Algorithms for the Development of Deep Learning Models for Classification and Prediction of Behaviour in MOOCS

Abstract

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are definitely one of the best approach to support the international agenda about inclusive and equitable education and lifelong learning opportunities for all (SDG4) [1]. A great deal universities and institutions offer valuable free courses to their numerous students and to people around the word through MOOC platforms. However, because of huge number of learners and data generated, learner’s behaviour in those platforms remain a kind of black box for learners themselves and for courses instructors who are supposed to tutor or monitor learners in the learning process. Therefore, learner do not receive sufficient support from instructors and from their peers, during the learning process [2]. This is one the main reasons that lead to high dropout, low completion and success rate observed in the MOOCs. Many research work have suggested descriptive, predictive and prescriptive models to address this issue, but most of these models focus on predicting dropout, completion and/or success, and do not generally pay enough attention to one of the key step (learner behaviour), that comes before, and can explain dropping out and failure. Our research aims to develop a deep learning model to predict learner behaviour (learner interactions) in the learning process, in order to equip learners and course instructors with insight understanding of the learner behaviour in the learning process. This specific paper will focus on analysing relevant algorithms to develop such model. For this analysis, we used data from UNESCO-IICBA (International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa) MOOC platform, designed for teacher training in Africa, and then we examine many types of features: geographical, social behavioural and learning behavioural features. Learner’s behaviour being a time series Big data, we built the predictive model using Deep Learning algorithms for better performance and accuracy (Thanks to the power of deep learning) compared to baseline Machine learning algorithms. Time series data is best handled by recurrent neural networks (RNN) [3], so, we choose RNN and implemented/tested the three main architectures of RNN: Simple RNNs, GRU (Gated Recurrent Unit) RNNs and LSTM (Long short-term memory) RNNs. The models were trained using L2 Regularization, based on the predictions results, we unexpectedly found model with simple RNNs produced the best performance and accuracy on the dataset used than the other RNN architectures. We had couple of observations, example: we saw a correlation between video viewing and quiz behaviour and the participation of the learner to the learning process. This observation could allow teachers to provide meaningful support and guidance to at risk or less active students. We also observed that, the shorter the video or the quiz, the more the viewer. We conclude that we could use learner video or quiz viewing behaviour to predict his behaviour concerning other MOOC contents. These results suggest the need of deeper research on educational video and educational quiz designing for MOOCs.