18054 research outputs found
Sort by
Revealing underlying factors of absenteeism: A machine learning approach
No full textIntroduction: The basis of support is understanding. In machine learning, understanding happens through assimilated knowledge and is centered on six pillars: big data, data volume, value, variety, velocity, and veracity. This study analyzes school attendance problems (SAP), which encompasses its legal statutes, school codes, students’ attendance behaviors, and interventions in a school environment. The support pillars include attention to the physical classroom, school climate, and personal underlying factors impeding engagement, from which socio-emotional factors are often the primary drivers.
Methods: This study asked the following research question: What can we learn about specific underlying factors of absenteeism using machine learning approaches? Data were retrieved from one school system available through the proprietary Building Dreams (BD) platform, owned by the Fight for Life Foundation (FFLF), whose mission is to support youth in underserved communities. The BD platform, licensed to K-12 schools, collects student-level data reported by educators on core values associated with in-class participation (a reported—negative or positive—behavior relative to the core values) based on Social–Emotional Learning (SEL) principles. We used a multi-phased approach leveraging several machine learning techniques (clustering, qualitative analysis, classification, and refinement of supervised and unsupervised learning). Unsupervised technique was employed to explore strong boundaries separating students using unlabeled data.
Results: From over 20,000 recorded behaviors, we were able to train a classifier with 90.2% accuracy and uncovered a major underlying factor directly affecting absenteeism: the importance of peer relationships. This is an important finding and provides data-driven support for the fundamental idea that peer relationships are a critical factor affecting absenteeism.
Discussion: The reported results provide a clear evidence that implementing socio-emotional learning components within a curriculum can improve absenteeism by targeting a root cause. Such knowledge can drive impactful policy and programming changes necessary for supporting the youth in communities overwhelmed with adversities
The Vicissitudes
Get PDFOn the surface, Julia\u27s life at middle age seems calm and settled. Her children are grown; she\u27s got plenty of friends and family; and her marriage has survived a betrayal. But when she unexpectedly receives a text from an old flame, one by one the certitudes she\u27s come to rely on start to unravel and Julia\u27s is forced to reckon anew with the meaning of her life and her place in the world
Economic Implications of State-Wide COVID-19 Response Aggressiveness
Get PDFIn this paper, we evaluate how the aggressiveness of each State’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic affected their respective economies from Q2, 2020 through Q2, 2021. In our study, we utilize the scale developed by McCann (2020, 2021), which ranks the least aggressive state response to the most aggressive state response at three different points of the pandemic. Using this methodology, we test the impact of the aggressiveness of each state governments’ response with the resulting economic impact within that State. Namely, we examine how this level of response affected each State’s unemployment rate, gross domestic product growth, and taxable sales growth of 27 various industries. In our analysis, we find that there was a significantly negative impact between each states response aggression and unemployment rates, GDP growth, and taxable sales for a sizable percentage of the analyzed industries. These results appear to remain consistent when we both analyze the instant quarterly impact of the restrictions imposed on a State, as well as when we factor in a quarter lag for each State’s response
Investigation Into the Responses of Physcomitrella patens to Herbivory and the Influence of Light on the Production of Defense Compounds
Get PDFPlant defense mechanisms are well studied in many agriculturally relevant crops such as corn and tomatoes. Though less studied, the more ancestral nonvascular plants may be able to provide insights into the origin and working of modern plant defense systems. In this study, the bryophyte Physcomitrella patens was researched and the role of the jasmonic acid pathway in response to herbivory was investigated. Additionally, the impact of light intensity on the efficacy of this pathway was to be determined. After exposing the moss to various chemical elicitors and mechanical wounding, the activity of proteins produced in the JA pathway was measured. In P. patens, no definitive conclusions could be drawn regarding the role of JA in the defense against herbivory. Due to a lack of results from the initial experiments, the light experiments were not performed
Dehumanization and the Power Hierarchy in Black Mirror’s “Men Against Fire”
Get PDFCharlie Brooker’s popular Netflix series Black Mirror has never failed to reflect society’s shadows, and season three’s “Men Against Fire” carries the torch in revealing that our dependence on technology leads to othering, dehumanization, and a perpetual power struggle. As technology rapidly evolves, its tendrils sink further into the human, organic world, making it increasingly difficult for humans to behave ethically as we gain power. Simultaneously, those at the other end of the spectrum are dehumanized as they are monitored and manipulated through the use of technology and power. The links between “Men Against Fire” and both historical and modern accounts, including the Holocaust and today’s refugee crisis, show that we do not change and are unprepared to keep up with the power that technology brings. Compelling dialogue, combined with first-person angles, gives the audience a firsthand view of a not-so-distant future in which our willingness to become socially distant and indifferent to suffering outside of our own group has led to the destruction of society and to the ongoing mission to destroy an entire population of powerless people. The intricate web of relation between power, technology, dehumanization, privacy, and xenophobia is strikingly evident in both “Men Against Fire” and our own world, offering a haunting premonition of our potential future state
Masked Emotions: Studying the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Emotional Regulation in College Students and Beyond
Get PDFStudies regarding the socioemotional selectivity theory have found that upcoming endings lead to a positivity bias in individuals’ executive functioning. The current study seeks to expand upon this theory by studying the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on college students and graduates. It was predicted that (a) current students would demonstrate more negative emotionality than pre-COVID students, (b) current students would demonstrate a greater positivity bias than pre-COVID students, and (c) this bias would be more pronounced in current seniors and weaker in current freshmen and college graduates. Participants responded to several scales regarding personality (neuroticism, shyness) and emotional factors (depression, anxiety, optimism/pessimism, loneliness, general affect) and completed working-memory tasks for happy, neutral, and sad human faces. Results revealed that current students performed significantly worse on all conditions of the working memory task; additionally, current students scored significantly lower on optimism and higher on shyness, anxiety, depression, general affect, and neuroticism. Among current students, only loneliness differed significantly, with first-year students being the most lonely. Although findings were inconsistent with the socioemotional selectivity theory, they suggest that overall emotionality can have detrimental effects on executive functioning. Findings that first-year students are significantly more lonely than pre-COVID students and other current students suggests that social-distancing practices are having a particularly negative effect on connectedness for these students
