Early detection of wheel-spinning in ASSISTments

Abstract

Persistence is a crucial trait for learners. However, a common issue in mastery learning is that persistence is not always productive, a construct termed wheel-spinning. In this paper, we extend on prior work to develop wheel-spinning detectors in the ASSISTments learning system that distinguish between non-persistence, productive persistence and wheel-spinning. To understand how quickly we can detect each state, we use data from different numbers of practice opportunities and compare model performance across student-problem set pairs. We identify that a model constructed using data from the first nine practice opportunities outperforms models using less practice data. However, it is possible to differentiate students who will eventually wheel-spin from learners who will persist productively using data from only the first three opportunities. Wheel-spinning can be differentiated from non-persistence from the first five opportunities, and non-persistence can be differentiated from productive persistence from the first seven opportunities. These results show that early differentiation between wheel-spinning and productive persistence is feasible. These detectors relied upon hint requests, the correctness of prior opportunities, and the amount of practice and time on the skill. Identifying predictive features offer insights into the impact of in-system behaviors on wheel-spinning and guide the system design.