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Machine Learning Based Predicting Student Academic Success

Article · October 2020

DOI: 10.1109/ICUMT51630.2020.9222435

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 2020 12th International Congress on Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems and Workshops (ICUMT)
Machine Learning Based Predicting Student
Academic Success
Khalfan Al Mayahi
Department of Mathematical and
Physical Sciences
University of Nizwa
Nizwa, Sultanat of Oman
12839392@uofn.edu.om
Abstract— Today, all institutions and companies are
accelerating the use of AI technologies in their businesses to
achieve a clear vision and quality results. The education sector
is one of the sectors where AI can be used because of big data.
In this work we created a machine-based learning model to
predict a student’s educational performance. The developed
model relied on the student’s previous data and performance
in the last stage of the school. The model showed a very
accurate accuracy rate that can be adopted.
Keywords— Machine Learning, Education, Algorithm,
Predicting, accuracy.
I. INTRODUCTION
Education is an area in which a large amount of data is
produced and accumulated. The traditional educational
process involves thousands of hours spent in school and
performing various tasks at home over the years. This
interaction of students with teaching materials generates a
lot of information. Education management systems and
online educational platforms collect data on student
interaction with the online system. For example, such data:
students’ progress and result of completing assignments
and exercises, about involvement in group projects and
discussions. Over the years, the university has been
accumulating data about its applicants: their gender, age,
Grades upon graduation from school in various subjects.
Later, data is collected about the same people, but already
as students. their attendance, grades in various subjects,
success in scientific activity, what types of assignments
were given better or worse, what teachers taught the course.
Analyzing this information correctly can help to
provide a more complete picture of the learning process. It
can also reveal useful and possibly non-obvious
connections: how the level of initial training affects
academic performance in a particular subject, whether
success in mastering the discipline depends on gender,
attendance or teacher, which teachers' students show the
best results.
Machine learning techniques can predict the outcome of
a situation based on historical data. In contrast to traditional
measures of measuring student performance. Such as
grades and accumulated points, which only help to measure
the final result of the student. Applying machine learning
techniques can help educators and researchers gain
valuable insights into how to improve and personalize
learning, make predictions and recommendations, and
drive change in real time when it makes sense and is
needed.
978-1-7281-9281-9/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE
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Dr. Mahmood Al-Bahri
Department of Mathematical and
Physical Sciences
University of Nizwa
Nizwa, Sultanat of Oman
m.albahri@unizwa.edu.om
The purpose of this work is to show the possibilities of
using machine learning in education. For example: a review
of existing experience, as well as the development of a
model for predicting the success of the exam by a student
based on his previous academic success.
II. MACHINE LEARNING AND EDUCATION
A. Machine Learning
The term "machine learning" was first coined by the
pioneer of computer games and artificial intelligence,
Arthur Samuel in 1952. The program, which demonstrated
the ability to self-learn based on its previous experience,
refuted the judgment that computers can only execute
algorithms strictly specified for them. Arthur Samuel
defined machine learning as "methods that enable
computers to learn without directly programming them."
[1, 10]. A more formal definition of machine learning was
given by American data scientist Tom Mitchell: "It is said
that a computer program learns on the basis of experience
E with respect to a certain class of problems T and a
measure of quality P, if the quality of solving problems
from T, measured on the basis of P, improves with the
acquisition of experience E". Thus, machine learning is a
subset of artificial intelligence. Machine learning stands at
the intersection of disciplines such as mathematics,
statistics, probability theory, graph theory, and the student
of algorithms that can learn independently from experience.
[2, 9]
B. Applying machine learning in education
Despite the fact that the use of machine learning
methods in many areas is already ingrained and considered
generally accepted. In education, this technology has not
yet found wide application. Education is one of the
industries in which new data is constantly being generated.
Data is also accumulated in traditional offline education
institutions such as schools, colleges, higher education
institutions, and in online education systems [5]. Figure 1
shows an automated education application in the education
sector. The application about Identifying Student
Candidates in Higher Education using Machine Learning
[11].
264

Fig.1 AWS Machine Learning Diagram [ 11]
Mostly machine learning methods are used by
educational platforms. These methods allow to automate
the process of collecting, storing and analyzing data. The
first studies in this area were carried out by the professor of
mathematics Sotiris Kotsiantis in 2003[3]. In his article
“Use of machine learning techniques for educational
proposes: a decision support system for forecasting
students’ grades” Kotsiantis writes that the use of machine
learning in educational practices is a promising and
developing area. The author notes that a huge amount of
data about a student is accumulated in the Distance learning
process.
In Paper [4], Kotsiantis describes how he used existing
regression analysis methods to predict student grades in
distance learning. He compares some of the modern
regression algorithms. The aim to find out which algorithm
is more appropriate not only for accurately predicting
academic performance, but also for use as an analytical tool
for support and decision-making for teachers. With
information in front of them about current and projected
student performance, educators can minimize student
failures by supporting them and providing additional
learning materials. Five different machine learning
approaches have been tested. In order to build an algorithm
that can most accurately predict the future performance of
students. These approaches include decision trees, neural
networks, Bayesian networks, logistic regression, and
support vector machines. All these models are described in
detail by Kotsianthis in his article.
Knewton is one of the first companies to actively apply
big data analysis technologies in education. The company
sees its mission in personalizing learning around the world
[6].
Among the mainstream schools and universities that
collect data about their students, but hardly use it for
analysis. there are separate institutions that build the entire
educational process around technology. AltSchool is an
example of such an institution[7].
265
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III. MACHINE LEARNING BASED PREDICTION MODLE
In this work a model based on machine learning was
developed. The task of this model is to predict if a student
will pass a specific course based on his previous academic
success data. Such a prediction should be carried out some
time before the exam, for example, 2-4 months. The reason
is that this information can be used as: students would have
time to put more effort into mastering this discipline, and
the teacher would have the opportunity to pay more
attention to these students. In machine learning terms, there
is a supervised learning task, namely a classification task.
C. Data collection
To construct this model, student data was used by the
University of Nizwa at the College of Arts and Sciences in
the Department of Physical and Mathematical Sciences,
Computer Science section. The data for the university
applicants and first year students were taken from the
academic years 2017/2017 and 2018/2019. First of all, the
data of applicants were collected, for which the following
characteristics are known: First Name, Last Name, and ID
of the applicant, Student grades upon graduation from
school in Mathematics, Arabic, Social Studies and English.
After that, data on student performance during the first year
were taken: student ratings for the first and second
semester. At the University of Nizwa, a centenary grading
system has been adopted, for which there is the following
scale for converting a quantitative assessment into a
qualitative one, presented in Table 3:
TABLE I. TRANSFER OF MARKS
100% Grade
90-100 A
77-89 B
67-76 C
60-66 D
0-60 F
For each student, the rating contained information about
his name, place in the rating, group, grade for the exam for
each subject of this semester on a 100% scale, average
grade, minimum grade, and the presence of unsatisfactory
grades. For each student, the classification contained
information about his name, his place in the classification,
the group and the score on the exam in each subject in this
semester on a scale of 100%, the average minimum score,
the minimum and the presence of unsatisfactory degrees.
The data for students of the educational programs
"Computer Science" and " Physics" were analyzed
together, as:
- the same entrance exams are accepted for both
directions (Mathematics, Arabic, Social Studies
and English)
- first-year programs in basic subjects are the same
(academic disciplines, topics to be mastered, hours
allocated for lecture, seminar and independent
work coincide).
 All data were taken with the help of computer science
section staff and students.
D. Primary data processing and analysis
First of all, the data of applicants and ratings of students
from both programs were combined into single lists. After
that, was carried out the mapping of the students' data with
the applicants according to the full coincidence of the full
name. That is, for each student from the rating before
retakes for the second semester, data about him as an
applicant was tightened. Mapping was done in Microsoft
Excel using the VLOOKUP vertical pull-up formula. In
total, the sample included 550 students.
In the next step, the subjects were identified for which
students received the most failures. These subjects in the
first semester were Math, Computer Skills, Physics.
Courses with an unsatisfactory grade were chosen for two
reasons: These disciplines are the most difficult and the
second reason is with a high percentage of misses, the
problem of unbalanced sampling disappears. The following
are charts 1 showing the percentage distribution of grades
in Math, Computer Skills, Physics in the first semester, in
descending order of percentage of non-grades. The highest
percentage of F grades in the first semester was for math at
15%. The next subject in terms of the level of non-
acceptance was Physics with 14. The number of failures in
Computer skills was 5%.
DISTRIBUTION OF GRADES
%
Math Computer Skills Physics
40
29
25
25
22
21
20
20
20
18
15
14
12
5
A B C D
Fig.2 Distribution of grades in three courses
The next step was to identify which variables should be
used to predict the assessment by mathematical analysis.
Since the data of applicants, such as student grades upon
graduation from school, are available for each student from
both study programs and enrollment years, they were
included in the sample. Thus, in the final dataset, there were
records of 550 students containing the fields presented in
Table 2:
TABLE II. FINAL DATASET FIELDS
Courses data of applicants
Math_Sch Grade upon graduation from school
Arabic_Sch Grade upon graduation from school
Social Grade upon graduation from school
Studies_sch
English_sch Grade upon graduation from school
Math _Uni Grade for Math in 1st Semester, 0 to 100
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Computer Grade for Computer Skills in 1st
Skills_Uni Semester, 0 to 100
Physic_Uni Grade for Physic in 1st Semester, 0 to
100
Average Average mark in all subjects for the 1st
mark_Uni semester
Math_Ana2 Evaluation of mathematical analysis in
the second term, from 0 to 100
E. Building the model
To build a classification model, the resulting dataset
was loaded and processed using the pandas module. To
build machine learning, the dataset must be represented as
a matrix. Each line corresponds to a record of one student.
Variables X1, X2,…, Xn are characteristics, and variable Y
is the target. That is, the one that needs to be predicted.
In this model, the student's characteristics are his Grade
upon graduation from school and university grades. Target
variable - Second semester math grade. Accordingly,
descriptive characteristics were selected in array X, and
target variable was written in Y. The below part of code
show how characteristics get into variable X and target
variable Y is shown in the following part of the code:
X = file[[' Math_Sch ', 'Math _Uni', ' Computer
Skills_Uni', ' Physic_Uni', ' Average mark_Uni.' ]]
y = file[' Math_Ana2']
Then the sample was pseudo randomly divided into two
parts: training and test samples. The training sample was
70%, and the test sample was 30%. For the training set,
both the X variable and the target Y variable are known.
The algorithm uses a training sample to determine how the
14
input characteristics affect the value of the target variable.
In the test sample, the algorithm knows only the
F
characteristics of each student. Already trained on 70% of
the data, the algorithm predicts the value of the target
variable. After that, can be checked the accuracy of such a
prediction, since the "correct answer" is known for these
30% of the sample. The pseudo random division of the
sample into training and test parts means that the division
occurs randomly, but it is fixed. So that when choosing
different machine learning algorithms, it was possible to
track which algorithm shows the best prediction accuracy
on the same data.
Predicting a student's grade accurate to a point cannot
be very accurate. If the algorithm predicted that the student
will get an 85 in the exam, and he got an 82 or 88, it cannot
be said that this is a strong error. In addition, the task of
predicting an accurate estimate does not make sense. It is
not important to know in advance what grade the student
will receive: 80 or 90, 60 or 70, it is important to divide
students into risk groups: who is most likely to pass and
who will not pass. For example, there is practically no
difference between grades 80 and 90, since in both cases
the student passed, but there is difference between grades
55 and 62, so the student did not pass. However, there is an
important distinction between grades 65 and 80, as they
266
separate pass and fail. Therefore, it was decided to
introduce three classes as following:
TABLE III. DISTRIBUTION OF GRADES BY
CLASSIFICATION
Predicted Classification Classification
score Description
A, B 2 The student will pass
F, D 0 The student will not
pass
C 1 suspicion
If the algorithm predicts a student's grade of 67 or
higher, he falls into the group of those who are most likely
to pass. If a student's predicted grade is below 67, then he
is in the group of those who have a high risk of not passing
the exam. However, if the student's predicted grade is 4,
then he falls into the suspicion group, since an error of one
point will cause a classification error. At the same time, it
is not so scary to classify a student into a risk group if he
passes the exam, than to predict that he will most likely pass
and be mistaken. Also, the human factor cannot be
excluded, since the mark for the exam largely depends on
the student. A student with a low level of initial knowledge
could prepare well at the last moment or cheat. A well-
prepared student could get anxious on an exam and forget
basic things.
A number of machine learning models were tested,
which included various implementations of linear
regression, support vector machines, naive Bayesian
classifier. Two models showed the highest accuracy:
• SVC - Support Vector Classification based on support
vector machine.
• Elastic Net - a kind of linear classification algorithm
Next section presents in detail about the accuracy of the
model.
IV. MODEL ACCURACY
A. SVC Model Accuracy
For the model built using the support vector machine,
the following indicators were demonstrated:
The total sample size is 550 students, the test sample
was 30%, which means that predictions were made for 165
students. 24% of students were classified in the uncertainty
class, for 65% it was predicted that they would pass the
exam, for 11% that they would not pass.
Thus, out of 165 people, for 38, prediction is
impossible, 113 fell into the class of those who will receive
the test, and for 14, failure was predicted.
For the classes "pass" and "not pass" the error matrix
looks like this:
True Positive = 110, False Positive = 3
False Negative =12, True Negative = 2
Thus, the metrics of the classifier have the following
values:
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𝑇𝑃 + 𝑇𝑁
𝐴𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑦 = = 88 %
𝑇𝑃 + 𝐹𝑃 + 𝐹𝑁 + 𝑇𝑁
Accuracy - the percentage of correctly identified objects
among all predictions. However, this metric is not always
effective.
𝑇𝑃
𝑃𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 = = 97 %
𝑇𝑃 + 𝐹𝑃
Precision - the proportion of objects correctly classified as
Class 1 among all objects classified positively.
𝑇𝑃
𝑅𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙 = = 90 %
𝑇𝑃 + 𝐹𝑁
The Recall metric demonstrates what part of objects of
a positive class the algorithm found among all objects of a
positive class [8].
B. SVC Model Accuracy
In this model, for 165 students, for whom the prediction
was built, the division into classes.
out of 165 people, prediction is already impossible for
26 (16%) fell into the class of those who will receive the
test, and for 18 (21%) failures were predicted.
For the classes "pass" and "not pass" the error matrix
looks like this:
True Positive = 119, False Positive = 2
False Negative =15, True Negative = 3
Thus, the metrics of the classifier have the following
values:
Accuracy = 87%, Precision= 98%, Recall= 88%
Thus, the first model turns out to be more accurate,
since the proportion of students for whom the system could
not predict exam success was significantly reduced, and the
Accuracy, Precision and Recall metrics show high values.
It was also found that student grades upon graduation from
school in Mathematics, Arabic, Social Studies and English
do not add accuracy to the predictive model. The target
variable is influenced by characteristics such as the student
grades in mathematics, the mathematical analysis in the
first semester, the score in computer skills, physics, and the
average score for the entire first semester. These
characteristics were included in the final models.
Conclusion
The result of this work is the developed machine
learning model. This model allows to predict the success of
the student at the end of the first year, based on data on his
school success and grades for the first semester of
university studies. The implemented model predicted
whether the student would pass or fail the exam. The model
showed an accuracy of 87%.
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