Predictive analytics is widely used in learning analytics, but many resource-constrained institutions lack the capacity to develop their own models or rely on proprietary ones trained in different contexts with little transparency. Transfer learning holds promise for expanding equitable access to predictive analytics but remains underexplored due to legal and technical constraints. This paper examines transfer learning strategies for retention prediction at U.S. two-year community colleges. We envision a scenario where community colleges collaborate with each other and four-year universities to develop retention prediction models under privacy constraints and evaluate risks and improvement strategies of cross-institutional model transfer. Using administrative records from 4 research universities and 23 community colleges covering over 800,000 students across 7 cohorts, we identify performance and fairness degradation when external models are deployed locally without adaptation. Publicly available contextual information can forecast these performance drops and offer early guidance for model portability. For developers under privacy regulations, sequential training selecting institut
The rapid adoption of AI tools such as ChatGPT has significantly transformed academic practices, offering considerable benefits for both students and faculty in computing disciplines. These tools have been shown to enhance learning efficiency, academic self-efficacy, and confidence. However, their increasing use also raises pressing concerns regarding the preservation of academic integrity -- an essential pillar of the educational process. This paper explores the implications of widespread AI tool usage within computing colleges, with a particular focus on how to align their use with the principles of academic honesty. We begin by classifying common assessment techniques employed in computing education and examine how each may be impacted by AI-assisted tools. Building on this foundation, we propose a set of general guidelines applicable across various assessment formats to help instructors responsibly integrate AI tools into their pedagogy. Furthermore, we provide targeted, assessment-specific recommendations designed to uphold educational objectives while mitigating risks of academic misconduct. These guidelines serve as a practical framework for instructors aiming to balance the
The main aim of this study was to assess and evaluate user satisfaction with library resources and services among library users associated with Solapur University. The current research shows the level of users satisfaction with different library resources and services offered by college libraries. The research found that a vast number of respondents were pleased with library facilities and services. The research is designed to achieve users satisfaction in the library to investigate the level of satisfaction towards library resources and services with regards to 26 colleges of Solapur University based in Maharashtra. Information in the form of data has been collected from colleges and on the basis of users results; analysis needs to analyze users satisfaction.
Successful careers are built on Skills (what you know), Occupational Identity (what you believe you can be) and Social Capital (who you know). Higher-ed spends significant resources in addressing the first, sometimes to the exclusion of the other two - which are difficult and expensive to teach and administer. This research specifically explores how near-peer mentoring programs, rather than a stand-alone opt-in guidance, can be integrated into the instruction/pedagogy by faculty at California community colleges. The research was conducted at 5 California community colleges (Reedley, Porterville, Coalinga, Solano and Glendale). A mixed-methods approach was used to gather social cognitive measures of student self-efficacy, occupational identity and social capital access. Measures were collected using survey instruments at the beginning of the mentoring program, and at its culmination. One of the most consistent measures observed across all the pilots was the increase in student self-efficacy of skills and competencies (3% - 7%) across colleges, geographies, and course formats after the mentoring program. Additionally, the research offers insights in implementing peer and near-peer me
Automated grading systems, or auto-graders, have become ubiquitous in programming education, and the way they generate feedback has become increasingly automated as well. However, there is insufficient evidence regarding auto-grader feedback's effectiveness in improving student learning outcomes, in a way that differentiates students who utilized the feedback and students who did not. In this study, we fill this critical gap. Specifically, we analyze students' interactions with auto-graders in an introductory Python programming course, offered at five community colleges in the United States. Our results show that students checking the feedback more frequently tend to get higher scores from their programming assignments overall. Our results also show that a submission that follows a student checking the feedback tends to receive a higher score than a submission that follows a student ignoring the feedback. Our results provide evidence on auto-grader feedback's effectiveness, encourage their increased utilization, and call for future work to continue their evaluation in this age of automation
Personalized adaptive learning (PAL) stands out by closely monitoring individual students' progress and tailoring their learning paths to their unique knowledge and needs. A crucial technique for effective PAL implementation is knowledge tracing, which models students' evolving knowledge to predict their future performance. Recent advancements in deep learning have significantly enhanced knowledge tracing through Deep Knowledge Tracing (DKT). However, there is limited research on DKT for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). This study builds a comprehensive dataset to investigate DKT for implementing PAL in STEM education at HBCUs, utilizing multiple state-of-the-art (SOTA) DKT models to examine knowledge tracing performance. The dataset includes 352,148 learning records for 17,181 undergraduate students across eight colleges at Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU). The SOTA DKT models employed include DKT, DKT+, DKVMN, SAKT, and KQN. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of DKT models in accurately predicting students' academic outcomes. Specifically, the SAKT and KQN models outperform
The study investigated the use of electronic resources/information by library users in selected colleges of Solapur University. Specifically, to investigate the awareness and level of use of electronic resources; perceived reliance, benefits and impact of use of electronic resources on the research activities. The research design for the study was a survey. Questionnaire schedule was used to collect data from 1022 library users from selected colleges of Solapur University. The result revealed that preponderance of users from aided 33.51% Self financing 26.10% and Education colleges 43.24 % preferred to visit the Library once in three days. While analyzing the entire college libraries regarding the frequency of visit, users gave first preference to once in three days i.e. 27.2%. College wise analysis reveals that mainstream of users from Aided Colleges 38%, Self financing Colleges 28.3%, Engineering Colleges 43%, Education colleges 53.2% and Pharmacy Colleges 23.4% are spending their time 1-2 hrs in libraries and 40.8%visit college libraries to issue and return books and in the device usage (33.9%) of users ranked mobile phone as the second device for accessing the e-resources. It i
Mental health support in colleges is vital in educating students by offering counseling services and organizing supportive events. However, evaluating its effectiveness faces challenges like data collection difficulties and lack of standardized metrics, limiting research scope. Student feedback is crucial for evaluation but often relies on qualitative analysis without systematic investigation using advanced machine learning methods. This paper uses public Student Voice Survey data to analyze student sentiments on mental health support with large language models (LLMs). We created a sentiment analysis dataset, SMILE-College, with human-machine collaboration. The investigation of both traditional machine learning methods and state-of-the-art LLMs showed the best performance of GPT-3.5 and BERT on this new dataset. The analysis highlights challenges in accurately predicting response sentiments and offers practical insights on how LLMs can enhance mental health-related research and improve college mental health services. This data-driven approach will facilitate efficient and informed mental health support evaluation, management, and decision-making.
Universities hold and process a vast amount of valuable user and research data. This makes them a prime target for cyber criminals. Additionally, universities and other educational settings, such as schools and college IT systems, have become a prime target for some of their own students -- often motivated by an opportunity to cause damage to networks and websites, and/or improve their grades. This paper provides a focused assessment of the current cyber security threat to universities, colleges, and schools (`the education sector') worldwide, providing chronological sequencing of attacks and highlighting the insider threat posed by students. Fifty-eight attacks were identified, with ransomware being the most common type of external attack, and hacking motivated by personal gain showing as the most common form of internal attack. Students, who have become a significant internal threat by either aiding or carrying out attacks are not a homogeneous group, as students may be motivated by different factors, therefore calling for targeted responses. Furthermore, the education sector is increasingly reliant on third party IT service providers meaning attacks on third parties can impact t
This study takes the development path of computer application technology specialty construction in Higher Vocational Colleges under the background of high-level higher vocational schools and specialty construction plan with Chinese characteristics (double high plan) as the main research object, and puts forward the core concept of computer application technology specialty construction and development in Higher Vocational Colleges in China through the practice of computer application technology specialty construction and development reform in recent years The main measures and construction objectives provide specific experience and solutions for deepening the reform of computer application technology specialty in higher vocational colleges.
This article attempts to comprehend the current issues and hurdles that Indian colleges affiliated with Tamil Nadu State Universities encounter when trying to subscribe to a software that detects plagiarism. The study goals are to determine whether colleges employ anti-plagiarism software, whether they ensure that their student-given assignments are free of copyright infringement, whether tutors teach about academic misconduct, and what people seem to think of anti-plagiarism software. We surveyed for this study and distributed the questionnaires among college administrators, principals, and librarians.
The long-term success of HEP lies in expanding inclusiveness beyond national labs and academic research institutions to a vast community of predominantly undergraduate institutions (PUI) and community colleges (CC). Institutions such as PUIs and CCs offer an early starting point in the pipeline that can mitigate issues of lack of diversity and underrepresented participation of different groups in HEP. However, there are many underlying systemic, structural, and cultural challenges that need to be addressed collectively. Experimental collaborations are largely populated by national labs and research-focused academic institutions (non-PUIs). The faculty at PUIs and CCs have a high teaching load that is detrimental to their research participation. In addition, there is a lack of guidance, access, and tough competition for securing research funding. The students also suffer from a lack of research infrastructure and technical equipment that can only be found at national labs and larger universities. There are existing successful efforts to enhance the HEP research experience of students and faculty members. This paper discusses ways to leverage these to provide more research opportunit
The emergence of intellectual property as an academic issue opens a big gate to a cross-disciplinary field. Different disciplines start a dialogue in the framework of the international multilateral treaties in the early 90's. As global economy demands new knowledge on intellectual property, Science grows at its own pace. However, the degree of consolidation of cross-disciplinary academic communities is not clear. In order to know how closely related are these communities, this paper proposes a mixed methodology to find invisible colleges in the production about intellectual property. The articles examined in this paper were extracted from Web of Science. The analyzed period was from 1994 to 2016, taking into account the signature of the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights in the early 90's. A total amount of 1580 papers were processed through co-citation network analysis. An especial technique, which combine algorithms of community detection and defining population of articles through thresholds of shared references, was applied. In order to contrast the invisible colleges that emerged with the existence of formal institutional relations, it was made
The paper aims to present the results of a survey of academic libraries about the adoption and perceived impact of Web 2.0 technologies. A total of 26 college libraries affiliated with Solapur University participated among the members. It was found that each library was using some form of technology, such as RSS, blogs, social networking sites, wikis, and instant messaging. Analyzing the entire college web technology usages, it is observed from the results that most of the web technologies are not used by the mainstream of the users due to lack of awareness, training, etc. Accurate and appropriate training should be conducted by the colleges' Libraries according to the necessities of the users. Systematic training will inevitably help the user for the maximum utilization of e-resources of the library. The leading web technologies such as internet surfing, emails, search engines, wikis, photo sharing, etc. are used by a great number of users on a daily and weekly basis of frequency. On the other hand majority of the web technologies are never used by a great number of users.
Cross-enrollment across institutions can expand access to courses and support student progression. Still, little is known about how geographic constraints and institutional policies jointly shape cross-enrollment within community college (CC) systems. We adopt a push-pull framework: geographic remoteness constrains feasible cross-institution mobility, while credit mobility may attract enrollment expressed as articulation (CC-to-university: credit toward a four-year partner) and course equivalencies (CC-to-CC: equivalencies across the system). Using de-identified administrative records from a 12-institution community college system (100,547 students; 1,290,311 course enrollments), we quantify outgoing and incoming cross-enrollment and relate these patterns to institutional remoteness and credit mobility. We find that less remote colleges exhibit higher outgoing and incoming cross-enrollment than more remote colleges. Further, cross-enrolled students are more likely to take articulated courses, and institutions with higher equivalency ratios receive higher incoming cross-enrollment (8.62% vs. 6.70%). This association was slightly stronger at more remote colleges. This study demonstra
Artificial intelligence has deeply permeated numerous fields, especially the design area which relies on technology as a tool for innovation. This change naturally extends to the field of design education, which is closest to design practice. This has led to further exploration of the impact of AI on college-level education in the design discipline. This study aims to examine how current design educators perceive the role of AI in college-level design education, their perspectives on integrating AI into teaching and research, and their concerns regarding its potential challenges in design education and research. Through qualitative, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with seven faculties in U.S. design colleges, the findings reveal that AI, as a tool and source of information, has become an integral part of design education. AI- derived functionalities are increasingly utilized in design software, and educators are actively incorporating AI as a theoretical framework in their teaching. Educators can guide students in using AI tools, but only if they first acquire a strong foundation in basic design principles and skills. This study also indicates the importance of promoting a coo
This paper explores the intersection of artificial intelligence and higher education administration, focusing on liberal arts colleges (LACs). It examines AI's opportunities and challenges in academic and student affairs, legal compliance, and accreditation processes, while also addressing the ethical considerations of AI deployment in mission-driven institutions. Considering AI's value pluralism and potential allocative or representational harms caused by algorithmic bias, LACs must ensure AI aligns with its mission and principles. The study highlights other strategies for responsible AI integration, balancing innovation with institutional values.
Each year, selective American colleges sort through tens of thousands of applications to identify a first-year class that displays both academic merit and diversity. In the 2023-2024 admissions cycle, these colleges faced unprecedented challenges. First, the number of applications has been steadily growing. Second, test-optional policies that have remained in place since the COVID-19 pandemic limit access to key information historically predictive of academic success. Most recently, longstanding debates over affirmative action culminated in the Supreme Court banning race-conscious admissions. Colleges have explored machine learning (ML) models to address the issues of scale and missing test scores, often via ranking algorithms intended to focus on 'top' applicants. However, the Court's ruling will force changes to these models, which were able to consider race as a factor in ranking. There is currently a poor understanding of how these mandated changes will shape applicant ranking algorithms, and, by extension, admitted classes. We seek to address this by quantifying the impact of different admission policies on the applications prioritized for review. We show that removing race da
Founded in 2007, the Foothill College Physics Show has served nearly a quarter of a million attendees in the two decades that have followed. This demo show features both performances for the public and field trips for students from local Title 1 schools. The college's students play an important role, acting as both on-stage talent, leading tours of the college, and helping build equipment. From a small beginning, it now hosts over twenty-five thousand attendees a year, and is an important part of the college's outreach efforts.
Psychological stress encompasses emotional tension and pressure experienced by people, which usually arises from situations people find challenging. However, more is needed to know about the pressures faced by international college students studying in China. The goal of this study is to investigate the various stressors that international college students in China face and how they cope with stress (coping mechanisms). Twenty international students were interviewed to gather data, which was then transcribed. Thematic analysis and coding were applied to the qualitative data, revealing themes related to the causes of stress. The following themes emerge from this data: anticipatory anxiety or future stress, social and cultural challenges, financial strain, and academic pressure. These themes will help understand the various stressors international college students in China face and how they try to cope. Studying how international college students in China cope with challenges can guide the development of targeted interventions to support their mental health. Research suggests that integrating aesthetics and connectivity into design interventions can notably improve the well-being of