Predictive student models are increasingly used in learning environments due to their ability to enhance educational outcomes and support stakeholders in making informed decisions. However, predictive models can be biased and produce unfair outcomes, leading to potential discrimination against certain individuals and harmful long-term…

We propose a novel approach to address the issue of college student attrition by developing a hybrid model that combines a structural neural network with a piecewise exponential model. This hybrid model not only shows the potential to robustly identify students who are at high risk of dropout, but also provides insights into which factors are most…

We encounter variables with little variation often in educational data mining (EDM) due to the demographics of higher education and the questions we ask. Yet, little work has examined how to analyze such data. Therefore, we conducted a simulation study using logistic regression, penalized regression, and random forest. We systematically varied the…

The Big Data for Education Spoke of the NSF Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub and ETS co-sponsored an educational data mining competition in which contestants were asked to predict efficient time use on the NAEP 8th grade mathematics computer-based assessment, based on the log file of a student's actions on a prior portion of the assessment. In…

Research on non-cognitive factors has shown that persistence in the face of challenges plays an important role in learning. However, recent work on wheel-spinning, a type of unproductive persistence where students spend too much time struggling without achieving mastery of skills, show that not all persistence is uniformly beneficial for learning.…

The state of Wisconsin has one of the highest four year graduation rates in the nation, but deep disparities among student subgroups remain. To address this the state has created the Wisconsin Dropout Early Warning System (DEWS), a predictive model of student dropout risk for students in grades six through nine. The Wisconsin DEWS is in use…

Over the past decade, there has been growing interest in real-time assessment of student engagement and motivation during interactions with educational software. Detecting symptoms of disengagement, such as off-task behavior, has shown considerable promise for understanding students' motivational characteristics during learning. In this paper, we…

In this paper we describe the development and refinement of "evidence rules" and "measurement models" within the "evidence model" of the "evidence-centered design" (ECD) framework in the context of the "Packet Tracer" digital learning environment of the "Cisco Networking Academy." Using…

Estimating the difficulty level of math word problems is an important task for many educational applications. Identification of relevant and irrelevant sentences in math word problems is an important step for calculating the difficulty levels of such problems. This paper addresses a novel application of text categorization to identify two types of…

In this paper, we present a data-based user modeling framework that uses both unsupervised and supervised classification to build student models for exploratory learning environments. We apply the framework to build student models for two different learning environments and using two different data sources (logged interface and eye-tracking data).…