Learning recommendations from educational event data in higher education

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach for generating actionable recommendations from educational event data collected by Campus Management Systems (CMS) to enhance study planning in higher education. The approach unfolds in three phases: feature identification tailored to the educational context, predictive modeling employing the RuleFit algorithm, and extracting actionable recommendations. We utilize diverse features, encompassing academic histories and course sequences, to capture the multi-dimensional nature of student academic behaviors. The effectiveness of our approach is empirically validated using data from the computer science bachelor’s program at RWTH Aachen University, with the goal of predicting overall GPA and formulating recommendations to enhance academic performance. Our contributions lie in the novel adaptation of behavioral features for the educational domain and the strategic use of the RuleFit algorithm for both predictive modeling and the generation of practical recommendations, offering a data-driven foundation for informed study planning and academic decision-making.