| The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that contribute to differences in student success. This study looks at how various types of student engagement behaviors (interaction with teacher, cognitive effort, and active participation) mediate among student incoming academic skills, motivation, and success measures (final test score, perceived learning, and general personal educational development).;This research used data gathered from a study of the Cisco Networking Academy. This longitudinal research study looks at a cohort of students who started the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) program during fall 2004 and took the first two courses in the program. An entry survey was administered at the beginning of the first course that measured students' entry skills, desires, and goals. A student engagement and best practices survey was administered in the second half of the second course and students' course feedback and test scores were included as outcome measures.;A structural equation modeling procedure was used to answer the research questions. The same structural equation model was tested for three groups of students: college male, college female, and high school male. The structural models fit the data well with satisfactory goodness-of-fit tests. The structural model included relationships among input, process, and outcome measures. The college male and female models were tested with each other and college and high school male models were tested with each other.;Some of the findings of the study were: The factor loadings and structural estimates were invariant across college and high school male students except for interaction with instructor factor. In college male and female models, all factor loadings were invariant across groups but structural estimates were not. The effect of motivation on engagement was larger than the previous academic skills in all student models. The effect of previous academic skills in predicting final test scores was consistently very high in all student models. The size of the effects of cognitive effort on perceived learning and basic personal and educational growth was large in all models. |
