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Modeling Improvement for Underrepresented Minorities in Online STEM Education

Published: 07 June 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Previous research has shown that students from underrepresented minority groups tend to receive lower grades in online classes than their peers, especially in science-focused courses. We propose that there may also be benefits to online courses for these students (e.g., opportunities for peer discussions where minority status is less salient), though little is currently known about these potential benefits. We present a new perspective on learning outcomes by measuring improvement, rather than grades alone. In learning management system data from seven semesters of an online introductory science course, we found that students from underrepresented minority racial groups were indeed less likely to receive high grades, and scored lower on exams; however, their exam scores improved throughout the semester a similar amount compared to their peers. We also compared improvement to students' behaviors, including exam submission times and forum usage, finding that these behaviors were related to improvement. Finally, we also briefly discuss implications of these findings for reducing inequalities in education, and the possibilities for underrepresented minority students in online STEM education in particular.

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  • (2023)Detector-driven classroom interviewing: focusing qualitative researcher time by selecting cases in situEducational technology research and development10.1007/s11423-023-10324-yOnline publication date: 22-Dec-2023
  • (2021)A Social Network Analysis of Online Engagement for College Students Traditionally Underrepresented in STEMLAK21: 11th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference10.1145/3448139.3448159(207-215)Online publication date: 12-Apr-2021
  • (2020)Improving Student Accessibility, Equity, Course Performance, and Lab Skills: How Introduction of ClassTranscribe is Changing Engineering Education at the University of Illinois2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings10.18260/1-2--34796Online publication date: Jun-2020

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      UMAP '19: Proceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization
      June 2019
      377 pages
      ISBN:9781450360210
      DOI:10.1145/3320435
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      Published: 07 June 2019

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      1. online education
      2. stem education
      3. underrepresented groups

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      View all
      • (2023)Detector-driven classroom interviewing: focusing qualitative researcher time by selecting cases in situEducational technology research and development10.1007/s11423-023-10324-yOnline publication date: 22-Dec-2023
      • (2021)A Social Network Analysis of Online Engagement for College Students Traditionally Underrepresented in STEMLAK21: 11th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference10.1145/3448139.3448159(207-215)Online publication date: 12-Apr-2021
      • (2020)Improving Student Accessibility, Equity, Course Performance, and Lab Skills: How Introduction of ClassTranscribe is Changing Engineering Education at the University of Illinois2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings10.18260/1-2--34796Online publication date: Jun-2020

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