MCA: Advancing Student Success and Career Horizon through Learning Analytics Research (Advancing SCHOLAR)

职业中期发展计划的目标是通过协同和互利的伙伴关系，特别是在他们所在机构以外的机构，实质性地加强和推进职业中期科学家和工程师的研究计划。本项目合作者提供的资源将为首席研究员（PI）提供与积极参与学习分析研究的个人团队合作的机会，以及访问适合此类研究的大型复杂数据集的机会。反过来，PI将为现有的学习分析研究团队提供额外的研究能力，并为目前不存在的工作带来工程视角。此外，PI将开展补充工作，重点关注主办机构的工程学院，随后将探索垂直联合学习的应用，以解决不同机构背景下的类似研究问题，这些背景的特点是缺乏容纳学生数据的统一数据湖，以及缺乏创建这样一个数据湖的可用资源。虽然黑人和西班牙裔目前约占美国人口的33%，但这部分美国公民仅占2020年授予的所有学士学位的26%，所有硕士学位的22%和所有博士学位的17%。到2060年，由黑人或西班牙裔组成的美国人口比例预计将增至43%。尽管有这种增长，但如果黑人和西班牙裔美国人继续缺乏获得高等教育学位的机会，美国将无法从这部分未开发的公民所代表的额外创新能力中充分受益，也无法跟上保持全球经济竞争力所需的专业人员数量。为了解决这个问题，本研究项目的目的是识别和理解学生完成学位所需时间的驱动因素，并了解这些驱动因素对学位获得总成本的影响——包括基于学生种族、民族、性别、社会经济地位或第一代身份的任何差异影响。本研究中发现的知识将提供对4年和6年毕业率不平等的潜在驱动因素的见解，学习分析研究方法将用于产生数据驱动的建议，以减少这种不平等。该项目通过识别和减少特定学生群体遇到的独特障碍，为包括黑人和西班牙裔在内的所有学士学位学生改善和公平完成学位的时间，朝着改变学生进入的高等教育系统迈出了一步。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The goal of the Mid-Career Advancement program is to substantively enhance and advance the research program of mid-career scientists and engineers through synergistic and mutually beneficial partnerships, typically at an institution other than their home institution. The resources provided by the collaborator of this project will provide the principal investigator (PI) with both the opportunity to work with a team of individuals actively engaged in learning analytics research as well as access to a large complex data set suitable for such research. The PI, in turn, will provide additional research capacity for the existing learning analytics research team and bring an engineering perspective to the work that is not currently present. Moreover, the PI will conduct complementary work focused on the College of Engineering at the host institution and will later explore the application of vertical federated learning to address similar research questions in a different institutional context characterized by the lack of a consolidated data lake housing student data and the lack of resources available to create such a data lake.While Black and Hispanic people currently comprise approximately 33% of the U.S. population, this portion of the U.S. citizenry comprised only 26% of all bachelor’s degrees, 22% of all master’s degrees, and 17% of all doctor’s degrees conferred in 2020. By 2060, the percentage of the U.S. population comprised of people who identify as Black or Hispanic is expected to grow to 43%. Despite this growth, if the dearth of Black and Hispanic Americans earning postsecondary degrees persists, the U.S. will not fully benefit from the additional innovation capacity represented by this untapped portion of its citizenry, nor will it keep pace with the number of professionals needed to maintain economic competitiveness worldwide. To redress this issue, the aim of this research program is to identify and understand the drivers underlying students’ time-to-degree completion and to understand the impacts of these drivers on the total cost of degree attainment – including any differential impacts based on students’ race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, or first-generation status. The discovered knowledge in this study will provide insights into the underlying drivers of inequities in 4- and 6-year graduation rates and learning analytics research approaches will be used to produce data-driven recommendations to reduce such inequities. The project is a step towards transforming the postsecondary system that students are entering by identifying and reducing the unique barriers encountered by specific student subpopulations in support of improved and equitable time-to-degree completion for all baccalaureate students, including Blacks and Hispanics.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.