Augmented intelligence in educational data mining

Abstract

Educational data mining (EDM) processes have shifted towards open-ended processes with visualizations and parameter and predictive model adjusting. Data and models in hyperdimensions can be visualized for end-users with popular data mining platforms such as Weka and RapidMiner. Multiple studies have shown how the adjusting and even creating the decision tree classifiers help EDM end-users to better comprehend the dataset and the context where the data has been collected. To harness the power of such open-ended approach in EDM, we introduce a novel Augmented Intelligence method and a cluster analysis algorithm Neural N-Tree . These contributions allow EDM end-users to analyze educational data in an iterative process where the knowledge discovery and the accuracy of the predictive model generated by the algorithm increases over time through the interactions between the models and the end-users. In contrast to other similar approaches, the key in our method is in the model adjusting and not in parameter tuning. We report a study where the potential EDM end-users clustered data from an education setting and interacted with Neural N-Tree models by following Augmented Intelligence method. The findings of the study suggest that the accuracy of the models evolve over time and especially the end-users who have a adequate level of knowledge from data mining benefit from the method. Moreover, the study indicates that the knowledge discovery is possible through AUI.