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

中期职业发展计划的目标是通过协同和互利的合作伙伴关系，实质性地增强和推进中期职业科学家和工程师的研究计划，通常是在他们的家乡机构以外的机构。该项目的合作者提供的资源将为主要研究者（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，并为目前尚不存在的工作带来工程视角。此外，委员会认为，PI将在主办机构的工程学院开展补充工作，随后将探索垂直联邦学习的应用，以解决不同机构背景下的类似研究问题，这些机构的特点是缺乏容纳学生数据的统一数据湖，并且缺乏创建这样一个数据湖的资源。在美国人口中，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，美国人口中黑人或西班牙裔的比例预计将增长到43%。尽管有这种增长，但如果获得高等教育学位的黑人和西班牙裔美国人的缺乏持续下去，美国将无法充分受益于这部分尚未开发的公民所代表的额外创新能力，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，本研究计划的目的是确定和了解学生完成学位的时间的驱动因素，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。这项研究中发现的知识将深入了解4年和6年毕业率不平等的潜在驱动因素，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。该项目是朝着改变学生进入的中学后教育系统迈出的一步，确定并减少特定学生群体遇到的独特障碍，以支持所有学士学位学生更好和公平地完成学位，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的评估来支持。影响审查标准。

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.