Application of EDM to Understand the Online Students' Behavioral Pattern

Abstract

In distance learning, the professor cannot see that the students are having trouble with a subject, and can fail to perceive the problem in time to intervene. However, in learning management systems (LMS's) a large volume of data regarding online access, participation and progress can be registered and collected allowing analysis based on students' behavioral patterns. As traditional methods have a limited capacity to extract knowledge from big volumes of data, educational data mining (EDM) arises as a tool to help teachers interpreting the behavior of students. The objective of the present article is to describe the application of educational data mining technics aiming to obtain relevant knowledge of students' behavioral patterns in an LMS for an online course, with 1,113 students enrolled. This paper applies two algorithms on educational context, decision tree and clustering, unveiling unknown relevant aspects to professors and managers, such as the most important examinations that contribute to students' approval as well as the most significant attributes to their success.