Abstract
With the rapid adoption of software-based learning in classrooms, it is increasingly important to design more intelligent educational software, a goal of the emerging field of educational data mining. In this work, we analyze student activities from using a learning tool for engineers, Mechanix, in order to find trends that may be used to make the software a better tutor, combining its natural, sketch-based input with intelligent, experience-based feedback. We see a significant correlation between student performance and the amount of time they work on a problem before submitting; students who attempt to “game” the system by submitting their results too often perform worse than those who work longer (p< 0.05). We also found significance in the number of times a student attempted a problem before moving on, with a strong correlation between being willing to switch among problems and better performance (p< 0.05). Overall, we find that student trends like these could be paired with machine learning techniques to make more intelligent educational tools.
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Notes
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Miniwatts Marketing Group, Internet Growth Statistics, 2014, http://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm.
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Jordan, K. MOOC Completion Rates, 2013, http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html.
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Acknowledgments
This research was funded by NSF EEC Grant No. 1129525. The authors would like to thank Dr. Matthew Green for using Mechanix in his classroom for testing; the members of the iDreem and Sketch Recognition Labs, particularly Stephanie Valentine and David Turner for their significant contributions to Mechanix; and the Computer Science & Engineering department at Texas A&M University.
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Polsley, S., Ray, J., Nelligan, T., Helms, M., Linsey, J., Hammond, T. (2016). Leveraging Trends in Student Interaction to Enhance the Effectiveness of Sketch-Based Educational Software. In: Hammond, T., Valentine, S., Adler, A. (eds) Revolutionizing Education with Digital Ink. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31193-7_7
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