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Impacts of Students' Academic-Performance Trajectories on their Final Academic Success

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Conference

2022 ASEE Zone IV Conference

Location

Vancouver

Publication Date

May 12, 2022

Start Date

May 12, 2022

End Date

May 14, 2022

Conference Session

Student Success and Interactions

Tagged Topic

Conference Submission

Page Count

14

DOI

10.18260/1-2--44740

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/44740

Download Count

211

Paper Authors

biography

Shahab Boumi University of Central Florida

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Shahab Boumi is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems (IEMS) at the University of Central Florida. His main research focus on educational data mining and machine learning.

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Adan Ernesto Vela

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Abstract

Many studies in the field of education analytics have identified student grade point averages (GPA) as an important indicator and predictor of students' final academic outcomes (graduate or halt). And while semester-to-semester fluctuations in GPA are considered normal, significant changes in academic performance may warrant more thorough investigation and consideration, particularly with regards to final academic outcomes. However, such an approach is challenging due to the difficulties of representing complex academic trajectories over an academic career. In this full paper, we apply a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to provide a standard and intuitive classification over students' academic-performance levels, which leads to a compact representation of academic-performance trajectories. Next, we explore the relationship between different academic-performance trajectories and their correspondence to final academic success. Based on student transcript data from University of Central XXX, our proposed HMM is trained using sequences of students' course grades for each semester. Through the HMM, our analysis follows the expected finding that higher academic performance levels correlate with lower halt rates. However, in this paper, we identify that there exist many scenarios in which both improving or worsening academic-performance trajectories actually correlate to higher graduation rates. This counter-intuitive finding is made possible through the proposed and developed HMM model.

Boumi, S., & Vela, A. E. (2022, May), Impacts of Students' Academic-Performance Trajectories on their Final Academic Success Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Zone IV Conference, Vancouver. 10.18260/1-2--44740

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