Neural Network Model to Predict Electrical
Students’ Academic Performance
Pauziah Mohd Arsad1, Norlida Buniyamin1, Jamalul-lail Ab Manan2
1
Engineering and Technical Education Research Group,
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA, MALAYSIA
2
Strategic Advanced Research Cluster, MIMOS Berhad, MALAYSIA
pauzia167@salam.uitm.edu.my
Abstract - Students performance is very crucial to any educational
institution particularly in the engineering field. This paper
describes a neural network based model (NN model) for academic
performance prediction of Electrical Engineering Degree students at
the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA
(UiTM), Malaysia. The study was conducted on student intakes from
Matriculation entry level. The performance was measured based on
their cumulative grade point average (CGPA) upon graduation. The
students’ results for fundamentals subjects at first semester are used
as predictor variables (initial values) for predicting the expected
(projected) final CGPA upon graduation using Artificial Neural
Network (ANN). The outcomes of the study indicated that there
appears to be a direct correlation between students’ results for core
subjects at semester one with the final overall academic performance
irrespective of their gender. It can be ascertained that the analysis on
strong students’ abilities in engineering fundamentals contributed
strongly in influencing the overall academic performance in
Engineering. Based on the outcomes of this study, we believe that
strategic interventions can be done during their study period to
improve their final performance, which can be extracted from this
prediction model.
Keywords - Prediction, engineering fundamentals, academic
performance Neural Network
I. INTRODUCTION
Students’ performance and achievement are important issues
in any university management. Upon completion of
undergraduate program, they can proceed further to pursue
into post-graduate studies, work in the government or private
sectors or even start entrepreneurial companies based on their
experiences during students’ lives. Thus student performance
is of dire importance to determine future undertakings upon
graduation. Predicting students’ performances become the key
success factor for university management because good
students’ performances mean that the university will get better
ranking amongst universities. Hence, university management
must plan strategic interventions along their study periods to
improve the overall achievement upon graduation.
Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) is one of the institutes
of higher learning in Malaysia that offers engineering courses.
The Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) Electrical Programme
evolved from the Advanced Diploma Programme which
started in 1968. Currently, UiTM’s main campus based in
Shah Alam, Selangor offers degree and postgraduate Civil,
Mechanical, Chemical and Electrical Engineering programs
running separately in its own faculty [1] [2]. Electrical
Engineering diploma programmes are offered in UiTM branch
campuses in the states of Sarawak, Terengganu and Pulau
Pinang. A high percentage of these students upon graduation
will usually undertake the Bachelor of Electrical Engineering
Programme offered by UiTM. They will be allowed to register
in the 3rd semester of the programme. The Matriculation
students which are considered the “normal route” will start in
the 1st semester. Matriculation students are those that
undertook a one year matriculation programme after finishing
the Malaysian secondary school programme[1] [2].
In order to graduate, students must undertake a total of 137
credits with a minimum CGPA score of 2.00. [3] Thus,
students with a Diploma can graduate within six semesters or
three years, since they have been given credit exemption for
subjects in semesters 1 and 2.
This paper presents the investigation which was conducted on
the performance of Matriculation entry level students. Gender
based performance was also investigated. Further, we
developed a Neural Network Model to predict the students’
performances based on their entry level and academic
performances in core subjects in the earlier semesters. We
used the final student’s CGPA to measure academic
performance. CGPA is the easiest way of measuring the
students’ performance as other traits such as inter–personality
skill, communication skill and other leadership skill constitute
intangible parameters. CGPA score is the famous criteria used
by many recent employers as a basis to call for first interview
session. [4]
II. PERFORMANCE PREDICTION
Traditionally, academic researchers have developed several
statistical models such as regression and decision trees, to
predict students’ performance. The data input was mainly
taken from questionnaires which include student’s family
background, participation in co-curriculum and involvement
in class. [5]
R .R Kabra [6] used Decision Tress Model to predict First
Year Student performance based on students earlier records in
school that includes Maths, Science, and gender and parents’
occupation. K Kardigama [7] on the other hand used
Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network (MPNN) to predict
students’ performance in the final examination on
Thermodynamics only using tests, Quiz and assignments as
input variables. Another researcher Oladokum V O [8]
predicted students’ final performance upon graduation by
using Artificial Neural Network (ANN). He again used
demographic factors such as previous school location and
zone, type of school, parents’ education, O level results and
age at entry level as input variables. S Sembiring et al [9] on
the contrary used Data Mining Technique (DMT) to predict
students’ performance. They used questionnaire that cover
psychometric factors such as Interest, Study Behaviour,
Believe, Family Support and Engage Time as input variables
for 1000 students. Naik B and Ragothanam S [10] again
used NN to predict MBA students’ success using
undergraduate information like campus location, gender,
ethnic status, CGPA and age as input variables. A
comparative study between NN, DT and LR was done by
Ibrahim Z and Rusli D [11] to predict students’ academic
performance using students’ demographic profile and CGPA
at first semester as predictor variables.
It can be seen that demographic profile as input variables is
very popular among academic researchers in the past. The key
difference between them and our study is that our approach
focuses on only students’ abilities at first semester,
irrespective of their family background or previous academic
history once accepted into the specific Degree Program.
Instead of using questionnaires, we used live data of students’
performance based on three generations of Matriculation
intakes. We hope that our study can be used by university
management and students who joined Degree Program in
Engineering to use our methodology, and model to help them
complete the entire Program successfully.
Data from Matriculation students from intakes in July 2005,
2006 and 2007 were collected and compiled for this study.
The data included gender, subjects attempted and Grade Point
scored for every subject, CGPA at first semester and the
CGPA scored at semester eight. There were 391 students’ data
collected and 7 subjects attempted which include
Mathematics, Signal and System, Circuit Theory,
Fundamental Electronics, Communication Theory,
Laboratory1 and Co-curriculum. However, for this study, we
omitted Laboratory and Co-curriculum as they do not form the
pre-prequisite to the other subjects in the higher semesters.
We have concluded from our earlier study that the final CGPA
performance was independent of gender. Hence, in this study,
we have also assumed the same. Female students can perform
equally well upon graduation provided that they have strong
analytical capabilities right from semester one. [12]
In this paper, our study mainly focusses on Electrical Degree
Students and the corresponding fundamental subjects that
form the foundation for UiTM Bachelor of Electrical
Engineering course.
III. ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS
Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is a biological inspired
intelligent technique that is generally made of a number of
highly interconnected processing elements units or nodes
whose functionality is loosely based on animal neuron. The
processing ability of the network is stored in the inter-unit
connection strengths, or weights, obtained by a process of
adaptation to, or learning from a set of training patterns.
Nueral Network (NN) can be used to predict future events
based on historical data. Most of the early application of NN
have been in systems such as aerospace simulation,
Automotive, Banking, Defence, Financial, Medical and
market research. In this paper, we use NN in the field of
education.
ANN consists of a network of neurons and each neuron is
associated with an input vector, a weight vector corresponding
to the input vector, a scalar bias, a transfer function and an
output vector. A neural network may consist of one or more
layers of neurons with one or more neurons in each layer. The
final layer is called the output layer and all previous layers are
called hidden layers. In the hidden layers, the output of a layer
becomes the input to the following layer. The transfer function
of a neuron converts the input to the output of the neuron.
Multilayer neural networks are quite powerful tools used in
solving many different problems compared to single layer. In
this paper Multilayer Back propagation neural network is
used. [13, 14]
The network is designed using the fastest technique so as to
get the minimum error between targeted and predicted values.
Usually, more number of layers and more neurons in each
layer can produce a better network with minimum error rate
between targeted and predicted. Thus, designing a neural
network is a trial and error process of choosing the Learning
Rate (0 -1) and the Momentum rate (0-1). The Learning rate
helps to accelerate the convergence of ANN training process
while the Momentum rate helps to accelerate the training
process. There are many techniques in ANN and in this study
Lavenberg-Marquardt (LM) was chosen, with two hidden
layers and one output layer. The activation or transfer function
used in hidden layers are Hyperbolic Tangent known as
“logsig” while the output layer is mainly pure linear or
“purelin”. The training will stop when Minimum Squared
Error (MSE) is obtained, that is the minimum error between
targeted and predicted by NN model. The output only has one
output, which is the CGPA at semester eight. The NN model
was built using the NN toolbox of the MATLAB software
version R2010a. The model was trained and tested with 391
data for Matriculation students.
 TABLE 1.0: INPUTS AND OUTPUT OF NN IV. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
Fig. 1 and 2 below show the results that we obtained for
Matriculation students. Fig. 1.0 shows the Performance at
minimum Mean Squared Error (MSE) for the Matriculation
students. From Fig. 1.0, it can be seen that the best validation
performance was at MSE= 0.0544 while the predicted CGPA8
is shown in Fig. 2.0.

From Fig. 2.0, we observed that there is a slight variation

between Predicted and Targeted CGPA8. It can be seen that at
lower CGPA8, the predicted is higher than the targeted
CGPA8 while those high CGPA8 was predicted lower. We
believe that the variations have shown a few points; firstly,
that the model is able to predict the expected result of the
students’ performance in the final semester, secondly, that the
students have improved, throughout the duration of their study,
with the help of lecturers intervention, through mentoring and
In this study, firstly the data from past years students’ coaching. The graph also shows, the cultural shock that the
performance were collected based on subjects in the first student undergo when the first joined the university, hence
semester for Matriculation intakes. The data include the final resulting in worse than predicted performance in early
CGPA at semester eight as the target output for the NN semesters.
training. The input predictor variables are Circuit Theory,
Fundamental Electronics, Signal and System, Mathematics,
Communication Theory and Grade Point Average of 1 st
semester. The target output was CGPA8. Table 1.0 shows the
inputs and output of the model. As shown, two models were
developed, namely Model A (Table 1.0) which considers the
five different subjects attempted and Model B, which
considers the most predicted variables as inputs. Table 2.0
depicts the developed NN Prediction models A and B.

TABLE 2.0: NN PREDICTION MODELS

Fig. 1.0 Best Validation with MSE=0.05544

 Fig. 3.0 Best Validation with MSE =0.0933
Fig. 2.0 Comparison Between
Targeted and Predicted for Tested Data (6 inputs)
V DISCUSSIONS AND RECOMMENDATION
The same technique was used with three input predictor In this section, we describe the practical steps taken to do
variables that seemed to be the most important subjects in intervention for the Engineering Degree students.
semester one namely Circuit Theory 1, Fundamental Strategic steps include taking lesser total credits for the
electronics and Signals and Systems 1 or Model B. Best medium abilities or lower CGPA scorers at semester one and
performance for the Matriculation Model B is shown in Fig. they tend to extend before they complete the total credit hours
3.0 below. required. The weaker students can take up courses during
intersession or summer schools to reduce the total credit hours
From the graphs of Target and Predicted CGPA8, it can be (load) during normal terms. Such students can only take
seen that similar results as the previous model were obtained. incremental courses one at a time. The role of academic
We observed again, those with lower CGPA have been advisors is very important at this time around as students need
improved, as shown in Fig 4.0 which is higher than the the proper advice and motivation to keep steadily strong until
predicted CGPA8 in both cases for the Matriculation students. the very end of their studies.
Hence, strategic intervention and actions can be encouraged
by the Academic advisors so as to improve the overall CGPA
during the period of studies as they have additional seven (7)
more semesters before reaching final semester. As those with
high CGPA at the start, they must stay focus and maintain
their performance as the predicted is lower than the targeted
due to increasing credit hours as they moved to higher
semesters in the Program.

Fig. 4.0 Comparison between Targeted and Predicted

for Tested Data (3 inputs).
As for those who scored high CGPA at the start of the course,
they have to work smart so as to maintain the same CGPA, as
seen from those graphs that the predicted is much less than the
actual CGPA8. It is extremely difficult to maintain CGPA as
the total credit hours keep on increasing every semester and
the subjects are getting more difficult as far as electrical
courses are concerned. The subjects at semester one only form
the basis foundation or perquisite to other subjects like
Circuit Theory 2, Electromagnetic Theory, Electrical
Machines, Control Systems, Microprocessor and Electronics
Design. The students need stay focus and maintain their
interest as well determination all along until graduation.
VI CONCLUSION
In this paper, we presented a neural network based model (NN
model) to predict the academic performance of Electrical
Engineering Degree students at the Faculty of Electrical
Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia.
The important parameters namely, the fundamental subjects
which the student take in the earlier semester are taken as
predictor variables. In our study, subjects such as Signals and
Systems, Fundamental Electronics and Circuit Theory were
considered as strong predictor parameters. The final semester
eight CGPA score is the output of the prediction model.
Experimental data obtained, were used for training and testing
the network. Several criteria such as training algorithm,
learning rate, momentum coefficient, number of hidden layer,
number of neurons in each hidden layer and activation
function were given to improve the performance of the ANN.
We have shown that there is a direct correlation between
students’ results for core subjects at semester one with the
final overall academic performance irrespective of their
gender. It can be ascertained that the analysis on strong
students’ abilities in engineering fundamentals contributed
strongly in influencing the overall academic performance in
Engineering. Based on the outcomes of this study, we believe
that strategic interventions can be undertaken during their
study period to improve their final performance, which can be
extracted from this prediction model. The developed model
could be used as evaluation tool by the Head of Programs or
academic advisors to enable them to play active roles with
the goal to improve students’ academic performance.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors gratefully acknowledge and thank University
Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Shah Alam, Malaysia, for the
Research Intensive Faculty (RIF) Grant (600-
RMI/DANA/5/3/RIF (195/2012).
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