John Hughes

This is an audio-only conversation between researchers from the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast (John Hughes and Diana Sharp) and Florida Virtual School (April Fleetwood). The conversation covers a variety of topics related to a study of teacher influences on student success in an online biology course.

Instruction plays a critical role in student success. However, most studies of teachers' effects on student learning focus on face-to-face settings. Some aspects of online courses, such as the choice of synchronous or asynchronous instruction and the course structure, might reduce teachers' influence on their students. This study of an online high school biology course offered by Florida Virtual School examined the variation in students' course segment (similar to semester) completion rates, ...

The high rate of students taking developmental education courses suggests that many students graduate from high school unready to meet college expectations. A college readiness screener can help colleges and school districts better identify students who are not ready for college credit courses. The primary audience for this guide is leaders and staff at colleges that are seeking to revise or evaluate their screening methods or to develop a college readiness screener if they do not already hav...

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which the measures that make up each of the three separate accountability indices of school performance in South Carolina could be used to create an overall, reliable index of school performance. Data from public elementary, middle, and high schools in 2012/13 were used in confirmatory factor analysis models designed to estimate the relations between the measures under different specifications. Four different factor models were compared a...

This report describes the results of a REL Southeast study comparing student success in online credit recovery and general courses taken online compared to traditional face-to-face courses. Credit recovery occurs when a student fails a course and then retakes the same course to earn high school credit. This research question was motivated by the high use of online learning in the Southeast, particularly as a method to help students engage in credit recovery. The data for this study covered al...