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The digital trails that students leave behind on e-learning environments have attracted considerable attention in the past decade. Typically, some of these traces involve the production of different kinds of texts. While students routinely produce a bulk of texts in online learning settings, the potential of such linguistic features has not been systematically explored. This paper introduces a novel approach that involves using student-generated texts for predicting performance after viewing short video lectures. Forty-two undergraduates viewed six video lectures and were asked to write short summaries for each one. Five combinations of features that were extracted from these summaries were used to train eight machine learning classifiers. The findings indicated that the raw text feature set achieved higher average classification accuracy in two video lectures, while the combined feature set whose dimensionality had been reduced resulted in higher classification accuracy in two other video lectures. The findings also indicated that the Gradient Boost, AdaBoost and Random Forest classifiers achieved high average performance in half of the video lectures. The study findings suggest that student-produced texts are a very promising source of features for predicting student performance when learning from short video lectures.

Nowadays, the improvement of digital learning with Artificial Intelligence has attracted a lot of research, as it provides solutions for individualized education styles which are independent of place and time. This is particularly the case for computer science, as a tutoring domain, which is rapidly growing and changing and as such, learners need frequent update courses. In this paper, we present a thorough evaluation of a fuzzy-based intelligent tutoring system (ITS), that teaches computer programming. The evaluation concerns multiple aspects of the ITS. The evaluation criteria are: (i) context, (ii) effectiveness, (iii) efficiency, (iv) accuracy, (v) usability and satisfaction, and (vi) engagement and motivation. In the evaluation process students of an undergraduate program in Informatics of the University of Piraeus in Greece participated. The evaluation method that was used included questionnaires, analysis of log files and experiments. Also, t-tests were conducted to certify the validity of the evaluation results. Indeed, the evaluation results are very positive and show that the incorporated fuzzy mechanism to the presented ITS enhances the system with Artificial Intelligence and through this, it increases the learners' satisfaction and new knowledge learning and mastering, improves the recommendation accuracy of the system, the efficacy of interactions, and contributes positively to the learners' engagement in the learning process.

Our modern era has brought about radical changes in the way courses are delivered and various teaching methods are being introduced to answer the purpose of meeting the modern learning challenges. On that account, the conventional way of teaching is giving place to a teaching method which combines conventional instructional strategies with contemporary learning trends. Thereby, a new course type has emerged, the blended course in the context of which online teaching and conventional instruction are efficiently mixed. This paper demonstrates a way to identify factors affecting students' critical performance in blended courses through a binary logistics regression analysis on students' engagement data. The binary logistics regression analysis has led to a risk model which identifies and prioritizes these factors in proportion to their contribution to the risk occurrence. The risk model is demonstrated in the context of two specific blended courses sharing the same learning design. Additionally, the outcome of the study has proved that factors related to the e-learning part have critically affected the students' performance in the respective blended courses.

Children from Roma communities are consistently among the lowest academic achievers in many European countries and this holds true in Greece. In Greek schools, Roma students experience high dropout rates and low performance compared to their non-Roma peers. Moreover, in Greece, as elsewhere, Roma experience wide-spread discrimination. Drawing on a set of in-depth interviews with 20 Greek Roma who have entered higher education, this paper examines how these participants account for their educational success. In particular, this article analyses the influence of 'community factors' on the participants' academic progression. This article highlights aspects of the Greek case of Roma's educational success that may contribute towards addressing aspects related to Roma's educational exclusion and promoting educational progression in the European context more widely.

Accurate and early predictions of student performance could significantly affect interventions during teaching and assessment, which gradually could lead to improved learning outcomes. In our research, we seek to identify and formalize temporal parameters as predictors of performance ("temporal learning analytics" or TLA) and examine students' temporal behaviour during testing (i.e., in terms of time-spent). The goal is to specify a functional set of parameters that will be embedded in an adaptive assessment system in order to contribute towards the personalization of feedback services. In this paper, we present the motivation and rationale for our work, along with our methodology, initial results, contributions so far, and plans for future work.

In contemporary academic literature and in many national curricula, there is a widespread acceptance that critical thinking should be an important dimension of Education. Teachers and researchers recognize the importance of developing students critical thinking, but there are still great difficulties in defining and assessing critical-thinking skills. The multiple definitions of critical thinking indicate the need for further clarification of the concept. An important attempt for clarifying the concept was the "Delphi Report" (Facione, 1990a), where a qualitative research methodology, known as the Delphi Method, was used to develop a unified theoretical framework. The core critical-thinking skills identified in the Delphi Report as essential elements for workplace and educational success are targeted in the assessment tool entitled "The Test of Everyday Reasoning" (TER) (Facione, 2001). TER was translated from English into Greek and standardized for Greek population. TER has a series of questions engaging the participant in the interpretation and reasoning relating to the information provided in charts and graphs as well as to the accompanying them textual description. This paper presents the results from the standardization of TER in terms of graph/chart interpretation and reading comprehension skills. Implications for science education in Greece are also discussed. (Contains 1 table, 4 figures, and 3 footnotes.)

The results presented in this paper contribute to research on two different areas of teaching methods: distributed pair programming (DPP) and computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). An evaluation study of a DPP system that supports collaboration scripts was conducted over one semester of a computer science course. Seventy-four students participated in the study and used the DPP model to solve programming assignments in pairs, rather than individually. Students were divided into two cohorts in order to examine how best to distribute programming tasks to students, to maximize learning outcomes. The results suggest that while the use of DPP improves pass rates and gets positive feedback from students, the use of collaboration scripts yields equal task contributions from each of the student pair. For a small number of students, overall performance was improved by the adaptive assignment of programming activities, designed to engage students equally in diverse roles and activities.

This paper presents some of the findings that emerged out of a national survey carried out in the school year 2005-2006 in various parts of Greece. The main aim of the study was to explore the effects of various "family" factors on the "student performance" in the (national) higher education entrance examinations. From the analysis of data it becomes evident that, despite numerous attempts at educational reform in the Greek education system in the last 30 years, inequalities among students based on family background still exist. The study has shown that the educational level and occupational status of parents represent two of the major factors affecting student performance--directly or indirectly--through their influence on previous achievement. It has also documented that the interplay between economic, cultural and social capital in shaping educational and occupational "pathways" is still an immensely important dimension in sociological studies of education. (Contains 1 figure, 2 notes, 1 graph and 10 tables.)

In this article, 93 Greek university departments were evaluated according to their academics' h-index. A representative sample from the fields of social sciences and humanities, sciences, engineering, pharmacy and economics was adopted. In the reported study, 3354 (approximately 1 out of 3) academics serving in Greek universities were evaluated. The number of papers, citations and h-index have been collected for each academic, department, school and university using the Google Scholar scientific database and the citations analysis software program Publish or Perish. Analysis revealed that departments of the same academic discipline but located in different universities are characterised by strong differences on the scientific outcome. In addition, in the majority of the evaluated departments, a significant difference in h-index was observed between academics who report scientific activity on the departments' website and those who do not. The viability of the adopted method for measuring and ranking the scientific performance of higher education departments proved to be quite high. (Contains 19 tables.)

Participation in the national exams is a very difficult task for Greek lyceum students as their access to higher education is highly dependent on their performance in them. This paper focuses on the students' preparation for the national exams and especially their resort to out-of-school supportive lessons in relation to their socio-economic background. The study examines whether the widening of participation reduces social inequalities or not. It also examines the possibility of their resort to different forms of out-of-school support and the cost of it in relation to their families' socio-economic background and their performance. The findings give evidence that there is a close relationship between parents' socio-economic state and the form of out-of-school support as well as the students' performance in the national exams. High social class parents increase the possibilities of their children's turn to the out-of-school support and especially to the most expensive and effective forms of it, as it can ensure high performance and access to high academic status departments. It has become a means for high social class parents to help their children face competition and ensure the reproduction of their social privileges. All this leads to the conclusion that in spite of the fact that the vast majority of the Greek students attend public lyceums, the out-of-school support has led to the commercialization of education and the public character of education tends to be dismissed. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.)

This paper describes a controlled experiment concerning the use of a learning aid during an open and distance learning (ODL) course. The core issue of investigation is whether this instructional aid can support, guide, and scaffold the distant student in his/her study. For this purpose, a controlled experiment was conducted with the participation of 191 undergraduate students at the department of informatics at a university in Greece. The considered domain was two lessons concerning human-computer interaction (HCI), the first in usability engineering and the second in interface evaluation methodologies. A test session was also conducted to collect data on the assessment of the effectiveness of the proposed tool. Descriptive statistics as well as a variety of statistical methods have been applied to the collected data in order to test the research hypotheses. The results have shown a statistically significant difference in performance for the student group that used the tool. In order to validate these results, a validity evaluation was also considered and presented. Finally, concerns about the application of the tool in a broader context and further research on the area are also presented. (Contains 4 tables and 3 figures.)

The paper examines the way the national higher education entry examinations in Greece are used to determine entry into the 100 percent government-controlled state tertiary education system. The database refers to the population of all secondary education graduates taking (or not taking) the June 2000 national secondary school examination. There is considerable achievement variation across regions and types of school. Poor districts, evening schools, and state schools are associated with lower achievement. Private schools are associated with higher achievement, even controlling for parental schooling and wealth. Regardless of the student's achievement in the national examinations, entry each year is mainly determined by the number of available places. Given the fact the state cannot afford to provide free access to all those who want entry, the non-university cycle has expanded rapidly to accommodate a greater number of students into "higher education technological institutes'' that are most frequently not the candidates' first choice. Thus, the fable of Procrustes is revived in modern Greece.

Children from Roma communities are consistently among the lowest academic achievers in many European countries and this holds true in Greece. In Greek schools, Roma students experience high dropout rates and low performance compared to their non-Roma peers. Moreover, in Greece, as elsewhere, Roma experience wide-spread discrimination. Drawing on a set of in-depth interviews with 20 Greek Roma who have entered higher education, this paper examines how these participants account for their educational success. In particular, this article analyses the influence of 'community factors' on the participants' academic progression. This article highlights aspects of the Greek case of Roma's educational success that may contribute towards addressing aspects related to Roma's educational exclusion and promoting educational progression in the European context more widely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the way the national higher education entry examinations in Greece are used to determine entry into the 100 percent government-controlled state tertiary education system. The database refers to the population of all secondary education graduates taking (or not taking) the June 2000 national secondary school examination. There is considerable achievement variation across regions and types of school. Poor districts, evening schools, and state schools are associated with lower achievement. Private schools are associated with higher achievement, even controlling for parental schooling and wealth. Regardless of the student's achievement in the national examinations, entry each year is mainly determined by the number of available places. Given the fact the state cannot afford to provide free access to all those who want entry, the non-university cycle has expanded rapidly to accommodate a greater number of students into ``higher education technological institutes'' that are most frequently not the candidates' first choice. Thus, the fable of Procrustes is revived in modern Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents some of the findings that emerged out of a national survey carried out in the school year 2005–2006 in various parts of Greece. The main aim of the study was to explore the effects of various family factors on the student performance in the (national) higher education entrance examinations. From the analysis of data it becomes evident that, despite numerous attempts at educational reform in the Greek education system in the last 30 years, inequalities among students based on family background still exist. The study has shown that the educational level and occupational status of parents represent two of the major factors affecting student performance – directly or indirectly – through their influence on previous achievement. It has also documented that the interplay between economic, cultural and social capital in shaping educational and occupational ‘pathways' is still an immensely important dimension in sociological studies of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This multi-method case study of a Greek vocational school explored teachers’ culture (including beliefs about education, teachers’ role, and students’ nature) using the concept of pupil control ideology to explain problems of disengagement and low morale among staff and students, as well as tensions in relationships. A prominent custodial culture was identified in the school using a functional/apolitical pedagogy to transmit ‘legitimate’ knowledge to students whose working-class background did not produce desired outcomes. This generated deficit views of students, teachers’ sympathy, and a seemingly caring school ethos which was, nevertheless, oppressive. Students’ failings were naturalised and vocational education misinterpreted as merely a streaming device in a system honouring academic achievement and middle-class ways. Teachers were blind to these cultural subtleties, believing they acted ‘rationally’ and altruistically. A humanistic subculture emphasising student empowerment and social transformation consisted of a minority of teachers and was rather marginalised. This disallowed meaningful dialogue and the identification of an alternative rationale for the sector, generating strong feelings of futility. Positive change in this school necessitated the deconstruction and (subsequent) reconstruction of custodial teachers’ world views as embedded in their practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, Web 2.0 technologies in higher education are evaluated using students' perceptions, satisfaction, performance and behaviour. The study evaluates the Web 2.0 tools as stand-alone entities as well in terms of their cross-operability and integration (confluence) to synergistic contributions towards the enhancement of student learning. Significant correlations and interdependencies on the students' behaviour over the used platform and their performance in various time points within the course time line have been revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]