scholarly journals On predicting academic performance with process mining in learning analytics

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahila Umer ◽  
Teo Susnjak ◽  
Anuradha Mathrani ◽  
Suriadi Suriadi

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a process mining approach to help in making early predictions to improve students’ learning experience in massive open online courses (MOOCs). It investigates the impact of various machine learning techniques in combination with process mining features to measure effectiveness of these techniques. Design/methodology/approach Student’s data (e.g. assessment grades, demographic information) and weekly interaction data based on event logs (e.g. video lecture interaction, solution submission time, time spent weekly) have guided this design. This study evaluates four machine learning classification techniques used in the literature (logistic regression (LR), Naïve Bayes (NB), random forest (RF) and K-nearest neighbor) to monitor weekly progression of students’ performance and to predict their overall performance outcome. Two data sets – one, with traditional features and second, with features obtained from process conformance testing – have been used. Findings The results show that techniques used in the study are able to make predictions on the performance of students. Overall accuracy (F1-score, area under curve) of machine learning techniques can be improved by integrating process mining features with standard features. Specifically, the use of LR and NB classifiers outperforms other techniques in a statistical significant way. Practical implications Although MOOCs provide a platform for learning in highly scalable and flexible manner, they are prone to early dropout and low completion rate. This study outlines a data-driven approach to improve students’ learning experience and decrease the dropout rate. Social implications Early predictions based on individual’s participation can help educators provide support to students who are struggling in the course. Originality/value This study outlines the innovative use of process mining techniques in education data mining to help educators gather data-driven insight on student performances in the enrolled courses.

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 573-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mojtaba Maghrebi ◽  
Claude Sammut ◽  
S. Travis Waller

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the implementation of machine learning (ML) techniques in order to automatically measure the feasibility of performing ready mixed concrete (RMC) dispatching jobs. Design/methodology/approach – Six ML techniques were selected and tested on data that was extracted from a developed simulation model and answered by a human expert. Findings – The results show that the performance of most of selected algorithms were the same and achieved an accuracy of around 80 per cent in terms of accuracy for the examined cases. Practical implications – This approach can be applied in practice to match experts’ decisions. Originality/value – In this paper the feasibility of handling complex concrete delivery problems by ML techniques is studied. Currently, most of the concrete mixing process is done by machines. However, RMC dispatching still relies on human resources to complete many tasks. In this paper the authors are addressing to reconstruct experts’ decisions as only practical solution.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (11) ◽  
pp. 2541-2549
Author(s):  
Chris Houser ◽  
Jacob Lehner ◽  
Nathan Cherry ◽  
Phil Wernette

Abstract. Rip currents and other surf hazards are an emerging public health issue globally. Lifeguards, warning flags, and signs are important, and to varying degrees they are effective strategies to minimize risk to beach users. In the United States and other jurisdictions around the world, lifeguards use coloured flags (green, yellow, and red) to indicate whether the danger posed by the surf and rip hazard is low, moderate, or high respectively. The choice of flag depends on the lifeguard(s) monitoring the changing surf conditions along the beach and over the course of the day using both regional surf forecasts and careful observation. There is a potential that the chosen flag is not consistent with the beach user perception of the risk, which may increase the potential for rescues or drownings. In this study, machine learning is used to determine the potential for error in the flags used at Pensacola Beach and the impact of that error on the number of rescues. Results of a decision tree analysis indicate that the colour flag chosen by the lifeguards was different from what the model predicted for 35 % of days between 2004 and 2008 (n=396/1125). Days when there is a difference between the predicted and posted flag colour represent only 17 % of all rescue days, but those days are associated with ∼60 % of all rescues between 2004 and 2008. Further analysis reveals that the largest number of rescue days and total number of rescues are associated with days where the flag deployed over-estimated the surf and hazard risk, such as a red or yellow flag flying when the model predicted a green flag would be more appropriate based on the wind and wave forcing alone. While it is possible that the lifeguards were overly cautious, it is argued that they most likely identified a rip forced by a transverse-bar and rip morphology common at the study site. Regardless, the results suggest that beach users may be discounting lifeguard warnings if the flag colour is not consistent with how they perceive the surf hazard or the regional forecast. Results suggest that machine learning techniques have the potential to support lifeguards and thereby reduce the number of rescues and drownings.


Author(s):  
Jasleen Kaur Sethi ◽  
Mamta Mittal

ABSTRACT Objective: The focus of this study is to monitor the effect of lockdown on the various air pollutants due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and identify the ones that affect COVID-19 fatalities so that measures to control the pollution could be enforced. Methods: Various machine learning techniques: Decision Trees, Linear Regression, and Random Forest have been applied to correlate air pollutants and COVID-19 fatalities in Delhi. Furthermore, a comparison between the concentration of various air pollutants and the air quality index during the lockdown period and last two years, 2018 and 2019, has been presented. Results: From the experimental work, it has been observed that the pollutants ozone and toluene have increased during the lockdown period. It has also been deduced that the pollutants that may impact the mortalities due to COVID-19 are ozone, NH3, NO2, and PM10. Conclusions: The novel coronavirus has led to environmental restoration due to lockdown. However, there is a need to impose measures to control ozone pollution, as there has been a significant increase in its concentration and it also impacts the COVID-19 mortality rate.


2019 ◽  
Vol 119 (3) ◽  
pp. 676-696 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhongyi Hu ◽  
Raymond Chiong ◽  
Ilung Pranata ◽  
Yukun Bao ◽  
Yuqing Lin

Purpose Malicious web domain identification is of significant importance to the security protection of internet users. With online credibility and performance data, the purpose of this paper to investigate the use of machine learning techniques for malicious web domain identification by considering the class imbalance issue (i.e. there are more benign web domains than malicious ones). Design/methodology/approach The authors propose an integrated resampling approach to handle class imbalance by combining the synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE) and particle swarm optimisation (PSO), a population-based meta-heuristic algorithm. The authors use the SMOTE for oversampling and PSO for undersampling. Findings By applying eight well-known machine learning classifiers, the proposed integrated resampling approach is comprehensively examined using several imbalanced web domain data sets with different imbalance ratios. Compared to five other well-known resampling approaches, experimental results confirm that the proposed approach is highly effective. Practical implications This study not only inspires the practical use of online credibility and performance data for identifying malicious web domains but also provides an effective resampling approach for handling the class imbalance issue in the area of malicious web domain identification. Originality/value Online credibility and performance data are applied to build malicious web domain identification models using machine learning techniques. An integrated resampling approach is proposed to address the class imbalance issue. The performance of the proposed approach is confirmed based on real-world data sets with different imbalance ratios.


2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Helsby ◽  
Samuel Carton ◽  
Kenneth Joseph ◽  
Ayesha Mahmud ◽  
Youngsoo Park ◽  
...  

Adverse interactions between police and the public hurt police legitimacy, cause harm to both officers and the public, and result in costly litigation. Early intervention systems (EISs) that flag officers considered most likely to be involved in one of these adverse events are an important tool for police supervision and for targeting interventions such as counseling or training. However, the EISs that exist are not data-driven and based on supervisor intuition. We have developed a data-driven EIS that uses a diverse set of data sources from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department and machine learning techniques to more accurately predict the officers who will have an adverse event. Our approach is able to significantly improve accuracy compared with their existing EIS: Preliminary results indicate a 20% reduction in false positives and a 75% increase in true positives.


Author(s):  
Afshin Rahimi ◽  
Mofiyinoluwa O. Folami

As the number of satellite launches increases each year, it is only natural that an interest in the safety and monitoring of these systems would increase as well. However, as a system becomes more complex, generating a high-fidelity model that accurately describes the system becomes complicated. Therefore, imploring a data-driven method can provide to be more beneficial for such applications. This research proposes a novel approach for data-driven machine learning techniques on the detection and isolation of nonlinear systems, with a case-study for an in-orbit closed loop-controlled satellite with reaction wheels as actuators. High-fidelity models of the 3-axis controlled satellite are employed to generate data for both nominal and faulty conditions of the reaction wheels. The generated simulation data is used as input for the isolation method, after which the data is pre-processed through feature extraction from a temporal, statistical, and spectral domain. The pre-processed features are then fed into various machine learning classifiers. Isolation results are validated with cross-validation, and model parameters are tuned using hyperparameter optimization. To validate the robustness of the proposed method, it is tested on three characterized datasets and three reaction wheel configurations, including standard four-wheel, three-orthogonal, and pyramid. The results prove superior performance isolation accuracy for the system under study compared to previous studies using alternative methods (Rahimi & Saadat, 2019, 2020).


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