Predictive Modeling of Student Dropout in MOOCs and Self-Regulated Learning

Abstract

The primary objective of this study is to examine the factors that contribute to the early prediction of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) dropouts in order to identify and support at-risk students. We utilize MOOC data of specific duration, with a guided study pace. The dataset exhibits class imbalance, and we apply oversampling techniques to ensure data balancing and unbiased prediction. We examine the predictive performance of five classic classification machine learning (ML) algorithms under four different oversampling techniques and various evaluation metrics. Additionally, we explore the influence of self-reported self-regulated learning (SRL) data provided by students and various other prominent features of MOOCs as potential indicators of early stage dropout prediction. The research questions focus on (1) the performance of the classic classification ML models using various evaluation metrics before and after different methods of oversampling, (2) which self-reported data may constitute crucial predictors for dropout propensity, and (3) the effect of the SRL factor on the dropout prediction performance. The main conclusions are: (1) prominent predictors, including employment status, frequency of chat tool usage, prior subject-related experiences, gender, education, and willingness to participate, exhibit remarkable efficacy in achieving high to excellent recall performance, particularly when specific combinations of algorithms and oversampling methods are applied, (2) self-reported SRL factor, combined with easily provided/self-reported features, performed well as a predictor in terms of recall when LR and SVM algorithms were employed, (3) it is crucial to test diverse machine learning algorithms and oversampling methods in predictive modeling.