University at Albany, State University of New York
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Multi-activity Student Knowledge and Behavior Modeling via Transfer Learning
Get PDFOnline education systems have grown in popularity over the past few years, providing abundant opportunities for students to learn. As the number of students using these systems grows, it promotes the development of the Educational Data Mining (EDM) field, which leverages statistical, machine learning, and data mining technologies to explore large-scale educational data and develop methods to better understand student learning.
In this dissertation, we investigate two essential topics in EDM: Student Knowledge Tracing (KT) and Behavior Modeling (BM). KT aims to quantify and model student knowledge gained from learning activities, while BM focuses on tasks such as modeling student choices and preferences for future learning materials. Accurately tracing student knowledge and modeling student behavior can help us better understand students learning. This understanding can be applied to recommend useful learning materials to students, detect knowledge gaps, and better plan study schedules, to improve learning efficiency.
Online education systems provide students with access to diverse types of learning materials, such as video lectures, textbooks, and interactive questions. Students interact with and learn from these materials in different ways, leading to various types of learning activities (multi-activity). Additionally, in many online education systems, students can follow their preferences when choosing learning materials to study rather than following a predefined sequence set by a teacher or instructor, leading to varied behavior patterns. Every type of learning activity and each one individually can contribute to the student learning process, affecting both their knowledge and behavior. We argue that student knowledge and student behavior, or the choice of learning materials can be associated with each other. Therefore, it is essential to understand student knowledge and behavior throughout the learning trajectory involving multiple types of learning activities. Thus, the goals of this dissertation include studying student knowledge and behavior, as well as their association, and developing and improving student knowledge and behavior modeling when students interact with multiple types of learning materials.
We treat student learning activities involving multiple types of learning materials as multi-activity learning sequences and suggest adopting transfer learning to address these multi-activity sequence modeling problems. In this dissertation, we aim to investigate the following tasks: (1) Student knowledge acquisition from multiple learning material types. (2) Knowledge transfer modeling between different learning material types. (3) Simultaneous knowledge and behavior modeling.
We hypothesize that modeling student learning from different types of activities and behavior related to learning material choices can effectively improve the understanding of student knowledge and behavior
Effects of Grant Termination for Orphans, Vulnerable Children and Their Caregivers in Windhoek, Namibia
Get PDFNamibia faces complex child welfare policy dilemmas in providing sustainable support for the increasing number of AIDS-orphaned youth transitioning into adulthood. While Orphan and Vulnerable Children (OVC) social grants have played a vital role in poverty alleviation and childhood development (Ministry of Gender Equality, Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare, 2021), the abrupt termination of these grants for youth when they reach 18 years of age without any transitional support has posed significant risks to their well-being. While much research in Namibia (Mnubi-Mchombu and Ocholla, 2014; Van Der Brug, 2012.) has examined the impact of OVC grants on children under the age of 18, there is a lack of research exploring the perceptions and impacts after grant termination on this vulnerable population.
This qualitative, exploratory phenomenological study addresses this research gap by investigating the psychosocial experiences of OVC youth and their caregivers following grant termination. A purposive criterion sampling technique was used to select 10 OVC recipients aged out of the program and 9 caregivers in Windhoek, Namibia. In-depth interviews were conducted, and an inductive thematic analysis approach utilizing Atlas. ti for coding was employed to analyze the data. The study revealed that grant termination led to significant psychosocial challenges, including psychological distress, socioeconomic hardships, and educational barriers, compounded by a lack of continuing familial and communal support for OVC youth. Participants employed both positive coping strategies (financial adaptation, entrepreneurship, community support) and negative coping mechanisms (risky sexual behaviors, substance abuse, criminal activities). The findings challenged the policy’s assumption of self-sufficiency at 18 and highlighted inconsistencies and deleterious effects in grant termination policies.
The study suggests implications for social welfare policy and practice, including the need for extended or graduated financial support, vocational training programs, mental health services, and stronger community support systems for orphaned young adults. Future research should explore the short and long-term outcomes of grant termination, the effectiveness of alternative support programs, and the development of best practices for supporting orphaned youth during their transition to adulthood
Exploring Diatom Community Composition along the Ganga River Ghats in Prayagraj Using Next Generation Sequencing: A Comprehensive Biodiversity Analysis
Get PDFThe Ganga River is a crucial water body in India, impacting the lives of millions. This research focuses on studying tiny organisms called diatoms in different areas of the Ganga River in Prayagraj, using High Throughput Sequencing. Diatoms were collected from four riverbanks, and the results show a diverse community of 45,447 diatoms belonging to 65 species. By using a new generation sequencing method, we classified these diatoms into four classes, nineteen orders, twenty-four families, thirty-nine genera, and sixty-five species. This detailed study is a significant contribution to understanding the ecology of the Ganga River
The Effect of Learning Environment and Student Groupings on Math Skill Mastery
Get PDFThis study was designed to evaluate the impact of instructional group size and composition on student progress within a classwide math intervention. In terms of group size, groupings of greater than and less than 10 students were compared. In terms of group composition, homogeneous and heterogeneous groups were compared, defined by grouping the classes with standard deviations of student performance within the upper quartile (heterogeneous) and lower quartile (homogeneous) on a pre-intervention measure. The outcome measure used to evaluate student progress was the number of trials required for students to reach mastery on a specific skill within the 16-skill intervention trajectory. Comparisons between the two groups were conducted for each skill to determine whether students reached mastery more efficiently in a certain type of intervention grouping (e.g., large vs. small and homogeneous vs. heterogeneous). Results showed significant differences in learning efficiency for homogeneous versus heterogeneous student groupings, with students placed in more heterogeneous groups reaching mastery on the math skill trajectory at a statistically significantly faster pace than their peers in a more homogeneous grouping. Group size comparisons led to results that were less conclusive, with some skills showing significantly more efficient growth for smaller groups, but overall effectively null results. This contributed to the research base in support of mixed-ability groupings for intervention, particularly in a tier 1.5 classwide intervention that relies on peer mediated learning as a component of instruction. Future research incorporating a different frequency of progress monitoring data collection, further exploration of group size differences, and examination of different types of outcome metrics would provide further information on optimal group size and compositions for mathematics intervention
Non-Emergent Medical Transportation (NEMT) Needs and Options for Saratoga County Residents with Substance Use Disorder
Get PDFSaratoga County has faced an increasing burden of substance use disorder (SUD) in recent years. The Saratoga County Department of Health (DOH) identified transportation as a key barrier to SUD treatment that could be improved through targeted application of opioid settlement funding. To this end, the Saratoga County DOH engaged the Center for Human Services Research (CHSR) to estimate the need for non-emergent medical transportation (NEMT) for residents with SUD in Saratoga County and determine the non-emergent transportation program options available and investigate the pros and cons of each, including the potential costs of program implementation
An Exploratory Study of Anti-Black Racism in Social Media Behavior Intentions: Effects of Political Orientation and Motivation to Control Prejudice
Get PDFConsidering the widespread prevalence of racist content and opinions on social media, there is a pressing need to understand how users react to such content in ways that might lead them to be drawn into echo chambers of racism, hate speech, and potentially even violence. We conducted an online study to investigate how two individual differences—political orientation and motivation to control prejudice (MCP)—may predispose people to accept anti-Black racism expressed in social media messages. Non-Black participants viewed racist and egalitarian mock social media posts and reported how likely they would be to respond favorably and/or engage in supportive social media behaviors. People who identified as conservative and those who reported having low internal MCP were equally accepting of racist and egalitarian posts, whereas people who identified as liberal and those who reported having high internal MCP were less accepting of the racist versus egalitarian post. External MCP did not affect judgments. We consider how these effects might contribute to racism, hate, and violence
From SWOT to Success: The Collaborative Strategic Planning Journey of an Academic Library Department
No full textThis article discusses the benefits of engaging library staff in a department strategic planning process, using the University at Albany Libraries’ Access Services Department as an example. The author describes the process used to create a department strategic plan, which involved a combination of department meetings, independent and group work, and ongoing communication to maintain staff engagement. The resulting plan connected department goals and initiatives to the strategic plans of the University at Albany and the University Libraries to provide staff members with a better understanding of the importance of their work to the overall strategic direction of the university. Additionally, the planning process provided staff with a morale boost, and the plan served as a communication tool to articulate the contributions of the department to the university community