This volume is largely about nontraditional data; this paper is about a nontraditional visualization: classification trees. Using trees with data will be new to many students, so rather than beginning with a computer algorithm that produces optimal trees, we suggest that students first construct their own trees, one node at a time, to explore how…

Methods based on machine learning have become increasingly popular in many areas as they allow models to be fitted in a highly-data driven fashion and often show comparable or even increased performance in comparison to classical methods. However, in the area of educational sciences, the application of machine learning is still quite uncommon.…

For the offshore energy industry, virtual environment technology can enhance conventional training by teaching basic offshore safety protocols such as onboard familiarization and emergency evacuation. Virtual environments have the added benefit of being used to investigate the impact of different training approaches on competence. This pilot study…

To detect differential item functioning (DIF), Rasch trees search for optimal split-points in covariates and identify subgroups of respondents in a data-driven way. To determine whether and in which covariate a split should be performed, Rasch trees use statistical significance tests. Consequently, Rasch trees are more likely to label small DIF…

Even highly urban environments are settings for outdoor learning of local biodiversity, for they contain easily accessible street tree diversity that students walk pass daily. This study uses pre/post assessments and a tree observation curriculum grounded in scientific observation practice to understand the everyday and scientific tree observation…

This paper reports on progress in the development of a teaching module on machine learning with decision trees for secondary-school students, in which students use survey data about media use to predict who plays online games frequently. This context is familiar to students and provides a link between school and everyday experience. In this…

The literature provides multiple measures of diversity along a single demographic dimension, but when it comes to studying the interaction of multiple diversity types (e.g. age, gender, and race), the field of useable measures diminishes. We present the use of decision trees as a machine learning technique to automatically identify the…

This article explores a narrative approach adopted by three Taiwanese children's books that feature old trees as storytellers and memory-keepers to address aspects of emotional and psychological adaptation when facing drastic life changes. Although these stories are told from the perspective of old trees, the nostalgic tone serves a specific…

Phylogenetic trees are important tools for teaching and understanding evolution, yet students struggle to read and interpret them correctly. In this study, we extend a study conducted by Catley and Novick (2008) by investigating depictions of evolutionary trees in US textbooks. We investigated 1197 diagrams from 11 German and 11 United States…

This design-based study addresses the issue of how to digitally support students' problem-solving by providing heuristics, in the absence of the teacher. The problem is that, so far, digital tutoring systems lack the ability to diagnose students' needs in open problem situations. Our approach is based on students' ability to self-diagnose and find…

Mobile geospatial technologies enable high school students to engage in authentic scientific data collection and analysis that promote spatial-thinking and reasoning skills, as well as problem-solving in a school's local environment. We developed and implemented an Ecological Services investigation aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards…

In this study, classifications were made from the data obtained from the Health-Related Physical Fitness Report cards and BMIs of students through data mining methods, artificial neural networks, and decision trees models. Then the classification performances of both models were compared. The body weight and height measurements of the students in…

Individual response style behaviors, unrelated to the latent trait of interest, may influence responses to ordinal survey items. Response style can introduce bias in the total score with respect to the trait of interest, threatening valid interpretation of scores. Despite claims of response style stability across scales, there has been little…

In educational and psychological research, it is common to use latent factors to represent constructs and then to examine covariate effects on these latent factors. Using empirical data, this study applied three approaches to covariate effects on latent factors: the multiple-indicator multiple-cause (MIMIC) approach, multiple group confirmatory…

Background and Context: Recursion in binary trees has proven to be a hard topic. There was not much research on enhancing student understanding of this topic. Objective: We present a tutorial to enhance learning through practice of recursive operations in binary trees, as it is typically taught post-CS2. Method: We identified the misconceptions…