Using an Exploratory Analytical Approach to Distinguish the Habits of Graduating and Non-Graduating Students in a Virtual Learning Environment

Abstract

Understanding student behaviour is crucial for creating personalised learning and other interventions. Educational stakeholders continue investigating diverse solutions to improve student learning behaviour in higher educational institutions. One solution that stands out is to gain insights and identify the trends and patterns in data about students learning behaviour for decision-making. Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) is a method for analysing and summarising data in order to get insights and recognise patterns or trends about an entity. This study seeks to utilise Exploratory Data Analysis to analyse students' logs in the virtual learning environment to distinguish the characteristics/habits of students who graduate and students who do not graduate from higher educational institutions. The process flow for implementing EDA can act as a helpful guide for educational stakeholders. The study findings indicate that the revision trend of graduated students is much more frequent than that of non-graduated students. However, there were no differences in habits in the early access to the learning materials before the start of the program. Academic stakeholders can utilise the approach to enable them to make better decisions when assessing students' behaviour and trends in the virtual environment.