Informatics in Education, 2008, Vol. 7, No.

1, 31–54 31
© 2008 Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Vilnius

Data Mining Application in Higher Learning

Institutions

Naeimeh DELAVARI, Somnuk PHON-AMNUAISUK

Faculty of Information Technology, Multimedia University
Jalan Multimedia, 63100 Cyberjaya, Selangor, Malaysia
e-mail: naeimeh.delavari04@mmu.edu.my, somnuk.amnuaisuk@mmu.edu.my

Mohammad Reza BEIKZADEH

Faculty of Engineering, Multimedia University
Jalan Multimedia, 63100 Cyberjaya, Selangor, Malaysia
e-mail: drbeik@mmu.edu.my

Received: June 2007

Abstract. One of the biggest challenges that higher learning institutions face today is to improve
the quality of managerial decisions. The managerial decision making process becomes more com-
plex as the complexity of educational entities increase. Educational institute seeks more efficient
technology to better manage and support decision making procedures or assist them to set new
strategies and plan for a better management of the current processes. One way to effectively address
the challenges for improving the quality is to provide new knowledge related to the educational pro-
cesses and entities to the managerial system. This knowledge can be extracted from historical and
operational data that reside in the educational organization’s databases using the techniques of data
mining technology. Data mining techniques are analytical tools that can be used to extract mean-
ingful knowledge from large data sets. This paper presents the capabilities of data mining in the
context of higher educational system by i) proposing an analytical guideline for higher education
institutions to enhance their current decision processes, and ii) applying data mining techniques to
discover new explicit knowledge which could be useful for the decision making processes.
Keywords: data mining, explicit knowledge, classification, prediction, association rule analysis,
clustering, decision tree, neural network classification, radial basis function, neural network
prediction.

1. Introduction

One of the significant facts in higher learning institution is the explosive growth of edu-
cational data. These data are increasing rapidly without any benefit to the management.
We believe that to manage this difficult task, new techniques and tools for processing the
large amount of generated data in business processes and extracting some useful knowl-
edge and information are required. Data mining techniques are analytical tools that can
be used to extract meaningful knowledge from large data sets. This paper addresses the
capabilities of data mining in higher learning institution by proposing a new guideline of
32 N. Delavari, M.R. Beikzadeh, S. Phon-Amnuaisuk

data mining application in education. It focuses on how data mining may help to improve
decision making processes in higher learning institution.
In order to propose a new guideline, one must understand the data mining and deci-
sion making processes in higher learning institutions. In this regard the literature survey
highlights the importance of this technology, what educational system lacks today and
how data mining is applied to the current educational system.
This paper is structured as follows. The next section presents a background study of
the educational domain and the problems that exist in the current conventional system.
Section 3 presents data mining as a key to the current problem in educational system.
Section 4 presents a guideline to data mining application in higher learning institution
proposed by the authors. Section 5 and 6 present the data analysis and data modeling of
data mining application in a university respectively. Section 7 presents the analysis and
the results.

2. Background of Educational Systems Based on Indicators

Indicators are agreed measurement scales which identify the quantitative relationships
between two variables. They are normally used as numerical values. Indicators are very
important in determining the goals and the operational analysis of the educational system
(Johnstone, 1976; Johnstone, 1981; Wako, 1988).
The higher learning institution of a country deals with human factors and educating
specialists needed by the community, educational promotion, research development, and
providing a suitable environment for the country’s growth. Thus, the system essentially
requires a principle which can express the qualitative characteristics of the higher learning
institution to some quantitative values, and facilitates evaluating the functionalities. This
principle is summarized into indicators.
To evaluate the different aspects of the higher learning institution, “performance in-
dicator” is used as one of the main educational system indicators (UNESCO, 2006b).
Educational performance indicators have been known as the base for educational sys-
tem methodology improvement. There have been many studies (Oakes, 1986; Scheerens,
1990; Cave et al., 1990) which present the importance of performance indicator as a qual-
ity improvement tool in an educational domain. They indicate that performance indicator
is vital for educational system improvement. The earlier studies (Yang et al., 1999; Fitz-
Gibbon and Tymms, 2002; Van Petegem et al., 2004) state that other than performance
indicator, an additional step for supporting educational system improvement, which is
built on information from performance indicator, is more important. This step is called
educational feedback. The feedback should be up-to-date, valid and reliable.
From the above literature survey in higher learning institution it is possible to derive
the following conclusions:
1. Based on the fact that the performance feedback perceived in an educational in-
stitution should be accurate, up-to-date, reliable, valid, and toward the goals of
educational improvements, therefore more effective strategies should be taken into
 Data Mining Application in Higher Learning Institutions 33

account to improve the feedback from an educational domain. Not only the perfor-
mance indicator is essential for indicating the actual state of an education system,
it is also vital to develop a methodology for educational system performance feed-
back.
2. Improving the feedback of an educational domain implies further analysis and in-
vestigation in the forming components of performance indicator. Data mining is
able to improve the educational system in each component of the performance in-
dicator. This improves the feedback from the system.
In this study, the components of performance indicator are based on Vlasceanu et
al. (2004) definition. They argue that performance indicators work efficiently only when
they are used as part of a coherent set of input indicator (Human resource, financial re-
sources, sector resources), process indicator (Educating methods, qualitative and quanti-
tative educational improvements, such as registration and dropout rates) and output indi-
cator (alumni and graduates).
In the next section, we present the importance of data mining in education and how it
can help to improve the performance indicator and higher learning institutions in general.

3. Data Mining: a Way to Improve Todays Higher Learning Institutions

Data mining is a powerful new technology with great potential in information system.
It can be best defined as the automated process of extracting useful knowledge and in-
formation including, patterns, associations, changes, trends, anomalies and significant
structures from large or complex data sets that are unknown (Han and Kamber, 2001;
Two Crows Corporation, 1999; Chen et al., 1996). Many applications areas such as bank-
ing (Han and Kamber, 2001), retail industry and marketing (Han and Kamber, 2001;
Edelstein, 2000), fraud detection (Chang and Lee, 2000), computer auditing (Teh et al.,
2002), biomedical and DNA analysis (Han and Kamber, 2001; Han, 2002; Feldman,
2003), telecommunications (Han and Kamber, 2001; Chang and Lee, 2000), financial
industry (Han and Kamber, 2001) have already been advanced through the sturdy tech-
niques of data mining. Another application domain that can take advantage of data mining
techniques is higher learning institution.
Nowadays, higher learning institutions encounter many problems which keep them
away from achieving their quality objectives. Some of these problems stem from knowl-
edge gap. Knowledge gap is the lack of significant knowledge at the educational main
processes such as counseling, planning, registration, evaluation and marketing. For ex-
ample, many learning institutions do not have access to the necessary information to
counsel students. Therefore they are not able to give suitable recommendation to the stu-
dents. We also observe that there is no accurate grouping of courses to identify which
type of course is most appropriate to be offered to which type of students.
Our main idea is that the hidden patterns, associations, and anomalies that are dis-
covered by data mining techniques can help bridge this knowledge gap in higher learn-
ing institutions. The knowledge discovered by data mining techniques would enable the
higher learning institutions in making better decisions, having more advanced planning
34 N. Delavari, M.R. Beikzadeh, S. Phon-Amnuaisuk

in directing students, predicting individual behaviors with higher accuracy, and enabling
the institution to allocate resources and staff more effectively. It results in improving the
effectiveness and efficiency of the processes.
Data mining is considered as the most suitable technology in giving additional insight
into educational entities such as; student, lecturer, staff, alumni and managerial behavior.
It acts as an active automated assistant in helping them to make better decisions on their
educational activities. The final result is improved decision making processes in higher
learning institutions. This improvement would carry the following advantages including;
increasing student’s promotion rate, retention rate, transition rate, increasing educational
improvement ratio, increasing student’s success, increasing student’s learning outcome,
maximizing educational system efficiency, decreasing student’s drop-out rate, and reduc-
ing the cost of system processes. In the next section, the literature surveys of data mining
applications in learning institutions are presented and analyzed based on the components
of performance indicator and educational processes.

3.1. Analysis of Previous Data Mining Applications in Education Systems

In this section the previous data mining applications in higher learning institutions are
analyzed to identify the effect of data mining on which components of performance indi-
cator is. Table 1 provides a summary analysis of the main components.

Table 1
Summary analysis of previous study

Performance Data Educational

Educational
ID Indicator Objective Mining Explicit Knowledge Main
Sub-Process
Type Method Process

The pattern of previous graduates Alumni

Predicting alumni
1 Input indicator Prediction contributing to the university Planning activity
pledge
activities planning
The patterns of previous student
Use of Data Mining in test score associated with their Course
2 Prediction
CRCT scores gender, race, attendance and so on assessment

Creating meaningful The patterns of previous student’s

learning outcome Cluster
3 learning outcome
analysis
typologies
Use data mining The pattern of various groups of
techniques to develop Cluster
4 students
Process indicator analysis Evaluation
institutional typologies
Academic planning and The success patterns of previous
Student
5 intervention transfer Prediction students who had previously
assessment
prediction transferred subjects
Predicting and The patterns of previous similar
clustering persisters Prediction student who were persistent or non
6
Clustering
and non-persisters persistent
Predicting student Classified pattern of previous
7 Classification
performance students based on their final grade
Characteristic patterns of previous
students who took a particular
Improving quality of major
Association Student major
8 Output indicator graduate student by and Counseling
Classification counseling
data mining The patterns of previous students
which were likely to be good in a
given major
 Data Mining Application in Higher Learning Institutions 35

Project ID 1: Predicting Alumni Pledge

This case study (Luan, 2002a; 2002b) predicts the alumni pledges and helps univer-
sities to develop a cost-effective method to identify those alumni most likely to make
pledges. Many universities spend lot of money in sending regular mails to their alumni
every year, though some of them (alumni) may never contribute at all. The obtained pat-
tern from the data mining technique is able to predict those alumni who make pledges to
the university after graduation. The main advantage of this activity to the universities is
to spend money on mailing those who are not very interested in contributing. The result
is saving money in performing other functionalities.
One of the input indicators in a higher education is estimating the financial resources,
cost and expenses. This study attempts to reduce the expenses on alumni activities in ed-
ucational domain through prediction technique. By reducing the cost of alumni activities,
the total cost of university is reduced. This has a great impact on improving this input
indicator of a higher education through improving the alumni activity planning process
in educational domain.
Project ID 2: Uses of Data Mining in CRCT Scores
This study (Gabrilson, 2003) attempts to analyze the most effective factor in determin-
ing student test score in various subjects. It presents that the useful discovered patterns
targeting the various relationship of different types of variables are the main factors af-
fecting the students test score. Using data mining prediction technique, these factors are
identified. While theses factors are identified, then the attempt would be based on in-
creasing the effect of these factors for new students. It results in better student’s test score
performance in coming year.
One of the qualitative and quantitative educational improvements of process indica-
tors is transition rate (Wako, 1988). It is defined as the “proportion of pupils progressing
from the final grade of one level to the first grade of the next level”. Using the standard-
ized test result, the student transition rate from one level to higher is identifiable. High
transition rate in a higher educational domain is an indication of a high level of access or
transition from one level of education to the next. Also low transition rate can signal prob-
lems in the bridging between two cycles or levels of education, due to either deficiencies
in the examination system, or inadequate admission capacity in the higher cycle or level
of education, or both. For example, if student transition rate is reduced and the standard-
ized test result is also present low trend, therefore we need to determine the reason for
result worsening, and try to enrich the factors affecting student’s drops. This increment
will definitely increase the student’s transition rate.
From this case study the effectiveness of data mining in predicting the most effective
factors in student test score can be concluded. It results in improving the evaluation-
student assessment process. Improving this process has a direct impact in improving
transition rate of a higher learning institution.
Project ID 3: Creating Meaningful Learning Outcome Typologies
Another study done by Luan (2002a, 2002b) aims at creating meaningful learning out-
come typologies using data mining techniques. The main objective of obtaining typolo-
gies of students is to be able to improve students through predefined clusters of behavior.
36 N. Delavari, M.R. Beikzadeh, S. Phon-Amnuaisuk

These grouping can be reached beyond traditional student profiling. Discovering various
student typologies in educational domain helps to determine those who quickly are able
to pile up their courses and those who take courses for longer period of time. These clus-
ters help universities to better identify the requirements of each group and make better
decision on how to behave with them in terms of educating, offering courses and curricu-
lum, required time for teaching and so on. It results in having more student satisfaction
of their studies, course offering, and class’s periods.
Evaluating student educational achievement is one of the process indicators of edu-
cational domain. For example, the rate of female educational achievement (Mashayekh,
1989) can be obtained by dividing female educational achievement over male educational
achievement. To keep the educational achievement ratio above the standard level, educa-
tional domain need to better understand their student’s behavior and characteristics. It
necessitates a method to better understand students in their domain, so that they may
better identify their requirement and state of their students.
From this case study we can conclude the effectiveness of data mining in developing
typologies of students in educational domain. The result has an impact in improving
educational achievement of a higher education through improving the evaluation-student
assessment process.
Project ID 4: Use Data Mining Techniques to Develop Institutional Typologies
This study (Luan et al., 2004) is very similar to the above study but is more advanced
in a sense that it first discovers the factors of student dimension (attributes) using factor
analysis, one of the feature reduction methods. Then the result is used to discover the
various clusters of students. The third finding is discovering institutional typologies based
on the various types of students.
The analysis and the effect of this study on student educational improvement process
indicator are similar to the project ID 3 “Creating meaningful learning outcome typolo-
gies”. Therefore it is not repeated again here.
Project ID 5: Academic Planning and Interventions Transfer Prediction
The study done by Luan (2001, 2002b) presents data mining advantages in predicting
students’ likelihood of transferability for on time proactive intervention. It notifies the
institution the types of students who are most at risk of not transferring to a higher level
before they know it. The outcome enables universities in predicting the likelihood of
student transferability. Data mining can link student’s academic behaviors with their final
transfer outcomes. Therefore these kinds of identifications help the universities to pay
more attention to those who require more academic assistance by setting extra classes,
setting consultation hours with the university’s counselors and psychologies.
As mentioned in the above literature, the transition rate is the level of improvement
from one cycle or level to another educational cycle or level. The aim of the educational
domain is to keep this indicator high. One way to accomplish this is to be able to predict
students’ transferability.
From this case study, we conclude that predictions of student’s likelihood of transfer-
ability assist decision makers with an additional tool to identify those who are less likely
 Data Mining Application in Higher Learning Institutions 37

to transfer. As a result, this prediction provides a high potential impact on improving

the transition rate of an educational domain through improving the student assessment
process of the educational domain.
Project ID 6: Predicting and Clustering Persisters and Non-Persisters
A study is done by Luan (2002) to predict student’s persistency by considering the
students who either re-enroll or doesn’t re-enroll the following trimester. Using the pre-
diction techniques, the likelihood of a student’s persistency can be determined. The iden-
tification of these students is very useful to universities because if they know those who
are less likely to persist, then the university can attempt to increase the persistency rate
of these students. By knowing students who are not persistence, the faculty can identify
the factors affecting their non-persistency. Therefore the university’s managerial systems
have to make an attempt on improving these factors, which would result in improving the
student’s persistency rate.
One of the qualitative and quantitative educational improvements in the process in-
dicators of an educational system is the survival rate by grade. It measures the internal
efficiency and the holding power of an educational system (UNESCO, 2006a). The def-
inition from (Wako, 1988; Wako, 2003) seems to be comprehensive where they define it
as “the percentage of a cohort of pupils enrolled in the first grade of a given level or cycle
of education in a given year who are expected to reach each successive grades”. It defines
the retention of students from grade to grade in educational organizations.
From this study, it can be concluded that the prediction technique is useful in pre-
dicting the likelihood of a student persistency. By identifying the students who are less
likely to persist, the university intervenes by providing them the academic assist and as a
result, student retention rate will be increased. This has a positive impact on improving
the survival rate through enhancing the student’s assessment process in a higher learning
institution.
Project ID 7: Predicting a Student’s Performance
Another study (Behrouz et al., 2003) uses the data mining classification technique to
predict students final grades based on their web-use feature. By discovering the successful
patterns of students in various categories, the university can predict the final grade of each
single student. Therefore it helps to identify students at risk early and allow the instructor
to provide appropriate advice in a timely manner.
From this case study it can be concluded that data mining is effective in predicting
student’s performances in the educational domain. The result has an impact in improving
the transition rate, and the process indicator of a higher learning institute by improving
the student assessment process.
Project ID 8: Improving Quality of Graduate Students by Data Mining
A study is done by Kitsana (2003) to improve the quality of graduate students by
data mining. The objective of the project is to discover knowledge from large sets of en-
gineering student’s databases records. The discovered knowledge is useful in assisting
the development of new curricula, improving of existing curricula and most important,
helping students to select the appropriate major. The final result represents the most ap-
38 N. Delavari, M.R. Beikzadeh, S. Phon-Amnuaisuk

propriate major for each single student. The discovered patterns are useful for university
counselors or supervisors who are supposed to supervise new student.
One of the output indicators is computed through gross completion rate. This is de-
fined as the “the total number of students completing (or graduating from) the final year
of primary or secondary education, regardless of age” (UNESCO, 2006b).
The result obtained from this case study is useful in increasing students’ success in
their major. It directly causes an increment of students’ gross completion rates in every
single major. We can conclude that the effectiveness of data mining in predicting the most
appropriate major for each single student improve the student course counseling process.
Improving this process has a direct impact in improving the gross completion rate of a
higher learning institution.
According to Table 1, it is clear that the main focus of many researchers has been to
improve the process indicator of an educational domain. It is also observed that there has
been much attention on enhancing the main process evaluation. The most emphasis is also
on the student assessment sub-process. But the results from previous studies show that to
establish advanced higher learning institution there are still many areas hidden from the
view of data mining researchers in the educational domain. To better identify these areas
in the educational domain, we will present our proposed data mining guideline in the next
section. It introduces a plausible area of data mining application in various processes of
a higher learning institution.

4. Proposed Analysis Guideline (DM-HEDU) for Application of Data Mining in

Higher Learning Institution

In this section, we propose a new analysis guideline to present a roadmap or the plau-
sible area of data mining application in higher learning institution. Its adopted name is
DM-HEDU (Data Mining in Higher Education System). As today’s higher learning in-
stitutions deal with powerful business competitors in a highly competitive environment,
they have to look for a new and faster solution to overcome the problems and achieve a
high academic standard. Therefore, this guideline may assist the institutions to identify
the ways to improve their processes. In the previous literature studies we have not dis-
covered a complete guideline which gathers most of the possible processes to improve a
learning institution through data mining.
The idea of our proposed guideline is presented Fig. 1. The importance of tracking
DM-HEDU guideline in a higher learning institution can be viewed from four different
angels as follows:

Traditional Data Mining Discovered Knowledge Enhanced

Process Knowledge Process
Technique Interpretation

Fig. 1. Basic idea of proposed DM-HEDU guideline.

 Data Mining Application in Higher Learning Institutions 39

1) incorrect usage of huge amount of raw data;

2) outsider environmental motivation;
3) internal educational reason;
4) identification of current gaps and further work.
The incorrect usage of huge amount of raw data stored in a higher learning institution
can be seen where the current university management system and administrators manage
the existing educational processes based on the data stored in the university’s database
systems. But since not all of these data are useful, data mining techniques can help to
discover valuable knowledge, patterns, and structures. The result is a set of enhanced
and new processes offered to the educational institutions. Our guideline is arranged to
demonstrate the identification of the type of knowledge that can be discovered in each
process using data mining techniques to the higher learning institutions.
The outsider environmental motivation can be observed where the higher educational
organizations aim to be ahead of their business competitors. Therefore they first have
to be powered by a proper roadmap and to be demonstrated with an exact guideline to
reach a higher educational level. Our proposed analysis guideline is designed to serve
as a prerequisite to today’s higher educational needs. They can use this guideline as an
assistance decision support tool.
The internal educational reason is considered as the procedure toward improving the
educational management system. Our guideline is arranged to demonstrate the manage-
rial system to identify which part of their traditional processes can be improved by data
mining technology and how they can achieve their data mining goal through a struc-
tured way.
Our DM-UEDU guideline can be used for unifying a common context to identify the
current gaps and further works for any data mining application in a higher education
based on the processes of higher learning institution. It also provides an opportunity for
researchers to be known with the existing area of research.
Table 2 shows the main components of this guideline. It signifies the main processes of
a generic educational system, sub processes, the related knowledge that can be discovered
by data mining techniques, and the appropriate data mining technique that can be used to
discover the related knowledge.
As shown in the DM-HEDU guideline, the first column of the table corresponds to
the main processes that normally occur in a higher learning institution. We have identified
seven main processes in higher educational system, which are “evaluation”, “planning”,
“registration”, “consulting”, “marketing”, “performance” and “examination”. Each sin-
gle process is categorized into some detail sub-processes, which are presented in column
two of the DM-HEDU guideline. The third column of the guideline introduces sets of
knowledge and information, which are in fact a series of extracted patterns and struc-
tures from the masses of data by the use of data mining techniques and algorithms. It
means that applying some data mining techniques on the set of data, a series of mean-
ingful knowledge can be discovered. This knowledge helps in enhancing the traditional
education processes. The last column of the guideline portrays the most appropriate data
mining method for extracting the beneficial knowledge.
40 N. Delavari, M.R. Beikzadeh, S. Phon-Amnuaisuk

Table 2
Portion of DM-HEDU: data mining in higher education

Data Mining
Main Process Sub-Process Explicit Knowledge
Method
• The success patterns of previous students who • Prediction
previously had transferred subjects
• The patterns of previous students who were likely to • Prediction
be good in a given major
• The patterns and relationship of various factors
affecting the student test score
• Prediction of the likelihood of success
• The success patterns of previous similar students • Prediction,
• Prediction of likelihood of persistence • Clustering
• The patterns of previous successful and unsuccessful • Prediction,
graduates • Clustering
Student • The patterns of previous students who planned to dropp • Prediction
assessment subject
• The patterns of previous students who planned for • Prediction
resource allocation
• The patterns of previous male and female students in • Association
test score
• The patterns of previous student’s learning outcome • Prediction,
• Clustering
• The patterns of previous students attendance in • Association
accordance with test score
Evaluation • Association of student health information and test score • Association
• The characteristic patterns of previous lecturers which • Prediction,
Lecturer were more effective than others Classification
assessment • Association between lecturer training and student test • Association
score
• Cluster of most cost-effective courses to be offered • Clustering
together
• The patterns of courses who offered previously to • Classification
Course different type of students • Association
assessment • Prediction of factors most affected in test score in • Prediction
various courses
• The patterns of programs (courses) which produce • Prediction
greatest return and investment in terms of student
learning in coming year
Industrial • The patterns of previous training course for different • Classification
training type of student • Association
assessment
Student • The success patterns of those students who successfully • Prediction
registration enrolled to the university
evaluation

To be continued
 Data Mining Application in Higher Learning Institutions 41

Continuation of Table 2
Data Mining
Main Process Sub-Process Explicit Knowledge
Method
Course • Classification of courses to the most appropriate time • Classification
Planning • Success patterns of courses which were taken together • Clustering
Academic • The patterns of previous discipline problems in • Prediction
planning academic planning
Lecturer time • The patterns of previous lecturer’s class time table • Prediction
table planning • Prediction of lecturer time table for coming year
• The pattern of previous graduates contributing in • Prediction
Alumni university activities
Planning activities • Prediction of the likelihood of alumni who continued
planning studies
• Prediction of the likelihood of alumni who find suitable
job
Student • The patterns of previous students who take various • Prediction
Registration course subjects
registration • Association of student to the most appropriate subject • Association
Student • The patterns of previous students behavior in an • Clustering
behavioral academic environment
consulting
Major selection • The characteristic patterns of previous students who • Classification
consulting took particular major • Association
Counseling
Course • Classification of student to various elective subject • Classification
selection • Classification of student to various courses
consulting
Program • The patterns of previous student who were good in a • Association
selection given program • Classification
counseling

Student ex- • Association between exam level and student mark • Association
Examination
amination • Association between exam level and lecturer class
performance
• Association between student performance and lecturer • Association
Student satisfaction
performance • Association between student course mark and time and
venue of classes
Performance
• Association between lecturer who cancel the class • Association
Lecturer frequently and student test score
performance • Association between lecturer background and time and
his/her performance
• The characteristic patterns of previous international • Prediction
University lecturer and student which attract to the universities
Marketing
advertising • The characteristic patterns of previous local student and • Prediction
lecturer who resign or terminate from local universities
42 N. Delavari, M.R. Beikzadeh, S. Phon-Amnuaisuk

For instance, it is observed in the DM-HEDU guideline that “evaluation” is an edu-

cational process. Its main sub-processes are “student assessment”, “lecturer assessment”,
“industrial training assessment”, “course assessment”, and “student registration evalua-
tion”. As an example, the traditional “student assessment” sub-process can be enhanced
to a new process that can identify the likelihood of student’s transferability. The appropri-
ate technique can be prediction technique stated in column 4 of the table. The discovered
knowledge defines the success patterns of previous similar students who successfully
transfer the course.

5. Data Analysis and Investigation

In this study, the experiments are conducted on course computer programming II and the
pre-requisite of it, Computer Programming I. The new knowledge discovered from these
applications help in improving decision-making procedure of a university.
The application is mainly based on the CRISP_DM (Chapman et al., 2000) methodol-
ogy. The main steps of CRISP are including; domain understanding, data understanding,
data preparation, modeling, evaluation and deployment. In this section, some of the ap-
propriate activities for the first three steps are presented. These three steps prepare and
preprocess the data for further analysis and modeling. Next sections will discuss on the
rest of the CRISP steps.

Domain Understanding. In this phase the higher education is analyzed and the main
data mining objectives are set (Section 5, DM-HEDU guideline)

Data Understanding. In this phase, the required raw data and attributes are collected
based on the objectives. According to our data mining goal, the raw data is related to:
1) student demographic and academic knowledge;
2) lecturer demographic and academic knowledge;
3) course information;
4) semester status information.
The data are then described and explored by (i) identifying initial format of data, (ii)
the meaning and description of individual attributes and (iii) determining the relation of
attributes. The final part verifies the data quality by determining the data completeness
and correctness.

Data Preparation. This phase is the final step of directly dealing with data. The dataset
produced in this section is used for modeling and the major analysis task of the project.
The essence of data preparation is to maximize visibility of the relationship that exists
between input and output data sets, which is captured with a modeling tool. Prepared
data enables mining technique to generate a better model.
Three main activities done in this phase are as follows:
1) designing the taxonomy of a university educational entities,
 Data Mining Application in Higher Learning Institutions 43

2) evaluating data,
3) evaluating variables (feature selection).
By designing the taxonomy, a hierarchy of relations between various students and
lecturer knowledge are defined. As an example, prior to the limited space a very small
portion of taxonomy related to student demographics information is presented in Fig. 2.
Data evaluation includes resolving the problems with missing values, outliers and
redundant variables. In this regard, few activities are done to make sure that the data are
in a good quality condition, including: handling missing values, converting continuous
variables to discrete variables, constructing new attributes, integrating data, and sampling
data.
Our main idea of evaluating the variables is demonstrated in Fig. 3. It presents the
suitable technique and approach appropriate to our study to get the most consistence
variables.
Choosing the right variables in data mining is one of the main tasks before applying
most of the modeling technique, because the variables can be correlated or redundant.
The approach to get these variables is relevance analysis or feature selection. The tech-

Higher Education System

Lecturer Student

Demographic Academic Academic Demographic

Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge Knowledge

Private General
Knowledge Knowledge

Student Disability Student Marital Status Locality Specification

Student County Student Citizen Student Birth Place Student Nationality

Student Age Student Sex Student Religion Student Race

Fig. 2. Small portion of taxonomy related to student demographics information.

Relevance Approach Outcome

Analysis
Most Consistence
Variables Decision Tree Bottom up variables

Fig. 3. Evaluating variable technique and approache.

44 N. Delavari, M.R. Beikzadeh, S. Phon-Amnuaisuk

nique used is decision tree. This method is appropriate for handling both categorical and
numerical variables values. It is used to get the most consistence variables by presenting
them in the various tree levels.
Among two approaches of decision tree including bottom up and top down, the bot-
tom up strategy is selected in this study, because it is more reliable, and we can get the
classification trees that describe the class label with only this variables set. The output
variables discovered in this phase are going to be used as the input of next phase of
CRISP, modeling phase.

6. Data Mining Modeling

In this section the prepared data and attributes from the previous section are used as the
input for the development of lecturer, student and course models. This section explains
the outcome (explicit knowledge) of the models and the usage of the outcome by man-
agerial decision makers. The knowledge obtained from data mining techniques gives the
managerial decision makers the useful information for decision making. The models are
classified in two main categories; predictive and descriptive models.
• Descriptive model describes the data set in a concise and summarized manner and
presents the interesting general properties of the data. It explains the patterns in
existing data, which may be used to guide decisions.
• Predictive model predicts behavior based on historic data and uses data with known
results to build a model that can be later used to explicitly predict values for differ-
ent data (Two Crows Corporation, 1999).

6.1. Predictive Data Mining Models

Model A: Predicting Student Success Rate for Individual Student

This model is developed to predict the student success rate for individual students. The
explicit knowledge discovered from this model can be used by student management sys-
tem to consult individual student in successful course taking. Within this procedure, if the
students are predicted to be unsuccessful, then they are provided with extra consultation
and help to get improved in the course. If they are successful, new personal policies for
successful student course taking are set.
Classification and prediction are the two main methods, which are helpful to discover
the pattern of successful student. They assist in predicting the performance of students
in computer programming II and help to identify who will be poorly carried out in the
course before they are even known with it.
For classification method, the experiments are conducted through decision tree us-
ing SLIQ algorithm (Mehta et al., 1996) and neural classification. For prediction method
the experiments are conducted using neural prediction (Han and Kamber, 2001) and Ra-
dial Basis Function (RBF) (Lee et al., 1998). In the following some of the hypotheses1
discovered from the models are presented.
1 Hypothesis is the obtained result from the model before validation.
 Data Mining Application in Higher Learning Institutions 45

Decision Tree and Neural Network Classification Technique

Using decision tree, the final model has the accuracy of 86.04% and using neural network
the final model has the accuracy of 86.8%. In the following some of the meaningful output
results are presented.
1. There is a strong correlation between students, whom are younger than 21 years
old and taking the course according to the study plan (or earlier), and his success.
The student in this group is likely to be successful (97.3% of cases).
2. There is a strong correlation between students who delay on taking the course for
long time (more than 3 years), and their success. They are likely to be unsuccessful
(100% of cases).
3. There is a strong correlation between students majoring in software engineering
who take the course earlier and their success. They are likely to be successful.

Neural Network and RBF Prediction Techniques

This model is applied through hold out and 5-fold cross validation. The result is presented
in terms of Global Root Means Square (GRMS) error (Huffman, 1997). The neural net-
work has the error rate of 0.31 and RBF has 0.30 GRMS error. The outcome of prediction
techniques cannot be easily understandable and should be interpreted first. Below, con-
clusion results of some of the hypothesis are presented.
1. There is a strong correlation between the students with high English ability and
their success. These students are 82.52% to 84.13% likely to be successful.
2. There is a strong correlation between those students who perform well in pre-
requisite of the course, and their success. These students are 82.69% to 86.20%
likely to be successful.
3. There is a strong correlation between the students who take the subject while they
are not in the first year of study and their success. These students are 71.03% to
73.07% likely to be successful.

Model B: Predicting Student Success Rate for Individual Lecturer

This model is developed to predict the student success rate for individual lecturer. The
explicit knowledge discovered from this model can be used by management for general
decision-making. In other words it can be used to support policies and procedures, which
are set at top-level management. The model is applied through prediction (neural net-
work) and classification (SLIQ and neural network) techniques. In the following some of
the obtained results are presented.

Decision Tree and Neural Network Classification Technique

In this model, the lecturer’s demographics and academic knowledge and student suc-
cess/failure as class category are the input variables to the decision tree. The result
obtained from decision tree model through 5-fold cross validation has the accuracy
of 87.80% and the result obtained from neural classification model has the accuracy
of 88.65%.
In the following, some of the hypotheses are presented.
46 N. Delavari, M.R. Beikzadeh, S. Phon-Amnuaisuk

1. There is a strong correlation between the lecturer who is single or has been married
for less than 10 years and the success of his students. In this case the students are
likely to be successful.
2. There is a strong correlation between the lecturer who has been married for more
than 10 years with high academic standard level, and the success of students. In
this case the students are likely to be successful.
3. There is a strong correlation between the lecturer who has been married for more
than 10 years with low academic standard level, and the success of students. In this
case the students are likely to be unsuccessful.

Neural Network Model

The model obtained using neural network has the GRMS error of 0.35. In the following,
some of the hypotheses are stated.
1. There is a strong correlation between the high academic standard grade level of a
lecturer and the success of the students. The students are likely to be successful in
this case.
2. There is a strong correlation between the lecturers majoring in computer science or
information technology, and the success of students. The students are likely to be
successful in this case.

6.2. Descriptive Data Mining Modeling

Model C: Model of Student Course Enrollment

This model is developed to describe the characteristics patterns of successful students
who plan to take the course. The discovered explicit knowledge discovered from this
model is used for general decision making at top-level management. It either assists in
supporting the policies and procedures for student intake procedure or it helps to set new
strategies and plan for those who are wishing to take the course.
One of the useful techniques is association rule analysis (Agrawal and Imielinski,
1993). Using this technique the pattern and tendencies of old data are discovered. This
pattern describes the relation of successful students with their academic and demograph-
ics information. Therefore this knowledge can help to determine new policies for new
intakes in this course. In the following the interpretations of some of the hypothesis are
presented. Confidence defines the strength of the rule.
1. This hypothesis says that for 70.98% of all students who have successfully passed
their perquisite for computer programming II, they are successful with a confidence
of 87.65%.
2. This hypothesis says that for 65.49% of all students who are not in the first year,
they are successful with a confidence of 79.71%.
3. This hypothesis says that for 58.62% of all students who have successfully passed
their prerequisite of the course and they are not in the first year; they are successful
with a confidence of 86.67%.
4. This hypothesis says that for 39.22% of all students younger than 21 years, they
are successful with a confidence of 98.52%.
 Data Mining Application in Higher Learning Institutions 47

5. This hypothesis says that for 37.05% of all students younger than 21 years old and
not in the first year, they are successful with a confidence of 98.44%
6. This hypothesis says that for 36.47% of all students younger than 21 years old
and with no failure in their prerequisite, they are successful with a confidence
of 98.94%.

Model D: Model of Lecturer Course Assignment Policy Making

This model is developed to describe the characteristics pattern of lecturers who plan to
take the course. The knowledge discovered from this model can be used for general de-
cision making at top-level management. It can either assists in supporting the current
managerial rules and regulations in lecturer course assignment policy making or it helps
to set new strategies and plan for managerial decision makers on those lecturers who plan
to take the course.
One of the appropriate techniques is association rule analysis. It can be used to dis-
cover the patterns and tendencies of old data that relates the academic and demographics
information of lecturers with their student’s success. In the next page some of the hy-
potheses are presented.
1. This hypothesis says that for 49.86% of all lecturers majoring in computer science,
their students are successful with a confidence of 80.72%.
2. This hypothesis says that the lecturer with high background grade level, and ma-
joring in computer science, the students are successful in 80.58% of cases. This
affects 45.99% of the total hypotheses.
3. This hypothesis says that for 38.22% of all lecturers with high academic grade
level, the students are successful with a confidence of 93.24%.
4. This hypothesis says that for 39.34% of all lecturers who are active in contributing
university activities, then the students are successful with a confidence of 84.02%.

Model E: Model of Lecturer Typologies

This model is also developed to describe the various typologies or segments of lectur-
ers who have taught the course. The appropriate technique is cluster analysis technique.
Using this technique, lecturer profiling that yields to high and low achieved students is
performed. The various segments of lecturers that deliver students in different level of
programming are identified. Two techniques are used including neural clustering and de-
mographics clustering.
Referring to the clusters obtained using demographics and neural clustering; it is ob-
served that most of the clusters obtained using both techniques are similar. In the follow-
ing the some sample clusters are presented.
Cluster Number 1. This cluster includes the lecturers with high academic grade level
and majored in science. They have been very active in university. Their background study
was done in research work. They have recently married. The students in this group are
95.74% likely to be successful.
Cluster Number 2. This cluster includes the lecturer with low academic grade level
and majored in computer science. They have been very active in university. Their back-
48 N. Delavari, M.R. Beikzadeh, S. Phon-Amnuaisuk

ground study was done in research work. They are married for long time. The students in
this group are 56% likely to be successful.

Model F: Model of Course Time Planning

This model is developed to describe the patterns of course information for better planning.
One of the appropriate solutions for this problem is using association rule analysis to
discover the pattern and tendencies of data. These patterns identify the most suitable time
of offering course. It can be discovered through identifying the relation of the successful
students with the time of taking the course. Therefore higher percentage of successful
students in an appropriate time is the representation of successful course planning on
time. The obtained hypothesis presents that if the course is offered on the first 7 to 16
first month of student study period, then the student is successful in 91.48% of cases.
Therefore this is an important factor for managerial decision makers to propose the course
at this appropriate time.

7. Analysis and Discussion

In this section the obtained hypotheses from the above models are analyzed and dis-
cussed. The main sources of this analysis are based on the expert knowledge and the
main data before any data mining operation. In the following some of the hypotheses are
validated for various models and later some improving factors are presented.
Creditability of the Results
The obtained hypotheses from the models should be first validated with the main data
set to identify whether the same patterns exists in the data. If the obtained hypothesis
and the pattern in the main data set do not match, then the reason of this inconsistency is
verified. The hypotheses presented in the previous section are all analyzed with the real
data set and they are validated to be meaningful and creditable. In the following some
example of the valid and invalid rules are presented.
One of the hypotheses (i.e., a rule generated by a decision tree model) says that, if
the students delay on taking the course (according to the study plan) and their English
ability level is medium, then they are 100% likely to be successful. It seems to contradict
to our commonsense since a 100% success rate seems a bit high. We verify this by com-
paring the percentage of student success in main data set and preprocessed data set. It is
identified that there are missing unsuccessful students that delays on taking the course
(according to the study plan) and their English ability level is medium. Therefore this
hypothesis is not creditable.
The other hypothesis obtained from the neural and decision tree classification says that
there are strong correlation between students, whom are younger than 21 years old and
taking the course according to the study plan (or earlier), and his success. The student in
this group is likely to be successful. In this hypothesis the percentage accuracy of student
success in preprocessed data is similar to the student success in main data set. Therefore
this rule is meaningful and creditable.
 Data Mining Application in Higher Learning Institutions 49

Factors Affecting the Reliability of Model

Reduction in the total number of data. There are few reasons that the result from
modeling techniques may not conclude to real data. One of the main possible reasons is
due to some negative impacts of data preprocessing in the third phase of CRISP_DM that
the total number of data is reduced. In the following some of them are stated:
1. Handling missing value phase
In this study, two methods for handling missing values are applied. The first ap-
proach is encoding the values. If this phase cannot be applied to some variables
then the records containing missing values are discarded. The missing records in
this phase may have some negative impact on the outcome of the modeling result.
2. Incompleteness and low quality of important attribute value
One of the important attribute values is the grade of students in the course so that
their success and failure can be obtained from it. This attribute is very important
since among all techniques it plays an important role in the modeling phase. Some
of the records in this phase have to be discarded because this important attribute is
not completely entered by the administrators.
3. Data integration and database application
In data integration phase the data from various sources are merged to produce the
information about students and lecturers. In this regards the full outer join operation
causes some of the records to be discarded in data preparation phase.
4. Inconsistency and value error among attributes
The other reason that some of the modeling results do not confirm with the real
life situation is inconsistency and value error among the attribute values. There
are many reasons for these inconsistencies, including wrong entering the values of
attributes by the administrators over a period of time, like “state” and “country” do
not match. Or when calculating the age of a lecturer, it is observed that the lecturer
is still young, but the pension date of him/her has already passed.
The modeling result is based on the values and attributes in the input data. There-
fore a wrong input produces a wrong modeling result too. So in our modeling, we
discard those attributes and values which may lead to wrong result. As a result, the
whole information about one educational entity is removed from the dataset.
Reduction in the total number of attributes. There are many reasons which cause
reduction in the number of attributes. We have identified this through the expert knowl-
edge. It means the attributes which are important from an expert’s point of view are not
observed in the modeling result. In the following some of the reasons are stated:
1. Feature Selection in data preparation phase
Based on the attribute values, in relevant analysis phase those attributes with ma-
jor importance and more consistency are identified. Some of those attributes may
be considered important from an expert point of view but they may not be con-
sidered important in relevance analysis and vice versa. The ignorance of attributes
in relevance analysis is based on the low quality of attributes and their value. For
example, most of the data in an attribute has the same value for all the values.
2. Medium quality of attributes and their values
50 N. Delavari, M.R. Beikzadeh, S. Phon-Amnuaisuk

There are some attributes which most of the values appropriate to them are not
filled properly or there is a lack of knowledge from the administrators about the
meaning of attribute values which has been designed earlier. These attributes have
to be discarded though they may be important from an expert point of view.
Unavailability of the Attributes
1. Non-extractability of many attributes from the main data source
There are some attributes which are important from an expert’s point of view, but
they are not extractable from the database.
2. Unavailability of some attributes in the main database
There are some important attributes important to our data mining analysis, but they
are not stored and unavailable in the university database. In the following section,
a number of these attributes relating to lecturer, student and course knowledge are
determined.

Suggestion to Improve the Model’s Quality

Based on the expert knowledge it is suggested that the main data base system may be
improved by adding the extra attributes. In the following, they are suggested and catego-
rized into the groups.
Student’s background knowledge (pre-university academic information):
• average of mathematical subjects such as; calculus, finite math, algebra;
• average of theoretical subjects such as family and society, management, economic,
accounting;
• major or degree;
• average of computer science mark.
Student’s course knowledge:
• average of mid-grade exam mark;
• attendance rate;
• average of project and assignment mark;
• carried mark itself (to know the performance during the course).
Student’s demographics knowledge:
• under any treatment which require consideration;
• any psychological problem;
• family monthly income;
• student monthly cost.
Lecturer academic knowledge:
• lecturer’s research activity, journals, book publishing in the teaching area;
• conferences, seminars and workshops in the area of teaching;
• lecturer’s attendance rate;
• lecturer’s year of experience in teaching the course.
Lecturer’s demographic knowledge:
• any disability;
• under any treatment which require consideration.
 Data Mining Application in Higher Learning Institutions 51

Course knowledge:
• Are the course materials based on the standard?
• Are there any standard number of assignment and project for the course?
• Is there enough pre-requisite as the basis of the course?

8. Conclusion and Further Works

This study was an attempt to enhance the traditional educational process via data mining
technology. The advantages and suitability of this system in higher learning institution
has been discussed in detail. The main idea of this analysis is organized into DM-HEDU
guideline proposed by the authors, which targets the superior advantages of data mining
in higher learning institution. The DM-HEDU is used to analyze the current works of data
mining in education and identify the existing gaps and further works. It also provides an
opportunity for researchers to learn the existing area of study for data mining in education.
The other main contributions of this study discusses on how the various data mining
techniques can be applied to the set of educational data and what new explicit knowledge
or models are discovered. The models are classified based on the type of techniques used,
including predictive and descriptive. The obtained rules from each model are translated
into plain English as a factor to be considered by the managerial system to either support
their current decision makings or help them to set new strategies and plan to improve
their decision making procedures.
The final results have been analyzed and validated with real situations in a university.
The factors affecting the anomalies have been discusses in detail. The final result from
each model using various techniques, presented that they are all performing similarly.
As a further work, we would like to enhance other data mining processes in higher
learning institution by referring to DM-HEDU analysis guideline. These processes are
according to first class priorities of the universities. Other work can be generating stu-
dent and lecturer models for the other type of course offered in the university. Since the
application of data mining brings a lot of advantages in higher learning institution, it is
recommended to apply these techniques in other academic institution such as schools,
language institutions, institutions for special students and private collages.

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N. Delavari received Canadian matriculation pre-university degree majored in science

from Ontario Canada in 2000. She received BSc (Hons) in Faculty of Information Tech-
nology majored in information system engineering from Multimedia University (MMU)
in Malaysia. She is completing Msc (IT) in Faculty of Information Technology from the
same university by the end of 2006. The topic of her interest is application of various data
mining techniques in higher education system.
M.R. Beikzadeh received BEng degree in electronic engineering from Beheshti Univer-
sity in Iran, the master in artificial intelligence from Computer Science Department and,
and the PhD degree in artificial intelligence and VLSI design from Electronic System En-
gineering Department of Essex University, UK in 1992. Until 2001 he was managing and
directing various research projects as well as directing research projects in Iran Telecom-
munication Research Center (ITRC) meanwhile he was teaching in Tehran Universities.
He joined Multimedia University in Malaysia in 2001 and his research interests include
temporal logic, fuzzy logic, data mining and other Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques
and their applications in e-learning, education and meaning-based systems.
S. Phon-Amnuaisuk received his BEng from King Mongkut Institute of Technology
(Hons) and PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh. He is cur-
rently an associate dean for the Faculty of Information Technology, Multimedia Univer-
sity, Malaysia where he is the chairman for Centre of Artificial Intelligence and Intelli-
gent Computing. He has also served as a committee member in many editorial boards and
research grant screening committees.
54 N. Delavari, M.R. Beikzadeh, S. Phon-Amnuaisuk

Duomenu gavybos taikymai aukštojo mokslo istaigose


Naeimeh DELAVARI, Mohammad Reza BEIKZADEH, Somnuk PHON-AMNUAISUK
Šiuo metu, aukštosios mokyklos, sprendžia viena didžiausiu problemu – kaip patobulinti
sprendimu valdymo kokybe.  Kuo mokymasis sudėtingesnis, tuo sudėtingesnis ir šis procesas.
Mokymo istaigos
 ieško veiksmingesniu technologiju geresniam sprendimu valdymui ir palaiky-
mui, imasi kurti nauju strategiju ir veiksmu planus geresniam dabartiniu procesu valdymui. To-
bulinant kokybe vienas iš veiksmingu būdu sprendžiant problemas yra suteikti valdymo sistemai
nauju žiniu, kurios būtu siejamos su mokymo procesais. Šias žinias galima išgauti iš ankstesniu ir
šiuo metu operuojamu duomenu mokymo organizacijos duomenu bazėje, taikant duomenu gavybos
technologijos metodus. Duomenu gavybos metodai – tai analitinės priemonės, kurias taikant gali-
ma išgauti daug vertingu žiniu iš didesniu duomenu baziu. Šiame straipsnyje aptariami du aukštojo
mokslo sistemos duomenu gavybos būdai: 1) aukštojo mokslo istaigoms
 siūlant analitinius nurody-
mus ir stiprinant ju dabartiniu sprendimu procesus, 2) naudojant duomenu gavybos technologijas
nauju tiksliu žiniu sprendimu paieškos procesams gerinti.