Sustainable e-Learning by Data Mining—Successful Results in a Chilean University

Abstract

People are increasingly open to using online education mainly to break the distance and time barriers of presential education. This type of education is sustainable at all levels, and its relevance has increased even more during the pandemic. Consequently, educational institutions are saving large volumes of data containing relevant information about their operations, but they do not know why students succeed or fail. The Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) process could support this challenge by extracting innovative models to identify the main patterns and factors that could affect the success of their students in online education programs. This work uses the CRISP-DM (Cross-Industry Standard Process for Data Mining) methodology to analyze data from the Distance Education Center of the Universidad Católica del Norte (DEC-UCN) from 2000 to 2018. CRISP-DM was chosen because it represents a proven process that integrates multiple methodologies to provide an effective meta-process for data knowledge projects. DEC-UCN is one of the first centers to implement online learning in Chile, and this study analyses 18,610 records in this period. The study applies data mining, the most critical KDD phase, to find hidden data patterns to identify the variables associated with students’ success in online learning (e-learning) programs. This study found that the main variables explaining student success in e-learning programs are age, gender, degree study, educational level, and locality.