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Using educational analytics to improve test performance

Corrigan, Owen orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-1840-982X, Smeaton, Alan F. orcid logoORCID: 0000-0003-1028-8389, Glynn, Mark orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-9625-1407 and Smyth, Sinéad orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-8736-0505 (2015) Using educational analytics to improve test performance. In: EC-TEL 2015 10th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, 15-18 Sept 2015, Toledo, Spain.

Abstract
Learning analytics are being used in many educational applications in order to help students and Faculty. In our work we use predictive analytics, using student behaviour to predict the likely performance of end of semester final grades with a system we call PredictED. The main contribution of our approach is that our intervention automatically emailed students on a regular basis, with our prediction for the outcome of their exam performance. We targeted first year, first semester University students who often struggle with making the transition into University life where they are given much more responsibility for things like attending class, completing assignments, etc. The form of student behaviour that we used is students’ levels and types of engagement with the University’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), Moodle. We mined the Moodle access log files for a range of parameters based on temporal as well as content access, and use machine learning techniques to predict likely pass/fail, on a weekly basis throughout the semester using logs and outcomes from previous years as training material. We chose ten first-year modules with reasonably high failure rates, large enrolments and stability of module content across the years to implement an early warning system on. From these modules 1,558 students were registered for one of these modules. They were offered the chance to opt into receiving weekly email alerts warning them about their likely outcome. Of these 75% or 1,181 students opted into this service. Pre-intervention there were no differences between participants and non-participants on a number of measures related to previous academic record. However, post- intervention the first-attempt final grade performance yielded nearly 3% improvement (58.4% to 61.2%) on average for those who opted in. This tells us that providing weekly guidance and personalised feedback to vulnerable first year students, automatically generated from monitoring of their online behaviour, has a significant positive effect on their exam performance.
Metadata
Item Type:Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Event Type:Conference
Refereed:Yes
Additional Information:alan.smeaton@dcu.ie
Uncontrolled Keywords:Data analytics
Subjects:Social Sciences > Education
Computer Science > Information technology
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science and Health > School of Nursing and Human Sciences
Research Institutes and Centres > INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics
University Professional Support Services > Office of the Vice-President for Learning Innovation (OVPLI)
DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Engineering and Computing > School of Computing
Published in: Design for Teaching and Learning in a Networked World. Lecture notes in Computer Science 9307. Springer.
Publisher:Springer
Official URL:http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319...
Copyright Information:© 2015 Springer. The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com
Use License:This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. View License
Funders:Science Foundation Ireland, Dublin City University
ID Code:20832
Deposited On:22 Sep 2015 09:42 by Alan Smeaton . Last Modified 14 Dec 2021 14:24
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