Applicability of Educational Data Mining in Afghanistan: Opportunities and Challenges

📝 Abstract

The author’s own experience as a student and later as a lecturer in Afghanistan has shown that the methods used in the educational system are not only flawed, but also do not provide the minimum guidance to students to select proper course of study before they enter the national university entrance (Kankor) exam. Thus, it often results in high attrition rates and poor performance in higher education. Based on the studies done in other countries, and by the author of this paper through online questionnaires distributed to university students in Afghanistan - it was found that proper procedures and specialized studies in high schools can help students in selecting their major field of study more systematically. Additionally, it has come to be known that there are large amounts of data available for mining purposes, but the methods that the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education use to store and produce their data, only enable them to achieve simple facts and figures. Furthermore, from the results it can be concluded that there are potential opportunities for educational data mining application in the domain of Afghanistan’s education systems. Finally, this study will provide the readers with approaches for using Educational Data Mining to improve the educational business processes. For instance, predict proper field of study for high school graduates, or, identify first year university students who are at high risk of attrition.

💡 Analysis

The author’s own experience as a student and later as a lecturer in Afghanistan has shown that the methods used in the educational system are not only flawed, but also do not provide the minimum guidance to students to select proper course of study before they enter the national university entrance (Kankor) exam. Thus, it often results in high attrition rates and poor performance in higher education. Based on the studies done in other countries, and by the author of this paper through online questionnaires distributed to university students in Afghanistan - it was found that proper procedures and specialized studies in high schools can help students in selecting their major field of study more systematically. Additionally, it has come to be known that there are large amounts of data available for mining purposes, but the methods that the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education use to store and produce their data, only enable them to achieve simple facts and figures. Furthermore, from the results it can be concluded that there are potential opportunities for educational data mining application in the domain of Afghanistan’s education systems. Finally, this study will provide the readers with approaches for using Educational Data Mining to improve the educational business processes. For instance, predict proper field of study for high school graduates, or, identify first year university students who are at high risk of attrition.

📄 Content

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Applicability of Educational Data Mining in Afghanistan: Opportunities and Challenges

Abdul Rahman, Sherzad Lecturer at Computer Science Faculty of Herat University, Afghanistan Ph.D. Student at Technische Universität Berlin, Germany absherzad@gmail.com || absherzad@mailbox.tu-berlin.de

ABSTRACT The author’s own experience as a student and later as a lecturer in Afghanistan has shown that the methods used in the educational system are not only flawed, but also do not provide the minimum guidance to students to select proper course of study before they enter the national university entrance (Kankor) exam. Thus, it often results in high attrition rates and poor performance in higher education. Based on the studies done in other countries, and by the author of this paper through online questionnaires distributed to university students in Afghanistan – it was found that proper procedures and specialized studies in high schools can help students in selecting their major field of study more systematically. Additionally, it has come to be known that there are large amounts of data available for mining purposes, but the methods that the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education use to store and produce their data, only enable them to achieve simple facts and figures. Furthermore, from the results it can be concluded that there are potential opportunities for educational data mining application in the domain of Afghanistan’s education systems. Finally, this study will provide the readers with approaches for using Educational Data Mining to improve the educational business processes. For instance, predict proper field of study for high school graduates, or, identify first year university students who are at high risk of attrition. Keywords Educational data mining; data mining; major study prediction; placement class; computer uses in education; value of information; Kankor, University Entrance Exam, Afghanistan education systems.

1. INTRODUCTION Recent advances in big data, data mining, and educational data mining (EDM) enable educational institutions to transform their data into valuable information to find the hidden patterns that yields clear results and specific targets to improve educational settings. The efforts of educational institutions in Afghanistan are to generate (only) facts and figures (e.g., total number of students and teachers based on gender, geographic location, schools and universities, and some other conditions). However, it turned out that these simple facts and figures do not help educational institutions to improve the educational settings. For example, to predict proper major fields of study for high school graduates participating in the Kankor exam, to identify first year university students who are at high attrition risk, or to Page 2 of 10

recommend right courses for the students to enroll. To find out about participants’ familiarity and factors choosing proper major studies in the Kankor exam, attrition rates and poor quality of education, and whether offering specialized studies at high school is a good decision or not; online questionnaires (open-ended and close- ended questions) were prepared and distributed through social networking platforms to Afghanistan public and private university students and alumni. Results of the questionnaires indicated that lack of familiarity with the Kankor exam and its processes, inappropriate selection of major fields of study as well as lack of offering specialized studies at school are the major reasons that most of the students are at risk of dropping out or poor performance in their higher education studies. The main goal and objective of this paper is to study the opportunities and challenges of EDM applicability in Afghanistan education context to help educational institutions to better prepare students for their studies in schools and universities. This paper also tries to offer answers to the following questions:

1. What are the potential challenges to implement EDM in the Afghanistan’s context?
2. How to implement EDM in Afghanistan education system effectively?
3. What is the status with regards to availability of data in Afghanistan education systems? This paper, initially presents a description on big data, data mining, and educational data mining. Next, it briefly explains the education systems and the existence and availability of large amounts of data in Afghanistan education systems. Finally, it presents studies in the area of EDM and discusses their applicability in Afghanistan’s education environment using case studies as a support for the argumentation. 1.1 Big Data Upon entering the 21st century, there has been a massive increase in data generation with the prevalence of mobile technologies, social media networks, sensor devices for environmental da

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