Automatic Identification of Student’s Cognitive Style from Online Laboratory Experimentation using Machine Learning Techniques

Abstract

Online learning has emerged as powerful learning methods for the transformation from traditional education to open learning through smart learning platforms due to Covid-19 pandemic. Despite its effectiveness, many studies have indicated the necessity of linking online learning methods with the cognitive learning styles of students. The level of students always improves if the teaching methods and educational interventions are appropriate to the cognitive style of each student individually. Currently, psychological measures are used to assess students’ cognitive styles, but about the application in virtual environment, the matter becomes complicated. The main goal of this study is to provide an efficient solution based on machine learning techniques to automatically identify the students’ cognitive styles by analyzing their mouse interaction behaviors while carrying out online laboratory experiments. This will help in the design of an effective online laboratory experimentation system that is able to individualize the experiment instructions and feedback according to the identified cognitive style of each student. The results reveal that the KNN and SVM classifiers have a good accuracy in predicting most cognitive learning styles. In comparison to KNN, the enlarged studies ensemble the KNN, linear regression, neural network, and SVM reveal a 13% increase in overall total RMS error. We believe that this finding will enable educators and policy makers to predict distinct cognitive types in the assessment of students when they interact with online experiments. We believe that integrating deep learning algorithms with a greater emphasis on mouse location traces will improve the accuracy of our classifiers’ predictions.