Prospective longitudinal data collection is an important way for researchers and evaluators to assess change. In school-based settings, for low-risk and/or likely-beneficial interventions or surveys, data quality and ethical standards are both arguably stronger when using a waiver of parental consent--but doing so often requires the use of…

There has been an ongoing debate of which physical labs or virtual labs are better. To resolve this issue, a remote lab provides an online lab that can do real experiments to obtain real data from a distant physical lab. Instead of relying on a remote lab, this article suggests that students collect experimental data locally with low-cost data…

This study reports the use of data mining tools in order to examine the influence of the methodology used in chemistry lab classes, on the weight attributed by the students to the lab work on learning and own motivation. The answer frequency analysis was unable to discriminate the opinions expressed by the respondents according to the type of the…

As the use of educational technology becomes more ubiquitous, an enormous amount of learning process data is being produced. Educational data mining seeks to analyze and model these data, with the ultimate goal of improving learning outcomes. The most firmly grounded and rigorous evaluation of an educational data mining discovery is whether it…

This article reports on a qualitative, descriptive, and interpretative research intervention case study of English as a foreign language students' construction of perceptions on social issues found in famous works of art. Participants in this study engaged in the practice of critical thinking as a strategy to appreciate art that expresses social…

Schools and communities across Montana are working hard to ensure that students receive the best education and graduate ready for college and careers. One of the most important components in this effort involves understanding where students are and how schools and communities can best help them achieve at the highest levels. Data is an invaluable…

This preliminary study investigates the current situation of school library support of K-12 health education in China. A survey of 42 school librarians and 115 K-12 teachers from selected schools was conducted to find out their views about school library's role in school health education and their current practice of library use in health…

Many states and districts across the country struggle with designing and implementing coherent dropout prevention initiatives that promote academic advancement, especially for special needs students, who drop out at much higher rates than the general student population. This "snapshot" describes New Hampshire's innovative use of data…

In this article, the authors explore which conditions support the success of literacy coaches. Because the literacy coach position is a relatively new one, this article examines some of the questions related to designing and implementing the position of the literacy coach, and the potential influence of the position on student achievement. The…

Many school districts are putting data to good use, although much of the data used in administrative decision making ultimately derives from standardized test scores, which raises a host of other related concerns. The author's purpose in this article is not to critique the types or sources of data that administrators use, but to suggest that there…

Introduction: The paper describes an interim model for understanding the influences on information use in relation to plagiarism, with a focus on secondary school students. Available literature mostly focuses on the tertiary level and on quantifying the extent of plagiarism, with limited availability of theory or empirical research focussing on…

The Second International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM2009) was held at the University of Cordoba, Spain, on July 1-3, 2009. EDM brings together researchers from computer science, education, psychology, psychometrics, and statistics to analyze large data sets to answer educational research questions. The increase in instrumented…