A Data-Driven Approach for Inferring Student Proficiency from Game Activity Logs

Abstract

Student assessments are important because they allow collecting evidence about learning. However, time spent on evaluating students may be otherwise used for instructional activities. Computer-based learning platforms provide the opportunity for unobtrusively gathering students' digital learning footprints. This data can be used to track learning progress and make inference about student competencies. We present a novel data analysis pipeline, Student Proficiency Inferrer from Game data (SPRING), that allows modeling game playing behavior in educational games. Unlike prior work, SPRING is a fully data-driven method that does not require costly domain knowledge engineering. Moreover, it produces a simple interpretable model that not only fits the data but also predicts learning outcomes. We validate our framework using data collected from students playing 11 educational mini-games. Our results suggest that SPRING can predict math assessments accurately on withheld test data (Correlation=0.55, Spearman rho=0.51).