Student's Patterns of Interaction with a Mathematics Intelligent Tutor: Learning Analytics Application

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine potential identifiers of students' academic success in foundation mathematics course by analyzing the data logs of an intelligent tutor. Design/ methodology/approach: A cross-sectional study design was used. A sample of 58 records was extracted from the data-logs of the intelligent tutor, ALEKS. This data was triangulated with the data collected from surveys. Two-step clustering, correlation and regression analysis, Chi-square analysis and paired sample t-tests were applied to address the research questions. Findings: The data-logs of ALEKS include information about number of topics practiced and number of topics mastered by each student. Prior knowledge and derived attribute, which is the ratio of number of topics mastered to number of topics practiced(denoted by the variable m top in this paper) are found to be predictors of final marks in the foundation mathematics course with = 42%.