This work explores how population-based engagement prediction can address cold-start at scale in large learning resource collections. The paper introduces: (1) VLE, a novel dataset that consists of content and video based features extracted from publicly available scientific video lectures coupled with implicit and explicit signals related to…

Typical data science instruction uses generic datasets like survival rates on the Titanic, which may not be motivating for students. Will introducing real-life data science problems fill this motivational deficit? To analyze this question, we contrasted learning with generic datasets and artificial problems (Phase 1) with a community-sourced…

Feedback on how students progress through completing subgoals can improve students' learning and motivation in programming. Detecting subgoal completion is a challenging task, and most learning environments do so either with "expert-authored" models or with "data-driven" models. Both models have advantages that are…

We present an analysis of log data from a semester's use of the OpenDSA eTextbook system with the goal of determining the most difficult course topics in a data structures course. While experienced instructors can identify which topics students most struggle with, this often comes only after much time and effort, and does not provide real-time…

The increasing use of educational technologies in classrooms is producing vast amounts of process data that capture rich information about learning as it unfolds. The field of educational data mining has made great progress in using log data to build models that improve instruction and advance the science of learning. Thus far, however, the…

This study investigates the issue of the goodness of fit of different skills assessment models using both synthetic and real data. Synthetic data is generated from the different skills assessment models. The results show wide differences of performances between the skills assessment models over synthetic data sets. The set of relative performances…

The field of education is undergoing fundamental change with the growing use of data. Fine-scale data collection at the item-response level is now possible. Xerox has developed a system that bridges the paper-to-digital divide by providing the well-established and easy-to-use paper interface to students, but digitizes the responses for scoring,…

Learning a more distributed representation of the input feature space is a powerful method to boost the performance of a given predictor. Often this is accomplished by partitioning the data into homogeneous groups by clustering so that separate models could be trained on each cluster. Intuitively each such predictor is a better representative of…

The 5th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2012) is held in picturesque Chania on the beautiful Crete island in Greece, under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society (IEDMS). The EDM 2012 conference is a leading international forum for high quality research that mines large data sets of educational…