MOOC student dropout prediction model based on learning behavior features and parameter optimization

ABSTRACT

Since the advent of massive open online courses (MOOC), it has been the focus of educators and learners around the world, however the high dropout rate of MOOC has had a serious negative impact on its popularity and promotion. How to effectively predict students' dropout status in MOOC for early intervention has become a hot topic in MOOC research. Due to there are huge differences in the learning behaviors, study habits and learning time of different students in MOOC, i.e. the students' learning behavior data containing rich learning information, so it can be used to predict the students' dropout status. In this paper, according to the students' learning behaviour data, a feature extraction method is firstly designed, which can reflect the characteristics of weekly student learning behaviors. Then, the intelligently optimized support vector regression (SVR) model is used as the student dropout prediction (SDP) model. In this SDP model, the three parameters of SVR are not randomly selected but determined by an improved quantum particle swarm optimization (IQPSO) algorithm. Experimental results from both direct observation and statistical analysis on public data indicate that the proposed SDP model can achieve better predictive performance than various benchmark SDP models.

KEYWORDS:

• Dropout prediction
• MOOC
• clickstream data
• learning behavior features
• parameter optimization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cong Jin

Cong Jin received the Ph.D. in Institute for Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2006; is Professor in school of computer, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei, China. The main research interests include e-learning, dropout prediction, and intelligence information processing, etc.