Educational data mining in moodle data

Abstract

The main purpose of this research paper is to analyze the moodle data and identify the most influencing features to develop the predictive model. The research applies a wrapper-based feature selection method called Boruta for the selection of best predicting features. Data were collected from eighty-one students who were enrolled in the course called Human Computer Interaction (COMP341), offered by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Kathmandu University, Nepal. Kathmandu University uses Moodle as an e-learning platform. The dataset contained eight features where Assignment.Click, Chat.Click, File.Click, Forum.Click, System.Click, Url.Click, and Wiki.Click was used as the independent features and Grade as the dependent feature. Five classification algorithms such as K Nearest Neighbour, Naïve Bayes, and Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest, and CART decision tree were applied in the moodle data. The finding shows that SVM has the highest accuracy in comparison to other algorithms. It suggested that File.Click and System.Click was the most significant feature. This type of research helps in the early identification of students’ performance. The growing popularity of the teaching-learning process through an online learning system has attracted researchers to work in the field of Educational Data Mining (EDM). Varieties of data are generated through several online activities that can be analyzed to understand the student’s performance which helps in the overall teaching-learning process. Academicians especially course instructors who use e-learning platforms for the delivery of the course contents and the learners who use these platforms are highly benefited from this research.