Designing new student performance prediction model using ensemble machine learning

Abstract

Academic success for students in any educational institute is the primary requirement for all stakeholders, i.e., students, teachers, parents, administrators and management, industry, and the environment. Regular feedback from all stakeholders helps higher education institutions (HEIs) rise professionally and academically, yet they must use emerging technologies that can help institutions to grow at a faster pace. Early prediction of students’ success using trending artificial intelligence technologies like machine learning, early finding of at-risk students, and predicting a suitable branch or course can help both management and students improve their academics. In our work, we have proposed a new student performance prediction model in which we have used ensemble machine learning with stacking of four multi-class classifiers, decision tree, k-nearest neighbor, Naïve Bayes, and One vs. Rest support vector machine classifiers. The proposed model predicts the final grade of a student at the earliest possible time and the suitable stream for a new student. A student dataset of over a thousand students from five different branches of an engineering institute has been taken to test the results. The proposed model compares the four-machine learning (ML) techniques being used and predicts the final grade with an accuracy of 93%.