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Engagement vs performance: using electronic portfolios to predict first semester engineering student retention

Published: 24 March 2014 Publication History

Abstract

As providers of higher education begin to harness the power of big data analytics, one very fitting application for these new techniques is that of predicting student attrition. The ability to pinpoint students who might soon decide to drop out of a given academic program allows those in charge to not only understand the causes for this undesired outcome, but it also provides room for the development of early intervention systems. While making such inferences based on academic performance data alone is certainly possible, we claim that in many cases there is no substantial correlation between how well a student performs and his or her decision to withdraw. This is specially true when the overall set of students has a relatively similar academic performance. To address this issue, we derive measurements of engagement from students' electronic portfolios and show how these features can be effectively used to augment the quality of predictions.

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  • (2024)Analysis and Prediction of Students' Performance in a Computer-Based Course Through Real-Time EventsIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2023.333143317(1794-1804)Online publication date: 2024
  • (2023)Proactive and reactive engagement of artificial intelligence methods for education: a reviewFrontiers in Artificial Intelligence10.3389/frai.2023.11513916Online publication date: 5-May-2023
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        cover image ACM Other conferences
        LAK '14: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Learning Analytics And Knowledge
        March 2014
        301 pages
        ISBN:9781450326643
        DOI:10.1145/2567574
        Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

        Sponsors

        • JNGI: John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education
        • University of Wisc-Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison
        • SoLAR: The Society for Learning Analytics Research
        • Purdue University: Purdue University

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        Published: 24 March 2014

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        Author Tags

        1. data fusion
        2. early intervention
        3. electronic portfolios
        4. learning analytics
        5. predictive analytics
        6. student retention

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        LAK '14
        Sponsor:
        • JNGI
        • University of Wisc-Madison
        • SoLAR
        • Purdue University
        LAK '14: Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference 2014
        March 24 - 28, 2014
        Indiana, Indianapolis, USA

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        LAK '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 13 of 44 submissions, 30%;
        Overall Acceptance Rate 236 of 782 submissions, 30%

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        Cited By

        View all
        • (2024)AI-Based Modeling for Predicting Open University Student RetentionJournal of Lifelong Learning Society10.26857/JLLS.2024.5.20.2.2720:2(27-52)Online publication date: 31-May-2024
        • (2024)Analysis and Prediction of Students' Performance in a Computer-Based Course Through Real-Time EventsIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2023.333143317(1794-1804)Online publication date: 2024
        • (2023)Proactive and reactive engagement of artificial intelligence methods for education: a reviewFrontiers in Artificial Intelligence10.3389/frai.2023.11513916Online publication date: 5-May-2023
        • (2023)A Human-Centered Review of Algorithms in Decision-Making in Higher EducationProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580658(1-15)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
        • (2023)Using machine learning to predict student retention from socio-demographic characteristics and app-based engagement metricsScientific Reports10.1038/s41598-023-32484-w13:1Online publication date: 7-Apr-2023
        • (2022)Retention Factors in STEM Education Identified Using Learning Analytics: A Systematic ReviewEducation Sciences10.3390/educsci1211078112:11(781)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2022
        • (2022)Predicting Freshmen Attrition in Computing Science using Data MiningEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-022-11018-327:7(9587-9617)Online publication date: 4-Apr-2022
        • (2021)The Effects of Offering Proactive Student-Success Coaching on Community College Students’ Academic Performance and PersistenceCommunity College Review10.1177/009155212098203049:2(202-237)Online publication date: 15-Jan-2021
        • (2021)Learning behaviours data in programming education: Community analysis and outcome prediction with cleaned dataFuture Generation Computer Systems10.1016/j.future.2021.08.026Online publication date: Sep-2021
        • (2021)Learning Analytics in Online Learning Environment: A Systematic Review on the Focuses and the Types of Student-Related Analytics DataTechnology, Knowledge and Learning10.1007/s10758-021-09541-227:2(405-427)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2021
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