Data-Driven Student Performance Analysis: A Machine Learning Approach

Predicting students’ academic performance is a crucial initiative in the field of education, as it allows educators and administrators to spot students who may require extra assistance, customize educational resources to meet individual requirements, and improve overall educational results. Conventional approaches to forecasting academic achievement, such as statistical analysis and expert evaluation, have certain drawbacks in terms of precision and scalability. The emergence of machine learning (ML) methods provides a possible alternative by utilizing extensive datasets and advanced algorithms to reveal patterns and generate more precise predictions. This investigation’s primary goal is to explore the predictive modelling of student academic performance by improving the accuracy of predictions through the utilization of machine learning techniques. The study was conducted utilizing the Python programming environment. The prediction of student academic performance was carried out utilising the Bidirectional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM) based Weighted Cost Effective Random Forest algorithm. The study utilized the Deep Encoder CNN-Bi-LSTM for optimal feature extraction to foresee student academic performance. The extracted features were then classified using the Weighted Cost Effective Random Forest (WECRF) classifier, and the classification was evaluated in terms of accuracy, precision, specificity, sensitivity, and recall. The issues addressed include the class imbalance, computational complexity, cost, and huge dimensional issue, among others. The random forest method achieved Precision Score - 0.72, Recall Score - 0.68, F1 Score - 0.69, and Accuracy - 0.77 in this study. Moreover, the suggested technique facilitates the automated forecasting and enhancement of students' future academic performance. Keywords: Predictive Modelling; Students; Academic Performance; Machine Learning; Bi-LSTM; CNN-Bi-LSTM; Deep Learning.

Chemical heuristics have been fundamental to the advancement of chemistry and materials science. These heuristics are typically established by scientists using knowledge and creativity to extract patterns from limited datasets. Machine learning offers opportunities to perfect this approach using computers and larger datasets. Here, we discuss the relationships between traditional heuristics and machine learning approaches. We show how traditional rules can be challenged by large-scale statistical assessment and how traditional concepts commonly used as features are feeding the machine learning techniques. We stress the waste involved in relearning chemical rules and the challenges in terms of data size requirements for purely data-driven approaches. Our view is that heuristic and machine learning approaches are at their best when they work together.

Education is a deliberate action with certain goals in mind, such as passing on knowledge or developing skills and character qualities. Education is also seen as a crucial prerequisite for boosting self-confidence and giving people the tools they need to take part in the rapidly changing world of today. We can measure the growth of the educational institution using the students' progress. Analysing student academic performance is essential for academic institutions and educators to decide how to enhance individual student performance. Finding meaningful patterns in a lot of data is what machine learning is all about. Machine learning is quickly becoming recognized as a promising framework that offers a large range of tools, strategies, and procedures that make it possible to thoroughly analyse the data that is currently available in many sectors. Machine-learning techniques are helpful for improving the present educational standards and academic management in education. These techniques provide a route to various degrees of ranking, which is a discovery that alters how people view how to excel in the educational field. This research introduces a paradigm for predicting students' academic progress using machine learning (ML) algorithms. Through the use of several machine learning (ML) algorithms, this initiative analyses historical student outcomes and their unique traits, including family history, demographic distribution, age, and study attitude.

Educational data mining (EDM) is a strategic technique for exploring data in educational environments to gain a deeper understanding of education. One of the goals of EDM is to predict things related to students in the future which can be done using a machine learning approach. In this paper, a regression model is developed to predict student performance in the first semester and the waiting period for graduate employment using machine learning approach based on informatics management (MI) and non-informatics management (non-MI) student data. Four regression models are compared for predicting student performance in the first semester and waiting period for graduate employment, including support vector regression (SVR), random forest regression (RFR), AdaBoost regression (ABR), and XGBoost regression. Based on the experiment, prediction of students' performance in the first semester, the highest R2 result produced by SVR model by value of 0.58 for MI and by RFR by value of 0.34 for non-MI. While, waiting period for graduate employment prediction, the highest R2 result produced by AdaBoost regression by value of 0.44 for MI and SVR by value of 0.39 for non-MI.

Artificial intelligence has been applied in wildfire science and management since the 1990s, with early applications including neural networks and expert systems. Since then, the field has rapidly progressed congruently with the wide adoption of machine learning (ML) methods in the environmental sciences. Here, we present a scoping review of ML applications in wildfire science and management. Our overall objective is to improve awareness of ML methods among wildfire researchers and managers, as well as illustrate the diverse and challenging range of problems in wildfire science available to ML data scientists. To that end, we first present an overview of popular ML approaches used in wildfire science to date and then review the use of ML in wildfire science as broadly categorized into six problem domains, including (i) fuels characterization, fire detection, and mapping; (ii) fire weather and climate change; (iii) fire occurrence, susceptibility, and risk; (iv) fire behavior prediction; (v) fire effects; and (vi) fire management. Furthermore, we discuss the advantages and limitations of various ML approaches relating to data size, computational requirements, generalizability, and interpretability, as well as identify opportunities for future advances in the science and management of wildfires within a data science context. In total, to the end of 2019, we identified 300 relevant publications in which the most frequently used ML methods across problem domains included random forests, MaxEnt, artificial neural networks, decision trees, support vector machines, and genetic algorithms. As such, there exists opportunities to apply more current ML methods — including deep learning and agent-based learning — in the wildfire sciences, especially in instances involving very large multivariate datasets. We must recognize, however, that despite the ability of ML models to learn on their own, expertise in wildfire science is necessary to ensure realistic modelling of fire processes across multiple scales, while the complexity of some ML methods such as deep learning requires a dedicated and sophisticated knowledge of their application. Finally, we stress that the wildfire research and management communities play an active role in providing relevant, high-quality, and freely available wildfire data for use by practitioners of ML methods.

Machine learning (ML) is the most common technique for predicting the future or for classifying information, to help people make the required decisions. ML techniques are based on algorithms – sets of mathematical procedures that explain the relationship between variables. ML algorithms are trained in situations where they learn from past data and can even evaluate historical data. After extensive training, the algorithm can recognize patterns sufficiently to make predictions. ML provides methods, techniques, and tools that can help in solving diagnostic and prognostic problems in a variety of medical domains. It is being used for the analysis of the importance of clinical parameters and their combinations for prognosis, e.g., for prediction of disease progression, for the extraction of medical information to predict research outcomes, for therapy planning and support, and for overall patient management. ML is also being used for data analysis, such as detection of patterns in the data by dealing appropriately with imperfect data, interpretation of continuous data generated in the Intensive Care Unit, and for intelligent alarms, resulting in effective and efficient monitoring. Successful implementation of ML methods can help the integration of computer-based systems into the healthcare environment, providing opportunities to facilitate and enhance the work of medical experts, and ultimately to improve the efficiency and quality of medical care. Most ML methods can be categorized into one of two types of learning techniques, namely supervised or unsupervised algorithms. A supervised learning algorithm takes a known set of input data (the training set) and known responses to the data (the output) and trains a model to generate reasonable predictions for the response to new input data. In medicine, supervised learning involves training a model to relate a person’s characteristics (e.g., height, weight, smoking status) to a certain outcome (onset of diabetes within five years, for example). Once the algorithm is successfully trained, it will be capable of making outcome predictions when supplied with new data. Predictions which are made by models trained using supervised learning can be either discrete (e.g., positive or negative, benign or malignant) or continuous (e.g., a score from 0 to 100). A supervised model which produces discrete categories (sometimes referred to as classes) is referred to as a classification algorithm. Examples of classification algorithms include those which predict whether a tumor is benign or malignant, or to establish whether comments written by a patient convey a positive or negative sentiment. In practice, classification algorithms return the probability of a class (between 0 for impossible and 1 for certain). Common classification algorithms are Logistic Regression, K-Nearest Neighbor, Support Vector Machine, Neural Network, and Naïve Bayes. A supervised model which returns a prediction of a continuous value is known as a regression algorithm, which might be used by ML to predict an individual’s life expectancy or the tolerable dose of chemotherapy. Supervised ML algorithms are typically developed using a dataset, which contains several variables and a relevant outcome. In contrast with supervised learning, unsupervised learning does not involve a predefined outcome. In unsupervised learning, patterns are sought by algorithms without any input from the user. Unsupervised techniques are thus exploratory and used to find undefined patterns or clusters which occur within datasets. In this chapter, the use of different types of supervised and unsupervised ML algorithms for various applications in health care are discussed.

Diabetes is a major chronic syndrome caused by a series of metabolic abnormalities in which blood glucose levels are abnormally high for an indeterminate amount of time. It influences various organs in the human body, resulting in a variety of complex diseases such as stroke, renal disease, pulmonary embolism, eyesight, and so on. Diabetes Disorders (DD) are presently one of the healthcare top causes of mortality. Predictive analytics in the health care system is a huge obstacle, but if accurate early prediction is achieved, the potential risk and degree of diabetes may be significantly decreased. Machine learning (ML) techniques are now used to analyze medical datasets at an earlier stage of life in keeping people safe. In this research, we utilized several ML approaches notably Logistic Regression, Decision Tree (DT), XGBoost, Support Vector Machine (SVM), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), and Random Forest (RF) on PIMA Indian Diabetes Dataset in order to monitor and evaluate their performances in diabetes prediction. The performance of the various ML algorithms employed in this research suggests which algorithm is most suitable in diabetes prediction. It is observed that among all the models XGBoost had outperformed the other ML techniques with an accuracy of 80.73% while SVM was the second-best performing model with a classification accuracy of 80.21%. Thus, employing ML techniques, this study aims to assist doctors as well as clinicians in the early detection of diabetes.

The prediction of student performance is a critical area in educational data mining, providing invaluable insights for early interventions and personalized learning strategies. This chapter explores the application of machine learning and deep learning algorithms in predicting academic success, focusing on the enhancement of traditional predictive models through advanced computational techniques. A comprehensive review of widely-used models such as decision trees, support vector machines, k-nearest neighbors, and random forests is presented, highlighting their strengths and limitations in handling educational data. In addition, the chapter delves into deep learning approaches, such as artificial neural networks, convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, and long short-term memory networks, which have shown promising results in capturing complex patterns and temporal dependencies in student performance data. The chapter emphasizes the importance of high-quality data preprocessing, including data cleaning, feature selection, and imputation, as essential steps for enhancing model accuracy. Evaluation metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and ROC-AUC curve analysis are discussed to ensure robust model validation, especially in the presence of class imbalance. Further, challenges like model overfitting and strategies to prevent it, including regularization, cross-validation, and early stopping, are explored. The integration of machine learning and deep learning in education holds transformative potential for improving academic outcomes, providing a framework for data-driven decisions and timely interventions. This chapter serves as a critical resource for researchers and practitioners aiming to leverage AI for enhanced student performance prediction.

The aim of this study is to undertake an empirical inquiry and comparison of the effectiveness of various classifiers with ensembles classifiers in the prediction of student academic performance. A single classifier algorithm will be compared against the performance and efficiency of ensemble classifiers. Reducing student attrition is a major problem for educational institutions all over the world. The search for solutions to increase student retention and graduation rates continues for educators. This is only possible if at-risk students are identified and intervened with as soon as possible. However, the majority of regularly used prediction models are inefficient and inaccurate as a result of inherent classifier limitations and the inclusion of insignificant inputs in their calculations. The majority of data mining and machine learning researcher focused on developing an algorithm that can extract useful information from massive amounts of data after being processed by a computer. The most difficult problem in predictive modelling is identifying the most effective prediction algorithms that are also accurate enough to be useful. Therefore, a multi-level homogeneous ensemble predictive (MLHoEP) model is designed, which uses the different techniques of data mining like feature selection, ensemble learning techniques like boosting and bagging. Seven distinct machine learning algorithms were used on this model to predict and analyse the academic performance of the students. The performance of the classification algorithms in terms of prediction was evaluated using k-fold cross-validation. The study contributes to the body of knowledge by suggesting the development of homogeneous classifiers that may be used to accurately predict students’ academic success. It also proposes the construction of homogeneous classifiers, which may be deployed for accurate student performance prediction, in order to provide a better explanation for the poor performance prediction. As a result of this research, it has been demonstrated that the technique of applying homogeneous ensemble approaches is incredibly efficient and accurate in terms of predicting student performance and assisting in identifying students, who are in danger of dropping out of school. The study compared the accuracy and efficiency of single classifiers to ensembles of classifiers in terms of performance. It was discovered in the research that a homogeneous model with excellent accuracy and efficiency might be developed for anticipating student performance. These key problems have been successfully addressed by the findings of this research study: Which characteristics of students are the most effective predictors of academic performance? How accurate are approaches such as bagging and boosting ensembles for predicting student academic performance? The approach offered in this study will aid educational administrators and policymakers in designing new policies and curriculum-linked to student retention in higher education. This research can also aid in the identification of students who are at risk of dropping out of school early, providing for timely intervention and support. Prospective research will examine the creation and implementation of an automated prediction system known as the students’ academic performance forecast framework, which will collect data from students via online submission and produce a prediction result for their academic performance.KeywordsEducational data miningEnsemble learningMultilayer perceptronRandom forestNaïve BayesCorrelation attribute evaluationInformation gainGain ratio

Predictive modeling for US commercial building energy use: A comparison of existing statistical and machine learning algorithms using CBECS microdata

Machine learning can be beneficial to numerous fields, and of which is education. A particular area, which is predicting student performance, is selected in this paper to be reviewed. The objective of this paper is to find out what predictors can be used to predict student performance, what performances of students should be predicted, and what algorithms can be used for predicting student performance and which one has the best accuracy. To achieve those objectives, a systematic literature review has been done. In this research, it is found that there are various student features that can be used as predictors, student performance indicators that can be predicted with machine learning, and there are also a variety of machine learning algorithms that can be used in predicting student performance. Regarding the machine learning algorithm with the best accuracy/performance, the results differ from one research with the other. It is also found that increasing the number of predictors used and implementing techniques such as feature selection and data mining can improve accuracy of the prediction. We conclude that in predicting student performance, there are various predictors predicted student performance indicator, and machine learning algorithms that can be applied, as well as results regarding the most accurate machine learning algorithm differ.

Student performance detection has become an essential research area in educational data mining, as accurate prediction of academic outcomes can support timely interventions and enhance learning efficiency. Traditional evaluation methods often rely on periodic examinations and teacher assessments, which may not capture the complex and multifaceted factors influencing student performance. Machine Learning (ML) techniques provide a promising alternative by analyzing large volumes of educational data and identifying hidden patterns that contribute to academic success or failure. This study proposes an ML-based framework for predicting student performance by considering academic, behavioral, and socio-economic features, such as attendance, previous grades, study habits, parental background, and participation in extracurricular activities. The dataset undergoes preprocessing, feature selection, and balancing techniques to ensure model reliability. Several ML algorithms—including Decision Trees, Random Forest, Support Vector Machines (SVM), Logistic Regression, and Neural Networks—are evaluated to determine the most effective approach for prediction. Performance metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and ROC-AUC are employed for comprehensive evaluation. Experimental results demonstrate that ensemble-based models, particularly Random Forest, achieve superior accuracy compared to single classifiers, indicating their effectiveness in capturing nonlinear relationships within the data. The findings highlight that feature such as attendance and internal assessment scores strongly influence performance prediction. This research not only contributes to improving academic planning but also assists educators in early detection of at-risk students, enabling targeted support and personalized learning strategies. Ultimately, the integration of ML into educational systems can reduce dropout rates, enhance student outcomes, and foster data-driven decision-making in academia.

Within the domain of password security classification, the pursuit of practical and dependable methodologies has prompted the examination of both biological and technological paradigms. The present study investigates the efficacy of Mouth Brooding Fish (MBF) as an innovative method in contrast to conventional Machine Learning (ML) approaches for classifying password security. The research approach entails a rigorous examination of the comparative analysis of MBF and ML algorithms, evaluating their effectiveness in password classification using many criteria, including accuracy, robustness, flexibility, and durability against adversarial assaults. The findings suggest that ML approaches have shown significant effectiveness in classifying passwords. However, using methodologies inspired by the minimum Bayes risk framework demonstrates a higher degree of resistance against typical cyber dangers. The intrinsic biological mechanisms of MBF, encompassing adaptive behaviors and inherent protection, play a role in enhancing the resilience and adaptability of the password security categorization system. The results offer significant insights that can inform the evolution of password security systems, integrating biological principles with technical progress to enhance safeguarding measures in digital environments. To emphasize the advantages of the suggested approach, several ML approaches are investigated, such as Support Vector Machines (SVM), AdaBoost, Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), Gaussian Kernel (GK), and Random Forest (RF). The F-score, accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity metrics for MBF exhibit noteworthy performance compared to the other selected models, with values of 100%.

Parameter importance assessment improves efficacy of machine learning methods for predicting snow avalanche sites in Leh-Manali Highway, India

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, many universities in Thailand were mostly locked down and classrooms were also transformed into a fully online format. It was challenging for teachers to manage online learning and especially to track student behavior since the teacher could not observe and notify students. To alleviate this problem, one solution that has become increasingly important is the prediction of student performance based on their log data. This study, therefore, aims to analyze student behavior data by applying Predictive Analytics through Moodle Log for approximately 54,803 events. Six Machine Learning Classifiers (Neural Network, Random Forest, Decision Tree, Logistic Regression, Linear Regression, and Support Vector Machine) were applied to predict student performance. Further, we attained a comparison of the effectiveness of early prediction for four stages at 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of the course. The prediction models could guide future studies, motivate self-preparation and reduce dropout rates. In the experiment, the model with 5-fold cross-validation was evaluated. Results indicated that the Decision Tree performed best at 81.10% upon course completion. Meanwhile, the SVM had the best result at 86.90% at the first stage, at 25% of the course, and Linear Regression performed with the best efficiency at the middle stages at 70.80%, and 80.20% respectively. The results could be applied to other courses and on a larger e-learning systems log that has similar student activity conditions and this could contribute to more accurate student performance prediction.