Studying Academic Indicators within Virtual Learning Environment Using Educational Data Mining
📝 Abstract
Our main goal is to discover the main factors influencing students’ academic trajectory and students’ academic evolution within such environment. Our results indicate strong correlation in this virtual learning environment between student average and some factors like: student’s English level (despite the fact that Arabic language is the teaching language), student’s age, student’s gender, student’s over-stay and student’s place of residence (inside or outside Syria). Our results indicate also a need to modify the academic trajectory of students by changing the prerequisites of few courses delivered as a part of BIT diploma like Advanced DBA II, Data Security. In this research, the results also highlight the effect of the Syrian Crisis on students. Finally, we’ve suggested some future recommendations based on our observations and results to develop the current information system in SVU in order to help us to deduce some indicators more easily.
💡 Analysis
Our main goal is to discover the main factors influencing students’ academic trajectory and students’ academic evolution within such environment. Our results indicate strong correlation in this virtual learning environment between student average and some factors like: student’s English level (despite the fact that Arabic language is the teaching language), student’s age, student’s gender, student’s over-stay and student’s place of residence (inside or outside Syria). Our results indicate also a need to modify the academic trajectory of students by changing the prerequisites of few courses delivered as a part of BIT diploma like Advanced DBA II, Data Security. In this research, the results also highlight the effect of the Syrian Crisis on students. Finally, we’ve suggested some future recommendations based on our observations and results to develop the current information system in SVU in order to help us to deduce some indicators more easily.
📄 Content
International Journal of Data Mining & Knowledge Management Process (IJDKP) Vol.6, No.6, November 2016
DOI: 10.5121/ijdkp.2016.6603 29
STUDYING ACADEMIC INDICATORS WITHIN VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT USING EDUCATIONAL DATA MINING
Eng. Eid Aldikanji1 and Dr. Khalil Ajami2
1Master Web Science, Syrian Virtual University, Damascus, Syria 2Syrian Virtual University Vice President, Bachelor of Information Technology Program Director, Damascus, Syria
ABSTRACT
The rapid developments in information and communication technologies taking place recent years, make it easy for people to pursue their education distantly. The development of new technologies helped to open spatial and temporal boundaries of learning toward virtual learning, and helped to transform education process from its classical form of courses within classrooms to a new virtual form within virtual environments; Consequently, lessons and lectures are delivered using information and communication technologies tools, and student’s attendance is virtually performed via Internet. Moreover, the education process in its new form becomes a supervised process, rather than a fully controlled process since virtual learning changed the education process pattern represented by the triangle (student, teacher and content) by increasing the importance of both “student” and “content” factors and transforming the main task of the “teacher” from “Teaching” to “Tutoring”. Consequently, many questions are raised concerning students’ performance and concerning the adequacy of virtual learning process. These questions are related to the need of accreditation for virtual learning and virtual universities.
Our work aims to use Educational Data Mining (EDM) in order to study academic indicators concerning a representative sample of students in a virtual learning environment within Syrian Virtual University – SVU (The students who are following Bachelor of Information Technology Diploma –BIT). Our main goal is to discover the main factors influencing students’ academic trajectory and students’ academic evolution within such environment.
Our results indicate strong correlation -in this virtual learning environment- between student average and some factors like: student’s English level (despite the fact that Arabic language is the teaching language), student’s age, student’s gender, student’s over-stay and student’s place of residence (inside /outside Syria). Our results indicate also a need to modify the academic trajectory of students by changing the prerequisites of few courses delivered as a part of BIT diploma like Advanced DBA II, Data Security. In this research, the results also highlight the effect of the Syrian Crisis on students. Finally, we’ve suggested some future recommendations based on our observations and results to develop the current information system in SVU in order to help us to deduce some indicators more easily.
KEYWORDS
Educational Data Mining; Classification; Naïve Bayes; Decision Trees; Regression Models; Syrian Virtual University, Virtual Learning Environment
- INTRODUCTION
The development of new technologies helped to transform education process from its classical form of courses within classrooms to a new virtual form within virtual environments; Consequently, lessons and lectures are delivered using information and communication International Journal of Data Mining & Knowledge Management Process (IJDKP) Vol.6, No.6, November 2016 30
technologies tools, and students’ attendance is virtually performed via Internet. Moreover, the education process in its new form becomes a supervised process, rather than a fully controlled process since virtual learning changed the education process pattern represented by the triangle (student, teacher and content) by increasing the importance of both “student” and “content” factors and transforming the main task of the “teacher” from “Teaching” to “Tutoring”. Consequently, many questions are raised concerning students’ performance and concerning the adequacy of virtual learning process. These questions are related to the need of accreditation for virtual learning and virtual universities.
Otherwise, Syrian Virtual University (SVU) is a public academic institution established in 2002 in response to developments in e-learning. Its objective is to help develop human resources in various disciplines in order to meet the needs of economic and social developments and market needs and to keep abreast with the requirements of a knowledge-based economy, especially in areas like Information and Management Systems, E-Marketing, IT and Internet Technologies. SVU is constantly developing its infrastructure and expanding its exam centers to accommodate the rapid increase in demand on its services, since the number of SVU students
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