education

sciences
Article
A Systematic Literature Review of Student’ Performance
Prediction Using Machine Learning Techniques
Balqis Albreiki 1,2 , Nazar Zaki 1,2, * and Hany Alashwal 1,2

1 Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, College of Information Technology,

United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain 15551, United Arab Emirates; [email protected] (B.A.);
[email protected] (H.A.)
2 Big Data Analytics Center, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain 15551, United Arab Emirates
* Correspondence: [email protected]

Abstract: Educational Data Mining plays a critical role in advancing the learning environment
by contributing state-of-the-art methods, techniques, and applications. The recent development
provides valuable tools for understanding the student learning environment by exploring and
utilizing educational data using machine learning and data mining techniques. Modern academic
institutions operate in a highly competitive and complex environment. Analyzing performance,
providing high-quality education, strategies for evaluating the students’ performance, and future
actions are among the prevailing challenges universities face. Student intervention plans must
be implemented in these universities to overcome problems experienced by the students during
their studies. In this systematic review, the relevant EDM literature related to identifying student
dropouts and students at risk from 2009 to 2021 is reviewed. The review results indicated that various



Machine Learning (ML) techniques are used to understand and overcome the underlying challenges;


predicting students at risk and students drop out prediction. Moreover, most studies use two types
Citation: Albreiki, B.; Zaki, N.; of datasets: data from student colleges/university databases and online learning platforms. ML
Alashwal, H. A Systematic Literature methods were confirmed to play essential roles in predicting students at risk and dropout rates, thus
Review of Student’ Performance improving the students’ performance.
Prediction Using Machine Learning
Techniques. Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552. Keywords: education data mining; machine learning; MOOC; student performance; prediction;
https://doi.org/
classification
10.3390/educsci11090552

Academic Editor: Riccardo Pecori

1. Introduction
Received: 12 July 2021
Accepted: 12 September 2021
The recent developments in the education sector have been significantly inspired by
Published: 16 September 2021
Educational Data Mining (EDM). The wide variety of research has discovered and enforced
new possibilities and opportunities for technologically enhanced learning systems based
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
on students’ needs. The EDM’s state-of-the-art methods and application techniques play
with regard to jurisdictional claims in a central role in advancing the learning environment. For example, the EDM is critical
published maps and institutional affil- in understanding the student learning environment by evaluating both the educational
iations. setting and machine learning techniques. According to information provided in [1], the
EDM discipline deals with exploring, researching, and implementing Data Mining (DM)
methods. The DM discipline incorporates multi-disciplinary techniques for its success. It
has a comprehensive method of extracting valuable and intellectual insights from raw data;
Copyright: © 2021 by the authors.
the data mining cycle is represented in Figure 1. Machine learning and statistical methods
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
for educational data are analyzed to determine meaningful patterns that improve students’
This article is an open access article knowledge and academic institutions in general.
distributed under the terms and Modern learning institutions operate in a highly competitive and complex envi-
conditions of the Creative Commons ronment. Thus, analyzing performance, providing high-quality education, formulating
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// strategies for evaluating the students’ performance, and identifying future needs are some
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ challenges faced by most universities today. Student intervention plans are implemented in
4.0/).

Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11090552 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/education

Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 2 of 27

universities to overcome students’ problems during their studies. Student performance pre-
diction at entry-level and during the subsequent periods helps the universities effectively
develop and evolve the intervention plans, where both the management and educators are
the beneficiaries of the students’ performance prediction plans.
E-learning is a rapidly growing and advanced form of education, where students are
enrolled in online courses. E-learning platforms such as the Intelligent Tutoring Systems
(ITS), Learning Management Systems (LMS), and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)
take maximum advantage of EDM in developing and building automatic grading systems
recommender systems, as well as adaptative systems. These platforms utilize intelligent
tools that collect valuable user information such as; frequency of a student’s access to the
e-learning system, the accuracy of the student’s answers to questions, and the number of
hours spent reading texts and watching video tutorials [2].
The acquired information, over time, is processed and analyzed using different ma-
chine learning methods to improve both the usability and build interactive tools on the
learning platform. According to Dr. Yoshua Bengio [3] at the University of Monreal,
“research using Machine Learning (ML) is part of Artificial Intelligence (AI), seeking to
provide knowledge to computers through data, observations, and close interaction with
the world. The acquired knowledge allows the computer to generalize to new settings
correctly”. Machine learning is a sub-field of AI, where ML systems learn from the data,
analyze patterns and predict the outcomes. The growing volumes of data, cheaper storage,
and robust computational systems are the reasons behind the rebirth of the machine from
just a pattern recognition algorithm to Deep Learning (DL) methods. ML models can
automatically and quickly analyze bigger and more complex data with accurate results
and avoid unexpected risks.
Although e-learning is widely regarded as a less expensive and more flexible form of
education compared to traditional on-campus, it is still regarded as a challenging learning
environment since there is no direct interaction between the students and course instructors.
Specifically, three main challenges are associated with e-learning systems; (i) the lack of
standardized assessment measures for students making it impossible to benchmark across
other learning platforms; thus, it is difficult to determine the effectiveness of each learning
platform; (ii) e-learning systems have high dropout rates than on-campus studies, due
to loss of motivation, especially in the self-paced courses and (iii) predicting students’
specialized needs is difficult due to lack of direct communication, especially in case of a
student’s disability [4,5]. The long-term log data from e-learning platforms such as MOOC,
LMS, and Digital Environment to Enable Data-driven (DEED) can be used for student and
course assessment.
However, understanding the log data is challenging as not all teachers and course
directors understand such valuable data. MOOC and LMS provide free higher education
all over the world. These platforms provide student-teacher interaction through their
online learning portals [6]. In these portals, the student can select, register and undertake
selected courses from anywhere [7]. Machine learning algorithms are useful tools for early
predicting students at risk and their dropout chances by utilizing the derived log data. This
technique is more advanced than the traditional on-campus where students’ records, such
as quizzes, attendance, exams, and marks, are used to evaluate and predict their academic
performance. The EDM research community utilizes session logs and student databases
for processing and analyzing student performance prediction using a machine learning
algorithm. This review investigates the application of different techniques of data mining
and machine learning to;
1. Predict the performance of students at risk in academic institutions
2. Determine and predict students’ dropout from on-going courses
3. Evaluate students’ performance based on dynamic and static data
4. Determine the remedial plans for the observed cases in the first three objectives
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 3 of 27

Figure 1. The typical cycle of Data Mining methodology, image is derived from [8].

There are some previous attempts to survey the literature on academic performance [9,10];
however, most of them are general literature reviews and targeted towards the generic
students performance prediction. We aimed to collect and review the best practices of
data mining and machine learning. Moreover, we aimed to provide a systematic literature
review, as the transparency of the methodology and search strategy reduce the replicability
of the review. In this, Grey literature (such as government reports and policy documents) is
not included, which may bias perspectives. Although there is one recent publication on the
Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of EDM [11], the inclusion and exclusion criteria are
different, and they targeted historical data only as compared to our work which is more
inclined on recent advances of last 13 years

2. Research Method
A systematic literature review is performed with a research method that must be
unbiased and ensure completeness to evaluate all available research related to the respective
field. We adopted Okoli’s guide [12] for conducting a standalone Systematic Literature
Review. Although Kitchenham B. [13], Piper, Rory J. [14], Mohit, et al. [15], and many
other researchers provided a comprehensive procedure systematic literature review, most
of them concentrate on only substantial parts of the process, and only a few followed the
entire process. The chosen method introduces the rigorous, standardized methodology for
the systematic literature review. Although the research is mainly tailored to information
system research, it is sufficiently broad to be applicable and valuable to scholars from any
social science field. Figure 2 provides the detailed flowchart of Okoli’s guide for systematic
literature review.
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 4 of 27

Figure 2. Okoli’s guide [12] for conducting a standalone Systematic Literature Review.

Since research questions are the top priority for a reviewer to identify and handle in
SLR, we tried to tackle the following research questions throughout the review.

2.1. Research Questions

• What type of problems exist in the literature for Student Performance Prediction?
• What solutions are proposed to address these problems?
• What is the overall research productivity in this field?

2.2. Data Sources

In order to carry out an extensive systematic literature review based on the objectives
of this review, We exploited six research databases to find the primary data and to search
for the relevant papers. The databases consulted in the entire research process are provided
in Table 1. These repositories were investigated in detail using different queries related to
ML techniques to predict students at risk and their dropout rates between 2009 and 2021.
The pre-determined queries returned many research papers that were manually filtered to
retain only the most relevant publications for this review.

Table 1. Data Sources.

Identifiers Databases Access Date URL Results

Sr.1 ResearchGate 4 February 2021 https://www.researchgate.net/ 83
Sr.2 IEEE Xplore Digital Library 4 February 2021 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ 78
Sr.3 Springer Link 6 February 2021 https://link.springer.com/ 20
Sr.4 Association for Computing Machinery 4 February 2021 https://dl.acm.org/ 39
Sr.5 Scopus 4 February 2021 https://www.scopus.com/ 33
Sr.6 Directory of Open Access Journals 4 February 2021 https://doaj.org// 54

2.3. Used Search Terms

Following search terms (one by one) were used to find out data from the databases
according to our research questions:
• EDM OR Performance OR eLearning OR Machine Learning OR Data Mining
• Educational Data Mining OR Student Performance Prediction OR Evaluations of
Students OR Performance Analysis of Students OR Learning Curve Prediction
• Students’ Intervention OR Dropout Prediction OR Student’s risks OR Students moni-
toring OR Requirements of students OR Performance management of students OR
student classification.
• Predict* AND student AND machine learning
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 5 of 27

2.4. The Paper Selection Procedure for Review

The selection procedure of the paper is comprised of identification, screening, eligibil-
ity checking, and inclusion criteria meeting of the research papers. Authors independently
collected the research papers and were agreed on the included papers. Figure 3 provides
the detailed structure of the review selection procedure after applying Okli’s guide [12] for
systematic review.

2.5. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

2.5.1. Inclusion
• Studies related to Student’s Performance Prediction;
• Research Papers that were accepted and published in a blind peer-reviewed Journals
or conferences;
• Papers that were from 2009 to 2021 era;
• Paper that were in the English language.

2.5.2. Exclusion
• Studies other than Student’s Performance Prediction using ML.
• Papers which had not conducted experiments or had validation of proposed methods.
• Short papers, Editorials, Business Posters, Patents, already conducted Reviews, Tech-
nical Reports, Wikipedia Articles, Survey Studies, and extended papers of already
reviewed papers.

Figure 3. Detailed structure of review selection procedure after applying Okli’s [12] for systematic
review.

2.6. Selection Execution

The search is executed to obtain the list of studies that can be used for further evalu-
ation. The bibliography management of the studies is performed by a bibliography tool
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 6 of 27

named Mendeley. These bibliographies contain those studies that are entirely fit the inclu-
sion criteria. After successfully implementing inclusion and exclusion criteria, the resulting
78 papers are described in detail in the following section. Table 2 presents the number of
papers selected from each year. All the papers mentioned below have been included in
the review.

Table 2. Number of research articles from 2009 to 2021.

Year References Count

2009 [4,16,17] 3
2010 [1,18–21] 5
2011 [22] 1
2012 [23–27] 5
2013 [28–31] 4
2014 [7,32–37] 7
2015 [5,6,38–45] 10
2016 [31,46–52] 8
2017 [51,53–60] 9
2018 [33,45,51,61–67] 10
2019 [2,57,68–70] 5
2020 [71–77] 7
2021 [78–80] 4

2.7. Quality Assessment Criteria

The following quality criteria are defined for the systematic literature review:
• QC1: are review objectives clearly defined?
• QC2: are proposed methods well defined?
• QC3: is proposed accuracy measured and validated?
• QC4: are limitations of the review explicitly stated?

3. Results and Discussion

3.1. Predicting the Performance of Students at Risk Using ML
The students’ performance prediction provides excellent benefits for increasing stu-
dent retention rates, effective enrollment management, alumni management, improved
targeted marketing, and overall educational institute effectiveness. The intervention pro-
grams in schools help those students who are at risk of failing to graduate. The success
of such programs is based on accurate and timely identification and prioritization of the
students requiring assistance. This section presents a chronological review of published
literature from 2009 to 2021, documenting at-risk student performance using ML tech-
niques. Research studies related to dataset type, feature selection methods, criteria applied
for classification, experimentation tools, and outcome of the proposed approaches are
also summarized.
Kuzilek et al. [5] were focused on General Unary Hypotheses Automation (GUHA)
and Markov Chain-based analysis to analyze the student activities in VLE systems. A set of
scenarios was developed containing 13 scenarios. The dataset used in this review contained
two types of information, i.e., (a) student assignment marks and (b) the VLE activity log that
represented student’s interaction with the VLE system. Implementation was undertaken
using the LISp-Miner tool. Their investigation concluded that both methods could discover
valuable insights into the dataset. Markov Chain-based graphical model can help in
visualizing the fact, which can be easier to understand. The patterns extracted using the
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 7 of 27

methods mentioned above provide sub-station support to the intervention plan. Analyzing
student behavioural data helps predict student performance during their academic journey.
He et al. [6], examine students at risk identification in MOOCs. They proposed two
transfer learning algorithms, namely “Sequentially Smoothed Logistic Regression (LR-SEQ)
and Simultaneously Smoothed Logistic Regression (LR-SIM)”. The proposed algorithms
are evaluated using DisOpt 1 and DisOpt2 datasets. Comparing the results with the
baseline Logistic Regression (LR) algorithm, LR-SIM outperformed the LR- SEQ in terms
of AUC, where the LR-SIM had a high ACU value in the first week. This result indicated a
promising prediction at the early stage of admission.
Kovacic, Z. [18] analyzed the early prediction of student success using machine learn-
ing techniques. The review investigated the socio-demographic features, i.e., education,
work, gender, status, disability, etc., and course features such as course program, course
block, etc., for effective prediction. These features containing the dataset were collected
from the Open University of New Zealand. The machine learning algorithms for feature
selection are used to identify the essential features affecting the students’ success. The key
finding from the investigation was that ethnicity, course program, and course block are the
top three main features affecting students’ success.
Kotsiaritis et al. [19] proposed a technique named the combinational incremental
ensemble of classifiers for student performance prediction. In the proposed technique,
three classifiers are combined where each of the classifiers calculates the prediction output.
A voting methodology is used to select the overall final prediction. Such a technique is
helpful for continuously generated data, and when a new sample arrives, each classifier
predicts the outcome. The final prediction is selected using the voting system. In this
review, the training data is provided by Hellenic Open University. The dataset comprises
writing assignments marks containing 1347 instances, with each having four attributes
with four features for written assignment scores. The three algorithms used to build the
system using a combinational incremental ensemble are naive Bayes (NB), Neural Network
(NN), and WINDOW. The system works so that the models are initially trained using the
training set, followed by the test of the models using the test set. When a new instance of
observation arrives, all three classifiers predict the value, and the ones with high accuracy
are automatically selected. Craige et al. [22] used statistical approaches, NN, and Bayesian
data reduction approaches to help to determine the effectiveness of the Student Evaluation
of Teaching Effectiveness (SETE) test. The results show no support for SETE as a general
indicator of teaching effectiveness or student learning on the online platform. In another
review by Kotsiantis, Sotiris B. [23] proposed a decision support system for a tutor to predict
students’ performance. This review considers student demographic data, e-learning system
logs, academic data, and admission information. The dataset is comprised of 354 student’s
data having 17 attributes each. Five classifiers are used, namely; Model Tree (MT), NN,
Linear Regression (LR), Locally Weighted Linear Regression, and Support Vector Machine
(SVM). MT predictor attains high Mean Absolute Error (MAE).
Osmanbegovic et al. [24] analyze Naive Bayes (NB), Decision Tree (DT), and Multilayer
perception (MLP) algorithms to predict students’ success. The data is comprised of two
parts. The first part of data is collected from the survey conducted at the University of Tuzla
in 2010–2011. The participants were the students of the first year from the department
of economics. The second part of the data is acquired from the enrollment database.
Collectively, the dataset has 257 instances with 12 attributes. They used Weka software as
an implementation tool. The classifiers are evaluated using accuracy, learning time, and
error rate. The NB attains a high accuracy score of 76.65% with a training time of less than
1 s and high error rates. Baradwaj and Pal [25] also review data mining approaches for
student performance prediction. They investigate the accuracy of DT, where the DT is
used to extract valuable rules from the dataset. The dataset utilized in their review was
obtained from Purvarichal University, India, comprising 50 students’ records, each having
eight attributes.
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 8 of 27

Watson et al. [28] considered the student activity log enrolled in the introductory
programming of a course to predict their performance. This review advised a predictor
based on automatically measured criteria rather than a direct basis to determine the
evolving performance of students over time. They proposed a scoring algorithm called
WATWIN that assigns specific scores to each activity of student programming. The scoring
algorithm considers the student’s ability to deal with the programming errors and the time
to solve such errors. This review used the programming activity log data of 45 students
from 14 sessions as a dataset. The activity of each student was assigned a WATWIN
score, which is then used in linear regression. Linear regression using the WATWIN score
achieves 76% accuracy. For effective prediction, the dataset must be balanced. Balanced
data mean that each of the prediction classes has an equal number of attributes.
Marquez-Vera et al. [29] shed light on the unbalanced nature of the dataset available
for student performance prediction. Genetic algorithms are very rarely used for prediction.
This review has been compared between 10 standard classification algorithms implemented
in Weka and three variations of genetic algorithms. The 10 Weka implemented classification
algorithms are Jrip, NNge, OneR, Prison, Ridor, ADTree, J48, Random Tree, REPTree,
and Simple CART, whereas three variations of the genetic algorithm are (Interpretable
Classification Rule Mining) ICRM v1, ICRM v2, and ICRM v3 that employs Grammar Based
Genetic Algorithm (G3P). For class balancing, the author used SMOTE, also implemented
in Weka. The results show that the genetic algorithm ICRM v2 score high accuracy when
the data is balanced, whereas the performance is slightly low when the data is not balanced.
The data used in this review have three types of attributes, including a specific survey
(45 attributes), a General survey (25 attributes), and scores (seven attributes).
Hu et al. [32] explore the time-dependent attributes for predicting student online learn-
ing performance. They proposed an early warning system to predict students’ performance
at risk in an online learning environment. They advised the need for time-dependent vari-
ables as an essential factor for determining student performance in Learning Management
Systems (LMS). The paper focused on three main objectives as follows; (i) investigation
of data mining technique for early warning, (ii) determination of the impacts of time-
dependent variables, (iii) selection of data mining technique with superior predictive
power. Using data from 330 students of online courses from the LMS, they evaluated
the performance of three machine learning classification models, namely “C4.5 Classifi-
cation and Regression Tree (CART), Logistic Regression (LGR), and Adaptive Boosting
(AdaBoost)”. Each of the instances in the dataset consisted of 10 features, and the per-
formance of the classifiers is evaluated using accuracy, type I, and type II errors. CART
algorithm outperforms the other algorithms achieving accuracy greater than 95%.
Lakkaraju et al. [38] proposed a machine learning framework for identifying the stu-
dent at risk of failing to graduate or students at risk of not graduating on time. Using
this framework, the student’s data were collected from two schools in two districts. Five
machine learning algorithms used for experimentation purposes include; Support Vector
Machine (SVM), Random Forest, Logistic Regression, Adaboost, and Decision Tree. These
algorithms are evaluated using precision, recall, accuracy, and AUC for binary classifi-
cation. Each student is ranked based on the risk score estimated from the classification,
as mentioned above model. The results revealed that Random Forest attains the best
performance. The algorithms are evaluated using precision and recall at top positions.
In order to understand the most likely mistake, the proposed framework can make the
authors suggest five critical steps for the educators. These include; (a) identification of
frequent patterns in data using FP-Growth algorithm, (b) use risk of the score for ranking
the students, (c) addition of a new field in the data and assign a score of one (1) if the
framework failed to predict correctly otherwise a score of zero (0), (d) computation of
probability mistake for each of the frequent patterns, and (e) sorting of the patterns based
on the mistake probability.
Ahmed et al. [45] collected student data between 2005 and 2010 from the educational
institute student database. The dataset contains 1547 instances having ten attributes. The
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 9 of 27

selected attributes gathered information such as; departments, high school degrees, mid-
term marks, lab test grades, seminar performance, assignment scores, student participation,
attendance, homework, and final grade marks. Two machine learning classification meth-
ods, DT and ID3 Decision Tree, are used for data classification. Weka data mining tool is
then used for experimentation. The information gained is used to select the root node; the
midterm attribute has been chosen to be the root node.
The performance prediction of the new intakes is studied by Ahmed et al. [45]. They
contemplated a machine learning framework for predicting the performance of first-year
students at FIC, UniSZA Malaysia. This review collected students’ data from university
databases, where nine attributes were extracted, including gender, race, hometown, GPA,
family income, university mode entry, and SPM grades in English, Malay languages, and
Math. After pre-processing and cleaning the dataset, demographic data of 399 students
from 2006–2007 to 2013–2014 is extracted. Three classifiers, including Decision Tree, Rule-
based and Naive Bayes performance, were examined. The results concede the rule-based
classifier as the best performing with 71.3% accuracy. Weka tool is used for experimen-
tation purposes. Students’ performance prediction in the online learning environment
is significant as the rate of dropouts is very high as compared to the traditional learning
system [6].
Al-Barrak and Al-Razgan [46] considered the student grades in previous courses to
predict the final GPA. For this purpose, they used students’ transcript data and applied
a decision tree algorithm for extracting classification rules. The application of these rules
helps identify required courses that have significant impacts on the student’s final GPA. The
work of Marbouti et al. [47] differed from the previous studies in that their investigation
analyzed predictive models to identify students at risk in a course that uses standard-based
grading. Furthermore, to reduce the size of the feature space, they adopted feature selection
methods using the data for the first-year engineering course at Midwestern US University
from the years 2013 and 2014. The student performance dataset had class attendance
grades, quizzes grades, homework, team participation, project milestones, mathematical
modeling activity test, and examination scores. Six machine learning classifiers analyzed
included LR, SVM, DT, MLP, NB, and KNN. These classifiers were evaluated using different
accuracy measures such as; overall accuracy, accuracy for pass students, and accuracy for
failed students. The feature selection method used Pearson’s correlation coefficient value,
where features with a correlation coefficient value > 0.3 were used in the prediction process.
Naive Bayes classifiers had higher accuracy (88%) utilizing16 features.
In a similar review, Iqbal et al. [53] also predicted student GPA using three ma-
chine learning approaches; CF, MF, and RBM. The dataset they used in this review is
collected from Information Technology University (ITU), Lahore, Pakistan. They proposed
a feedback model to calculate the student’s understanding of a specific course. They also
suggested a fitting procedure for the Hidden Markov model to predict student performance
in a specific course. For the experiment, the data split was 70% for the training set and 30%
for the testing data. The ML-based classifiers were evaluated using RMSE, MSE, and Mean
Absolute Error (MAE). During the data analysis, RBM achieved low scores of 0.3, 0.09, and
0.23 for RMSE, MSE, and MAE, respectively. Zhang et al. [54] optimized the parameter of
the Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT) classifier to predict the student’s grade in the
graduation thesis in Chinese universities. With customize parameters, GBDT outperforms
KNN, SVM, Random Forest (RF), DT, LDA, and Adaboost in terms of overall prediction
accuracy and AUC. The dataset used in this review comprised 771 samples with 84 features
from Zhejiang University, China. The data split was 80% training set and 20% testing set.
Hilal Almarabeh [55] investigated the performance of different classifiers for the
analysis of student performance. A comparison between five ML-based classifiers has been
made in this review. These classifiers include Naive Bayes, Bayesian Network, ID3, J48,
and Neural Networks. Weka implementation of all these algorithms is used in experiments.
The data for analysis is obtained from the college database with 225 instances, where each
instance comprised ten attributes. The results are shown in this review reveal the Bayesian
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 10 of 27

Network as the most practical prediction algorithm. Jie Xu et al. [56] proposed a new
machine learning method having two prominent features. The first feature was a layered
structure for prediction considering the ever-evolving performance behavior of students.
The layered structure is comprised of multiple bases and ensemble predictors. The second
important feature of the proposed method considered the data-driven approach used to
discover course relevance. The dataset consisted of 1169 students record enrolled in the
Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering departments of UCLA. The proposed method
showed promising results in terms of the Mean Square Error (MSE).
Al-shehri et al. [57] carried out a similar review that compared the performance of
supervised learning classifiers, SVM and KNN, using data from the University of Minho
that had 33 attributes. The dataset was first converted from nominal to numeric forms
before analyzing statistically. The dataset was initially collected using questionnaires and
reports from two schools in Portugal. The original data also contained 33 features, among
which nominal, binary and numeric attributes distribution was 4, 13, and 16, respectively,
with 395 the total number of instances. The Weka tool was used in the experiment where
the algorithms were tested using different data partition sets. The result was that the SVM
achieves high accuracy when using 10-Fold cross-validation and partition ratio.
The application of advanced learning analytics for student performance prediction was
examined by Alowibdi, J. [58]. They considered those students on scholarships in Pakistan.
This research analyzed discriminative models CART, SVM, C4.5, and generative models
Bayes Network and NB. Precision recall and F-score were used to evaluate the predictor
performance. Three thousand students’ data from 2004 to 2011 was initially collected,
which was reduced to 776 students after pre-processing and redundancy elimination.
Among these 776 students, 690 completed their degree successfully, whereas 86 were
failed to complete the degree programs. A total of 33 features were categorized into four
groups: family expenditure, family income, student personal information, and family assets.
The review found that natural gas expenditure, electricity expenditure, self-employment,
and location” were the most prominent predicting student academic performance. SVM
classifier outperforms all other approaches by scoring a 0.867 F1 score.
A hybrid classification approach is proposed by Al-Obeidat et al. [61] combining
PROAFTAN- a multi-criteria classifier- and DT classifiers. The proposed algorithm works in
three stages; in the first stage, the C4.5 algorithm is applied to the dataset with discretization
followed by the data filtering and pre-processing stage, and finally, enhances C4.5 with
PROAFTAN with attribute selection and discretization. They used the same UCI dataset as
used in [81]. The dataset was comprised of students enrolled in languages and Math courses.
The proposed hybrid classification algorithm is evaluated using precision, recall, and F-
measure. The authors recorded significant improvement in accuracy for both Languages
(82.82%) and Math (82.27%) in the students’ dataset. In comparisons with RF, NB, Meta
Bagging (MB), Attribute Selected Classifier, Simple Logistic (SL), and Decision Table (DT)
algorithms, the proposed hybrid approach attained accuracy, precision, recall, and F-
measure scores.
Kaviyarasi and Balasubramanian [62] examined the factors affecting the students’
performance. The authors classified the students into three classes; Fast learner, Average
Learner, and Slow Learner. The data used was belonged to affiliated colleges of the Periyar
University, where 45 features were extracted from the dataset. For classification, Extra Tree
(ET) classifier was used to calculate the importance of these features. Twelve top features
were identified as important features for predicting student academic performance. Zaffar
et al. [63] compared the performance of feature selection methods using two datasets.
Dataset 1 consisted of 500 student records with 16 features. Whereas dataset 2 contained
300 students records with 24 features. Weka tool was used for experimentation, and the
results revealed that the performance of the feature selection methods depends on the
classifiers used and the nature of the dataset.
Chui et al. [64] considered the extended training time of the classifier and proposed a
Reduced Training Vector-Based—Support Vector Machine (RTV-SVM) classifier to predict
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 11 of 27

marginal or at-risk students based on their academic performance. RTV-SVM is a four

stages algorithm. The first stage is the input definition, followed by the multivariable
approach, as the second stage is used for tier-1 elimination of training vectors. In the third
stage of RTV-SVM, vector transformation for tier-2 elimination of the training vectors is
used, and the SVM model is in the final stage using the SMO algorithm. OULA dataset was
used in [64], comprising of 32,593 student records containing both student demographics
data and session log of student interaction with the VLE system. TRV-SVM scored high
accuracy of 93.8% and 93.5% for predicting the student at risk and marginal student
respectively while significantly reducing the training time by 59%.
Msaci et al. [65] proposed machine learning and statistical methods to examine the
determinants of the PISA 2005 test score. The author analyzed PISA 2005 data from several
counties, including Germany, the USA, UK, Spain, Italy, France, Australia, Japan, and
Canada. This investigation aimed to explore the students’ and academic institutions’ char-
acteristics that may influence the student’s achievements, where the proposed approaches
work in two steps. In the first step, a multilevel regression tree is applied considering stu-
dents nested with schools, and student-level characteristics related to student achievement
are identified. In the second step, school value-additions are estimated, allowing for iden-
tifying school-related characteristics using regression tree and boosting techniques. The
PISA 2015 dataset from the nine countries was used where the total number of attributes
at the school level and student level was 19 and 18, respectively. The number of students
in sample size (Table 3). The results obtained suggested that both the student-level and
school-level characteristics have an impact on students’ achievements.
Livieris et al. [68] suggested a semi-supervised machine learning approach to predict
the performance of secondary school students. The approach considered in this review
included self-training and Yet Another Two-Stage Idea (YATSI). The dataset had perfor-
mance data of 3716 students collected by Microsoft Showcase School. Each instance in the
dataset has 12 attributes. The semi-supervised approaches perform well on the data as com-
pared to supervised and unsupervised learning approaches. For better decision-making,
Nieto et al. [69] compared the performance of SVM and ANN, where 6130 students’ data
was collected, and after pre-processing and cleaning, 5520 instances with multiple features
were extracted. KNIME software tool was used for the implementation of SVM and ANN.
It was realized that the SVM attained a high accuracy of 84.54% and high AUC values.

Table 3. Student sample size in the selected nine countries based on 2015 PISA dataset.

No. Country Sample Size

1 Canada 20,058
2 Australia 14,530
3 UK 14,157
4 Italy 11,586
5 Spain 6736
6 Japan 6647
7 Germany 6504
8 France 6108
9 US 5712

Aggarwal et al. [78] compared academic features and discussed the significance of
nonacademic features, such as demographic information, by applying eight different ML
algorithms. They utilized a dataset from a technical college in India, which has information
about 6807 students with academic and non-academic features. They applied Synthetic
minority oversampling methods to reduce the skewness in the dataset. They claimed J48
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 12 of 27

93.2% F1 score with Decision Tree, 90.3% with Logistic, 91.5% with Multi-Layer Perceptron,
92.4% with Support Vector Machine, 92.4% with AdaBoost, 91.8% with Bagging, 93.8% with
Random Forest, and 92.3% with Voting. They also suggested that academic performance is
not only dependent on the academic features, but it has a high influence on demographic
information as well; they suggested using the non-academic features with a combination
of academic features for predicting the student’s performance.
Zeineddine et al. [79] utilized the concept of AutoML to enhance the accuracy of
student’s performance prediction by exploiting the features prior to the starting of the new
academic program (prestart data). They achieved 75.9% accuracy with AutoML with a
lower false prediction rate. With a Kapa of 0.5. Accordingly, they encourage researchers in
this field to adopt AutoML in their search for an optimal student performance prediction
model, especially when using pre-start data. They suggested employing the pre-admission
data and start intervention and consulting sessions before starting the academic progress,
so the students who need immediate help may survive in society. They observed the
available data in unbalanced, and they employed SMOTE pre-processing method and then
employed the auto-generated Ensemble methods to predict the failing students with an
overall accuracy of 83%. The authors acknowledged the overgeneralization limitation of
SMOTE and discussed some methods to reduce the unbalancing data problem without the
overgeneralization problem. OuahiMariame and Samira [80] evaluated the usage of neural
networks in the field of EDM with the perspective of feature selection to classification.
They utilized various Neural networks on different student databases to check their perfor-
mance. They claimed that the NN had surpassed various algorithms such as Naïve Bayes,
support vector machine (SVM), RandomForest, and Artificial Neural Network (ANN), to
successfully evaluate the student’s performance.
Thai-Nghe et al. [82] proposed a recommender system for students’ performance
prediction. In this method, Matrix Factorization, Logistic Regression, and User-Item
collaborative filtering approach performance are compared using the KDD challenge
2010 dataset. The dataset contains a log file of students obtained when the students
interact with the computer-aided tutoring system. The results of this review suggested that
recommender systems based on Matrix Factorization and User-Item collaborative filtering
approaches have a low Average Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) of 0.30016.
Buenaño-Fernández [83] proposed the usage of ML methods for the final grades
prediction of students by using the historical data. They applied the historical data of
computer engineering from the universities of Ecuador. One of the strategic aims of this
research was to cultivate extensive yet comprehensive data. Their implementation had
yielded a panoptic amount of data which can be converted into several useful education-
related applications if processed appropriately. This paper proposed a novel technique for
pre-processing and grouping of students having the same patterns. Afterward, they applied
many supervised learning methods to identify the students who had similar patterns
and their predicted final grades. Finally, the results from ML methods were analyzed
and compared with the previous state of art methods. They claimed 91.5% accuracy
with ensemble techniques, which shows the effectiveness of ML methods to estimate the
performance of students.
Reddy and Rohith [84] discussed that many researchers had utilized the advanced ML
algorithms to predict the student’s performance effectively; however, they did not provide
any competent leads to under-performing students. They aimed to beat the limitation and
worked to identify the explainable human characteristics that may determine the student
will have poor tutorial performance. They used the data from the University of Minnesota
and applied SVM, RF, Gradient Boosting, and Decision Trees. They claimed more than
75% accuracy to identify the factors which are generic enough to spot out which students
will be failing this term.
Anal Archrya and Devadatta Sinha [85] also proposed an early prediction system
using ML-based classification methods utilizing the embedded feature selection methods
for reducing the feature set size. The total number of features in this review is 15, which are
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 13 of 27

collected through questionnaires. The survey participants are educators and students of
computer science from different colleges in Kolkata, India. The authors reported the C4.5
classifier as the best performing algorithm comparing to Multi-Layer Perception (MLP),
Naive Bayes (NB), K-NN, and SMO. In another review conducted at The Open University,
the United Kingdom by Kuzilek et al. [5], developed a system comprised of three predictive
algorithms to identify the students at risk. The three ML-based algorithms (including Naive
Bayes, K-NN, and CART) attain a predictive score using two datasets. The first dataset
is a demographic dataset collected from the university database and the second dataset
consisted of log data with structural interaction on the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)
system. The final score of each student was calculated as the sum of the predictive score by
each algorithm. If the final score was >2, the student was determined to be at risk, and
appropriate measures are implemented. However, if the final score was <3, the student is
not at risk and does not require intervention. Precision and recall score helps evaluate the
performance of the proposed system.
E-learning platforms received considerable attention from the EDM research commu-
nity in recent years. Hussain et al. [81] examined ML methods to predict the difficulties
that students encounter in an e-learning system called Digital Electronics Education and
Design Suits (DEEDS). EDM techniques consider the student’s interaction with the system
to identify meaningful patterns that help the educator improve their policies. In this work,
data of 100 first-year BSc students from the University of Genoa are used. The data is
comprised of session logs created when the students interact with the DEEDS tool and are
publicly available at the UCI machine learning repository. Five features selected for student
performance prediction included average time, the total number of activities, average idle
time, the average number of critical storks, and total related activities. THIS REVIEW’S
five ML algorithms included; ANN, LR, SVM, NBC, and DT. The performance of the
classifiers was evaluated using the RMSE, Receiver Operator Characteristics (ROC) curve,
and Cohen’s Kappa Coefficient. Accuracy, precision, recall, and F-score were also used
as performance parameters. ANN and SVM had identical results in terms of RMSE and
performance parameters. The authors argued the importance of SVM and ANN algorithms
and proposed a modified DEEDS system where ANN and SVM are part of such systems
for student performance prediction.

Comparisons of Performance Prediction Approaches

Accurate prediction of students’ performance and identification of students at risk
on e-learning platform utilized four approaches; (i) prediction of academic performance,
(ii) identification of students at risk, (iii) determination of difficulties in an e-learning
platform, and (iv) evaluation of the learning platform. Of these approaches, most research
studies show that the prediction of student’s academic performance is a crucial area of
interest, with a total of 16 research studies undertaken between 2009 and 2021. Identifying
students at risk was the second after the performance prediction, with 12 research studies
undertaken in the same period. Each research is unique in the methodology used and the
type attributes selected to determine the relevant algorithms applied during classification.
Students’ interaction with the e-learning platform was the most sought attribute, where the
1st year students were the most considered during the research process. Very few studies
(5) sought to understand the e-learning platform and its impact on students’ performance.
Overall, the commonly applied algorithms were; DT, LR, NB, MT, and SVM. Table 4
provides details for performance prediction and identification of students at risk.
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 14 of 27

Table 4. Prediction of student performance and identification of students at risk in e-learning.

Approach Methodology Attributes Algorithms Count References

[18,58]
Early prediction- ML Socio-demographic Rule- base 2
[19,22]
Incremental ensemble Teaching effectiveness NB, 1-NN, and WINDOW 2
[23,24,82]
Performance Recommender system Student’s platform interaction MT, NN, LR, LWLR, SVM, NB, DT, MLP 5
[25,28]
prediction Automatic measurement Students’ activity log WATWIN 2
[28,29]
Dynamic approach 1st-year students LR-SEQ, LR-SIM, DT, Rule-based & NB 3
[6,34,39]
Semi-supervised ML Secondary schools YATSI, SVM, ANN 6
[68,69,78–80]
At-risk of failing to graduate
3
Early prediction of SVM, RF, LR, Adaboost, CART, and DT
ML framework 1 [32,38,45]
at-risk students CART, C4.5, MLP, NB, KNN & SMO CF
Identification Reducing feature set size [85]
Final GPA results MF, RBM, GBDT, KNN, SVM, RF,
of students Student previous grades 3 [46,53,54]
Identification of DT, LDA, Adaboost
at-risk Predictive models- grading 2 [47,57]
students at risk LR, SVM, DT, MLP, NB, and KNN
Factors affecting- at- risk [62–64]
Fast Learner, Extra Tree (ET), RTV-SVM
3
Average & Slow Learner
Predict the
Difficulties encountered
difficulties of Examination of
on the ANN, LR, SVM, NBC, and DT 2 [61,81]
the learning ML methods
e-learning system
platform
Comparison between
Performance
Cross comparison five ML-based NB, BN, ID3, J48, and NN 2 [55,56]
of classifiers
classifiers
Evaluation of
Discriminants of Characteristics of
MOOC in
the PISA 2005 students and academic ML and statistical methods 1 [65]
developed
test score institutions
countries

3.2. Students Dropout Prediction Using ML

Accurate prediction of students’ dropout during the early stages helps eliminate the
underlying problem by developing and implementing rapid and consistent intervention
mechanisms. This section describes in detail dropout prediction using machine learning
techniques through a review of related research based on datasets, features used in ML
methods, and the outcome of the studies.
The early review by Quadri and Kalyankar [17,20] used decision tree and logistic
regression to identify the features for dropout prediction. In these studies, the authors used
the students’ session logs dataset, where a Decision Tree was used to extract dropout factors
while the logistic regression was used to quantify the dropout rates. The combination
of ML techniques for dropout prediction was also investigated by Loumos, V. [16] using
three machine learning algorithms: the Feed-Forward Network, SVM, and ARTMAP. Three
decision schemes for dropout reduction using the above method ML techniques were
suggested, i.e., in decision scheme 1, the student was considered dropout if at least one
algorithm classifies him/her as a dropout. In decision scheme 2, a student is considered
a potential dropout if two algorithms classify a student in this manner, and in decision
scheme 3, a student is considered a dropout if all the algorithms declare the student as a
dropout. The dataset used in their review comprised records of students’ between 2007 and
2008 registered in two e-learning courses. The total number of students is 193, including;
gender, residency, working experience, education level, MCQ test grades, project grade,
project submission date, and section activity. For experimentation purposes, the year
2007 data is used for training, while 2008 data were used for testing purposes. Accuracy,
sensitivity, and precision measures were used to evaluate the performance of the classifiers,
and the results indicated that decision scheme 1 is the appropriate scheme to predict
students’ dropout.
Oyedeji et al. [71] applied machine learning-based techniques in order to analyze the
student’s academic performance to help out educationists and institutions that are curious
to extract the methods that can improve the individual’s performance in academia. Their
review performed the analysis of past results with the combination of individual attributes
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 15 of 27

such as the student’s age, their demographic distribution, individual attitude towards
review, and family background by employing various machine learning-based algorithms.
They concluded three significant models for the comparative performance analysis, i.e.,
Linear regression supervised learning and deep learning. They suggested MAE of 3.26,
6.43, and 4.6, respectively.
Ghorbani and Ghousi [77] compared numerous resampling techniques to predict the
student’s dropout using two datasets. These techniques include Random Over-Sampling,
Borderline SMOTE, SMOTE, SVM-SMOTE, SMOTE-Tomek, and SMOTE-ENN. Their
primary goal is to handle the data unbalancing problems while proposing an adequate
solution for the performance prediction. They applied many algorithms on balanced
data such as RF, KNN, ANN, XG-boost, SVM, DT, LG, and NB. They claimed that the
combination of the Random Forest classifier with the balancing technique of SVM-SMOTE
provided the best results as 77.97% accuracy by employing shuffle 5-fold cross-validation
tests on multiple datasets.
Alhusban et al. [72] employed machine learning analysis to Measure and Enhance the
Undergraduate Student’s dropout. They collected the data from the students of Al-Al Bayt
University and measured various factors for practical analysis such as gender, enrolment
type, admission marks, birth city, marital status, Nationality, and subjects studied at the
k-12 stage. Many features are included, which makes the big sample data; they exploited
Hadoop, a machine learning-based open-source platform. They found that there is a
significant effect of admission test marks on the specialization. Moreover, they suggested
that specific genders, such as there dominating certain fields, are a massive number of girls
specializing in medical compared to the boys. They also claimed the effects of students’
social status on performance. Finally, they claimed that Single students performed better
compared to the married ones or the ones in some relationships.
Hussain et al. [76] applied a machine-learning-based methodology for the expected
performance prediction of students. They collected the curricular data and non-curricular
data from university daily activities. They suggested the application of a fuzzy neural
network that was trained by exploiting the metaheuristic method. As the original FNN was
based on gradient-based error correction and was limited in overall efficiency, they sug-
gested applying Henry Gas Solubility Optimization and fine-tuning the FNN parameters.
They compared the proposed methodology with several state-of-the-art BA, ABC, PSO, CS,
NB, k-NN, RF, ANN, DNN, ADDE, and Hybrid Stacking. They conducted rigorous experi-
ments on the proposed methodology and claimed 96.04% accuracy in the early prediction
student’s performance. Wakelam et al. [75] described an experiment that can be conducted
on the students of the university that are in their final year by using a module cohort of
23. They use readily available features like lecture attendance, learning environment, Quiz
marks, and intermediate assessments. They found these factors as a potential feature for
the prediction of an individual’s performance. They employed DT, KNN, and RF on the
self-generated data and claimed 75% average accuracy in the performance prediction with
only little data and small, easily accessible attributes.
Walia et al. [74] applied classification algorithms in order to predict the student’s
academic performance, such as NB, DT, RF, ZeroR, and JRip. They found that the school,
student’s attitude, gender, and review time affect the performance in terms of the final
grade. They have done a massive amount of experiments with the help of the Weka
tool and claimed more than 80.00% accuracy in their self-generated dataset. Similarly,
Gafarov, F. M., et al. [73] applied the data analysis on the records of students from Kazan
Federal University. The data was collected with the collaboration of the institution ranging
from 2012 to 2019. They applied standard analysis tools like Weka and IBM-SPSS and
devised different results. They concluded that if sufficient data is collected, it can be a lot
easier to apply the advanced algorithm and achieve more than 98% accuracy using modern
programming tools and languages.
The dropout rate is considered high in distance education courses as compared to
traditional on-campus courses. Kotsiantis, S. [17] argue that student dropout prediction
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 16 of 27

is essential for the universities providing distance education. The dataset collected for
predicting dropout is an imbalance in nature as most of the instances belong to one class.
In [17], Hellenic Open University (HOU) distance learning dataset was used for experimen-
tal purposes. The feature set comprised two types of features; curriculum-based features
and student performance-based features. In this review, the authors suggest a cost-sensitive
prediction algorithm that is based on K-NN. The proposed algorithm achieved promising
performance on the imbalance dataset as compared to the baseline method. Marquez-
vera [21] also considered class imbalance issues to determine the students’ failure using the
information of 670 students from Zacatecas. For class balancing, the SMOTE algorithm was
implemented using the Weka software tool. SMOTE is an oversampling method for data
resampling. The results show that applying ML algorithms on balanced data and feature
selection based on their frequencies can enhance the classifier’s performance to predict the
possibility of students’ dropout.
Mark Plagge [30] studied Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) algorithms to predict
the retention rate of first-year students between 2005 and 2010 registered at Columbus
State University. In this review, two ANN algorithms, (i) feed-forward neural network
and (ii) cascade feed-forward neural network, were investigated. The results suggested
that 2-layered feed-forward ANN achieved a high accuracy of 89%. Saurabh Pal [26]
proposed a predictive model to identify the possible student dropouts by utilizing the
decision tree variants including CART, ADT, IDB, and C4.5 in the prediction process. The
dataset contained 1650 instances with 14 attributes each. The Weka tool was also used
to implement the variance of decision tree variants in which the result showed that ID3
attained a high accuracy of 90.90% followed by C4.5, CART, and ADT with an accuracy
score of 89.09%, 86.66%, and 82.27% respectively.
Owning the temporal nature of dropout factors [35] Mi and Yeung [40] proposed
applicable temporal models. Their review proposed two versions of the Hidden Markov
Model (HMM) and named as Input-Output Hidden Markov Model (IOHMM) IOHMM1
and IOHMM2. Moreover, a modified version of the Recurrent Neural Network with LSTM
cell as a hiding unit was also proposed in this review. The performance of the proposed
methods was then compared with the baseline classification model using a dataset collected
from MOOC’s platform. The results showed the dominance of RNN combined with LSTM
as the best classification model, whereas IOHMM1 and IOHMM2 perform in line with
the baseline. Kloft et al. [7] considered the clickstream data for dropout classification in
MOOCs environment using EMNLP 2014 dataset. The output of the review proposed
feature selection and extraction pipeline for feature engineering.
Yukselturk et al. [36] review to investigate the data mining techniques for dropout
prediction in which the data was collected through online questionnaires. The online
questionnaire had ten attributes: age, gender, education level, previous online experi-
ence, coverage, prior knowledge, self-efficacy, occupation, and locus of control. The total
number of participants was 189 students. The review employed four machine learning
classifiers and used the Genetic Algorithm-based feature selection method. The results
show 3NN as the best classifier while achieving 87% accuracy. Considering the larger
dataset, the performance of ANN, DT, and BN is studied by [37]. The dataset used in this
review contains data from 62,375 online learning students. The dataset’s attributes were
grouped into two categories, i.e., students’ characteristics and academic performance. The
final result indicated that the Decision Tree classifier reached a high accuracy score and
overall effectiveness.
Dropout prediction at the early stage of the course can provide the management
and instructors with early intervention. Sara et al. [41] used a large dataset from the
Macom Lectio review administration system used by Danis high schools. The dataset
included 72,598 instances, where each instance comprised 17 attributes values. Weka
software was used as an implementation tool for RF, CART, SVM, and NB algorithms. The
performance of classifiers was evaluated using accuracy and AUC, wherein RF reaches
high values for both measures. Kostopoulos [42] work served as a pioneering review to
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 17 of 27

use semi-supervised machine learning techniques to predict student dropout. The KEEL
software tool was then used to implement the semi-supervised learning methods, and
the performances were compared. The dataset contained 244 instances with 12 attributes
each. The results obtained from the investigation suggested Tri-Training Multi-Classified
semi-supervised learning algorithm as the most effective method.
In recent years MOOCs platform has taken the center stage in education mining re-
search [48,49,59,60]. All these studies focused on the early detection of students’ dropouts.
In [48], the authors shed light on the significance of temporal features in student dropout
prediction. The temporal features captured the evolving characteristics of student perfor-
mance using data obtained from quiz scores and information gathered from discussion
forums through Canvas API. The extracted features from the data include; dropout week,
number of discussion posts, number of forum views, number of quiz views, number of
module views, social network degree, and active days. General Bayesian Network (GBN)
and Decision Tree (DT) were the two classification approaches employed in classification.
In [59], the authors investigated deep learning models capable of automatic feature
extraction from raw MOCs data. A deep learning method named “ConRec Network” was
proposed by combining CNN and RNN, in which the feature extraction automatically
takes place at the pooling layer. The proposed ConRec Network model attained high
precision, recall, F-score, and ACU values. Liang and Zhen [49] analyzed data from student
learning activities to measure the probabilities of student dropout in the next couple of days.
The proposed framework comprised data collection from the XuetangX platform, data
pre-processing, feature extraction, selection, and machine learning methods. The XuetangX
online learning dataset covered 39 courses based on Open Edx. The data contained the
students’ behavior logs over 40 days. The log data need pre-processing so that it can
be used to train ML algorithms. One hundred twelve features were extracted into three
categories; user features, course features, and enrollment features. The dataset was then
divided into training and testing sets containing 120,054 and 80,360 instances, respectively.
Gradient Boosting Tree (GBT), SVM, and RF classifiers are used where GBT score high
average AUC score.
The potential of ML for student dropout prediction at an early stage was also high-
lighted by [50,51]. University of Washington’s student dataset containing 69,116 students
record enrolled between the years 1998 and 2003 was used in experiments by [50]. From
this dataset, 75.5% of the instances belonged to the graduate class, whereas the rest 24.5%
belonged to the not-graduated class. The majority class was resampled using the “un-
dersampling” technique by deleting random instances, and the number of instances is
reduced to 16,269 for each class. The feature set contains demographic features, pre-college
entry information, and transcript information. Logistic Regression (LG), RF, and KNN
algorithms are used for classification, where LG performs better for accuracy and ROC
values. They further added that GPAs in Math, Psychology, Chemistry, and English are
potent predictors for student retention. In [51], the authors suggested an Early Warning
System (EWS) based on machine learning methods. The authors proposed Grammar-based
Genetic Programming (GBCP), a modified version of the Interpretable Classification Rule
Mining (ICRM) proposed in 2013. ICRM2 algorithm can work on both balance and imbal-
ance datasets. The author measures the performance of ICRM2 with SVM, NB, and DT and
found ICRM as the best predictor even if the dataset is imbalanced.
Burgas et al. [51] analyze course grade data to predict the dropout. According to their
experiments, they proposed that combining both the prediction and tutoring plan reduces
the dropout rate by 14%. More recently, Gordner and Brook [66] proposed Model Selection
Task (MST) for predictive model selection and extraction of features. They suggested two
stages based on Friedman and Nemenyi statistical tests for model selection. This review
collected data comprised of 298,909 students from the MOOCs platform for six online
courses. This dataset contained 28 features grouped into three categories, i.e., clickstream
features, academic features, and discussion forum features. CART and Adaboosting Tree
classifiers were utilized for prediction purposes. This review concluded that the click-
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 18 of 27

stream feature was more beneficial while in the selection of the ML method, the Critical
Distance between the classifier’s performance was a better measure. Desmarais et al. [70]
showed the importance of deep learning methods for dropout prediction and compared the
performance with KNN, SVM, and DT algorithms. The deep learning algorithm achieved
higher AUC and accuracy values than ML algorithms, where the dataset contained students’
clickstream and forum discussion data having 13 total features.

Comparisons of Dropout Prediction Approaches

Early prediction of possible students’ dropout is critical in determining necessary
remedial measures. The most used approaches included identifying dropout features,
curriculum and student performance, retention rate, dropout factors, and early prediction.
The student’s characteristics and academic performance were commonly used attributes by
most researchers in determining the dropout features. Early prediction of potential student
dropout was undertaken using both dynamic and static datasets. The commonly applied
algorithms in dropout prediction were; DT, SVM, CART, KNN, and NB (Table 5).

Table 5. Prediction of student dropout using ML techniques and EDM methods.

Approach Attributes Algorithms Count References

[17,20,37]
Features for dropout prediction students’ personal DT, LR, SVM,
[41–43]
including temporal characteristics and academic ARTMAP, RF, 10
[48,59,60]
features performance CART, and NB
[49]
Curriculum-based and Students performance
K-NN, SMOTE 2 [17,21]
student performance-based features class imbalance issues
Retention rate Freshman students DT, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) 2 [26,30]
Evaluation of useful
Dropout factors temporal models RNN combined with LSTM 3 [35,36,40]
(Hidden Markov Model (HMM)
ICRM2 with SVM,
Early-stage prediction of pre-college entry information, NB, DT, ID3, DL, and [26,51,66]
4
possible student dropout and transcript information KNN, CART, and [70]
Adabooting Tree

3.3. Evaluation of Students’ Performance Based on Static Data and Dynamic Data
The student performance data used to predict the students’ performance can be
categorized into two groups; (a) static data and (b) dynamic data. According to [27], the
dynamic student performance data contain student success and failure logs gathered as they
interact with the learning system. Student interaction logs with the e-learning system are
an example of dynamic data as the characteristics of the dataset changes with time. On the
other hand, static student performance data is acquired once and cannot change with time.
An example includes students’ enrolment and demographic data. The following sections
present discussions on the usage of static and dynamic data in educational data mining.
Thaker et al. [27] proposed a dynamic student knowledge model framework for
adaptive textbooks. The proposed framework utilizes student reading and quiz activity
data to predict the students’ current state of knowledge. The framework contains two
advanced versions of the basic Behavioral Model (BM), i.e., (i) Behavior-Performance
Model (BPM) and (ii) Individualized Behavior-Performance Model (IBPM). Feature Aware
Student Knowledge Tracing (FAST) tool was used to implement the proposed models. The
proposed approach achieved low RMSE and high ACU values comparing to the basic
Behavior Model.
Carlos et al. [52] present a classification-based model to predict students’ performance
includes a data collection method to collect student learning and behavioural data from
training activities. The SVM algorithm was used as a classification method that classifies
the students into three categories based on their performance: high, medium, and low-
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 19 of 27

performance levels. Data of 336 students were collected with 61 features. Four experiments
were conducted as follows; in experiment 1, only behavioral features were considered
for classification; in experiment 2, only learning features were used; in experiment 3,
learning and behavioral feature were combined for classification, and in experiment 4, only
selected features were used for student performance prediction. Generally, the dataset
contained eight behavioural features and 53 learning features, and students’ performance
was predicted over ten weeks. The results showed that the accuracy of the classifier
increased in the subsequent week as the data grows. Furthermore, both the behavioral and
learning features combined achieved high classification performance with an accuracy of
74.10% during week 10.
Desmarais et al. [70] proposed four-linear models based on matrix factorization using
static student data for student’s skill assessment where the performance of the proposed
linear models was compared with well-known Item Response Theory (IRT) and k-nearest
neighbor. In this review, three datasets were utilized, namely; (a) fraction algebra comprised
of 20 questions and 149 students, (b) UNIX shell comprising of 34 questions and 48 students,
and (c) college math comprised of 60 questions and 250 students. The experimental results
showed that traditional IRT approaches attained higher accuracy than the proposed linear
model and k-nearest neighbor approaches.

Application of Static and Dynamic Data Approaches

Early prediction of student performance, identification of at-risk students is essential
in determining the potential dropout and accurate remedial measures. A total of 15 research
studies used dynamic data for the students, such as student reading, quiz results, and
activity logs from the e-learning system (Table 6). Only nine studies utilized static data
that focused on enrolment details and demographic information, while 14 used both
dynamic and static datasets. This indicates that the students’ performances and activities
on the learning platform provide much feedback needed for performance prediction. The
commonly applied algorithms in early prediction using static and dynamic data were;
KNN, NB, SVM, DT, RF, ID3, and ICRM2.

Table 6. Utility of static and dynamic data for early prediction of student performance.

Approach Attributes Algorithms Count References

[23,25,28,53,54,82]
Student performance data, K-NN, SMOTE, BM, SVM, NB, BN,
Dynamic 15 [21,47,57,62–64]
student reading and quiz activity DT, CR, ADTree, J48, and RF
[33,44,49,86]
Item Response Theory (IRT), ICRM2, SVM,
Enrolment and [6,26,30,34,39,51,66]
Static NB, DT, ID3, DL, and KNN, 9
demographic data [27,70]
CART and Adabooting Tree
ICRM2 with SVM, DL, ID3,
Pre-college entry information, [17,20,26,37,41–43]
Both KNN, DT, LR, SVM, 14
and transcript information [45,48,49,59,60,66,70]
ARTMAP, RF, CART, and NB

3.4. Remedial Action Plan

Early identification of the student at risk is crucial and contributes to developing
practical remedial actions, which further contributes to students’ performance improve-
ment. This section provided details of recent scholarly work on the remedial action plan to
enhance the student output during their studies.
Ahadi et al. [52] suggested machine learning algorithms can detect the low and high-
performance students at early stages and proposed an intervention plan during the program-
ming of the course work. Early detection of low and high-performing students can benefit
instructors to guide the struggling students and help them during their future studies. In
this review, the authors evaluated the work presented by Jaduad, and Watson et al. [28] on
the given dataset. Furthermore, they also used machine learning algorithms to predict
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 20 of 27

the low and high-performing students in the first week of an introductory programming
course. The students’ dataset of two semesters for introductory programming courses at
Helsinki University was used. The dataset was collected using the Test My Code tool [44]
to assess student performance automatically. A total of 296 students data from spring
(86 students) and fall (210 students) semesters were divided into three groups as follows;
(a) “an algorithmic programming question is given in the exam”, (b) “the overall course”,
and (c) “combination of two”. During classification, nine ML algorithms of three types
were used. These include NB, BN (Bayesian), DT, Conjunctive Rule (CR), PART (Rule
Learner), ADTree, J48, RF, and Decision Stump (DS) (Decision Tree). A total of 53 features
were extracted from the dataset after applying three feature selection methods: best first
method, genetic search, and greedy step-wise. The number of features was then reduced
by eliminating those with low information gain. Weka data mining tool was used for
classification and feature selection, and algorithm implementation. The results suggested
that 88% to 93% accuracy is achieved by the classifiers when evaluated using 10-k fold
cross-validation and percent split methods. They also concluded that machine learning
approaches performed better than Jaduad and Watson et al. [28] methods. Moreover, the
authors suggested additional practices for low-performing students, such as rehearsing
and encouraging students to do more experiments rather than only correct experiments.
Jenhani et al. [87] proposed a classification-based remedial action plan that is built
on a remedial action dataset. In this review, the authors first constructed remedial action
datasets from different sources and multiple semesters where a set of supervised machine
learning algorithms was applied to predict practical remedial actions. The proposed system
helps the instructor to take appropriate remedial action. The system used was trained
on historical data based on experts’ and instructors’ actions to improve the low learning
outcome. Various sources collect the data, including “Blackboard LMS”, legacy systems,
and instructor gradings. Each instance in the dataset contains 13 attributes, whereas
nine class labels represent remedial actions. The attributes included course code, course
learning outcome (CLO), NQFDomain, gender, section size, course level, semester, Haslab,
assessment. The nine classes of remedial actions used were CCES- Support-Center-and-
Tutorial, Practice-Software, Improve class lab coordination, Revise Concept, Extra Quizzes,
Practice Examples, Extra Assignments, Discussion Presentation, and Demos, Supplement
Textbook and Materials. A total of 10 classifications algorithms were selected and used for
classification using the Weka data mining tool, and all the classifiers achieved an average
accuracy of 80%.
Elhassan et al. [31] proposed a remedial actions recommender system (RARS) to
address student performance shortcomings. The proposed recommender system was
based on a multi-label classification approach. This review was an extension of [87],
where each instance in the dataset had more than one label. The dataset used contained
1008 instances where the average number of labels per instance was six with seven features
each. Weka data mining tool was used for implementation purposes, where the dataset
was first split into a 70:30 ratio. The 70% instances were used as the training set while the
rest 30% were used as testing sets. Four wrapping methods were employed during the
experimentation phase, including “Binary Relevance”, “Classifier Chain (CC)”, “RAndom-
Kla bEL (RK)”, and “Rank+ Threshold (RT)”. Classification algorithms C4.5, NB and
K-NN, are used for wrapper methods. The performance of the classifiers is evaluated using
hamming loos, zero-one loss, One-Error loss, and average accuracy. The results concluded
that Decision Tree C4.5 had low error loss (0.0) and a high average accuracy of 98.4% for
the Binary-Relevance (BR) wrapper method.
Burgos et al. [51] investigated the use of the knowledge discovery technique and
proposed a tutoring action plan to reduce the dropout rate by 14%. Logistic Regression
models are used as predictive methods for detecting the potential student dropout using the
activity grades. The proposed prediction method uses an iterative function that assessed
students’ performance every week. The performance of the proposed LOGIT-Act method
was compared with SVM, FFNN, PESFAM, and SEDM algorithms. The proposed algorithm
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 21 of 27

attains high accuracy, precision, recall, and specificity scores of 97.13%, 98.95%, 96.73%,
and 97.14%, respectively. This research review also suggested a weekly tutoring action
plan that can prevent students from dropping out. The proposed action plan included;
• Courtesy call at the start of the academic year
• The public message of welcome to the course via a virtual classroom
• The video conference welcoming session
• Email to potential dropout
• A telephone call to potential dropout
• A telephone call to potential dropout (from one or more courses)

Remedial Action Approaches

This research has revealed that early detection based on students’ performance is
significant in determining the required remedial measures. On the other hand, remedial
actions are undertaken using the course characteristics and technologies of the e-learning
system. The review also revealed that standard early detection and the remedial algorithm
was NB, as most earlier studies exploited NB for the task and achieved significant results.
Overall, DT, NB, and SVM algorithms were applied for performance and during
dropout predictions using static and dynamic data. Table 7 provides summery of remedial
action approaches. Figure 4 shows the common methodological approach used by the
majority of the evaluated research studies.

Table 7. Remedial action based on prediction results.

Approach Attributes Algorithms Count References

NB, BN, DT, CR,
[17,20,28,37,41,42]
Early detection Student performance PART (Rule Learner), 12
[43,44,48,49,59,60]
ADTree, J48, and RF
course code, course learning outcome (CLO),
[26,31,51,66,70]
Remedial action NQFDomain, gender, section size, course level, RARS, C4.5, NB and K-NN 7
[45]
semester, Haslab, assessment, U, M, A, E.

Figure 4. Methodological approach adopted by most of the research studies.

4. Discussion and Critical Review

In order to address our first two research questions, we collected the studies that
are trying to address the problems. We identified the problems and their solutions in the
literature. To answer the third question, the overall research productivity is shown using
country-wise distribution in Figure 5, conference/journal wise distribution in Figure 6
and year-wise distribution in Figure 7 of the studies that are included in the review. It can
be observed that the research community from Germany and UK focused more on the
field than the other countries. Similarly, 2018 was a hot year for the student’s performance
prediction topic overall. Meanwhile, more journals focused on the topic as compared to
the conferences.
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 22 of 27

Figure 5. Contry wise distribution of included publications.

Figure 6. Conference vs. journal wise distribution of included publications.

Figure 7. Year wise distribution of included publications.

This paper presents an overview of the machine learning technique used in educational
data mining, focusing on two critical aspects; (a) accurate prediction of students at risk
and (b) accurate prediction of student dropout. Following an extensive literature review of
critical publications between 2009 and 2021, the following conclusions are made;
• Most studies used minimal data to train the machine learning methods. However, it
is a fact that ML algorithms need massive data in order to perform accurately.
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 23 of 27

• The review also revealed that a few studies have focused on class balancing or data bal-
ancing. Class balancing is mainly considered important in obtaining high classification
performance [50].
• The temporal nature of features used for at-risk and dropout students’ predictions
has not been studied to its potential. The values of these features change with time
due to their dynamic nature. Incorporating temporal features for classification has the
ability to enhance the predictor performance [40,48,67]. Khan et al. [67] examine the
temporal features for text classification.
• It was also observed that the prediction of students at-risk and dropout studies for
on-campus students utilized the dataset with a very minimal number of instances.
Machine learning algorithms trained on small datasets might not achieve satisfactory
results. Moreover, the data pre-processing technique can contribute significantly to
more accurate results.
• Most of the research studies tackled the problem as a classification task. Whereas very
few studies focused on clustering algorithms that detected the classes of students’
in the dataset. Furthermore, the problems mentioned above are treated as binary
classification while several other classes would be introduced to help the management
develop more effective intervention plans.
• Less attention has been paid to feature engineering tasks, where the types of features
can influence the predictor’s performance. Three features were primarily used in the
studies, i.e., students’ demographics, academic, and e-learning interaction session logs.
• It was also observed that most of the studies used traditional machine learning
algorithms such as SVM, DT, NB, KNN, etc., and only a few have investigated the
potential of deep learning algorithms.
• Last but not least, the current literature does not consider the dynamic nature of
student performance. The students’ performance is an evolving process and improves
or drops steadily. The performance of predictors on real-time dynamic data is yet to
be explored.
As a result, ML has all the potential to speed up the progress in the educational field
and it can be noticed that the efficiency of education grows significantly. By applying ML
techniques in educational field in a proper and efficient way, this will transform education
and fundamentally changing teaching, learning, and research. Educators who are using
ML will gain a better understanding of how their students are progressing with learning,
therefore will be able to help struggling students earlier and take action to improve success
and retention.

5. Conclusions
With recent advancements in data acquisition systems and system performance in-
dicators, educational systems are now studied more effectively yet with much less effort.
State-of-the-art data mining and machine learning techniques have been proposed for
analyzing and monitoring massive data giving rise to a whole new field of big data analyt-
ics. Overall, this review achieved its objectives of enhancing the students’ performance
by predicting students’ at-risk and dropout, highlighting the importance of using both
static and dynamic data. This will provide the basis for new advances in Educational
Data Mining using machine learning and data mining approaches. However, only a few
studies proposed remedial solutions to provide in-time feedback to students, instructors,
and educators to address the problems. Future research will focus more on developing
a efficient ensemble method to practically deploy the ML-based performance prediction
methodology and search for dynamic ways or methods to predict students’ performance
and provide automatic needed remedial actions to help the students as early as possible.
Finally, we emphasize the promising directions for future research using ML techniques
in predicting students performance. We are looking to implement some of the excellent
existing works and focusing more on dynamic nature of students performance. As a
Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 552 24 of 27

result, the instructors can gain more hints to build up proper interventions for learners and
achieve precision education targets..
Author Contributions: Conceptualization, methodology, software, statistical analysis, writing origi-
nal draft preparation: B.A., N.Z. and H.A.; data curation: B.A.; writing review and editing: literature
review, discussion: B.A., N.Z. and H.A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of
the manuscript.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used in this manuscript:

RF Random Forest
LG Logestic Regression
NN Neural Network
SVM Support Vector Machine
MLP Multi layer Perceptron
DT Decision Tree
NB Naive Bayes
KNN K-nearest neighbors
SMOTE Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique

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