategy and an analytic tool cannot be overstated. Triangulation allows for the clustering and organizing of disparate yet related data. Finding out what the data have in common and how the data are different allow the researcher to eliminate (or reduce) the number of…

This paper discusses a qualitative case study that addresses how an intranet can provide opportunities for learning about an organization's culture. Four primary findings are discussed with the study concluding that cultural knowledge is conveyed and renewed through an intranet in a learning process that emphasizes informal learning and…

Although multi-institutional data are more available than ever, researchers still face daunting hurdles when collecting data from multiple institutions. These hurdles are particularly high for stand-alone projects. This paper makes the case that, despite the difficulties, results from multi-institution research benefit both participating colleges…

This description of ways in which a microcomputer can enhance the process of conducting qualitative research uses a multiple site case study in education carried out during 1986-87 as an example (the study examined the mobilization and implementation stages of introducing microcomputers into a majority adopter school district). Specific…

Using a needs assessment conducted for the Girl Scouts of Greater Philadelphia as a test case, this article analyzes the conditions facilitating the collection of information needed for strategic planning in a voluntary organization and the related conditions influencing whether or not the information would in fact be used. (TJH)