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Analyzing Student Procrastination to Identify At-Risk Behavior

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Conference

ASEE Southeast Section Conference

Location

Arlington, Virginia

Publication Date

March 12, 2023

Start Date

March 12, 2023

End Date

March 14, 2023

Conference Session

Retention

Tagged Topic

Professional Engineering Education Papers

Page Count

11

DOI

10.18260/1-2--44985

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/44985

Download Count

115

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Paper Authors

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Mihai Boicu George Mason University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-6644-059X

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Mihai Boicu, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at George Mason University, Associate Director of the Learning Agents Center (http://lac.gmu.edu), and Co-Director of Personalized Learning in Applied Information Technology Laboratory (http://plait.gmu.edu/).

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Jay Lalwani Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology

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Jay Lalwani is a student and aspiring Computer Scientist attending Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (Grade 12).

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Aditya Daga Edison Academy Magnet School

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Aditya Daga is a Senior in high school at the Edison Academy Magnet School (Formerly Middlesex County Academy for Science Mathematics and Engineering Technologies) and is interested in data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. These interests cultivated after Aditya explored the intersection of statistics and computer science for his capstone project in his AP Statistics class. Aditya hopes to one day be a Data Scientist and leverage his skill sets to make informed business decisions using the vast amount of data available in today's world.

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Abstract

Researchers have long considered procrastination as a form of self-destructive behavior and a key factor in university students’ failure. However, procrastination by itself may have positive impact to some students, so, more factors must be taken in account to identify at-risk behavior. In order to predict student failure and allow early warning, we developed and trained a neural network based on second week activities that allow multiple attempts in a college course at George Mason University. The following procrastination related inputs were computed: average time spent between a student’s first and last attempt through all assignments, average time remaining before each assignment deadline from the last attempt, average assignment grade, and average number of assignment attempts. The neural network consists of an input layer of 4 perceptrons, 6 hidden layers, and a single output perceptron. We trained it with each student’s corresponding final grade (pass or fail determined by a grade above or below 59%). Our neural network had an accuracy of 91.6%, precision of 89.9%, and recall of 99.5%. Those who were misclassified largely consisted of passing students with a grade near the passing threshold. Additionally, using permutation feature importance, we found that the average time remaining before assignment deadline was the most important feature in the neural network resulting in an 18% decrease in classification accuracy when its value was randomized, as students who tended to submit assignments late consistently failed the course. Because procrastination is so common in university students, our model is relevant and an appreciable tool for professors to use to try to minimize failure in their class. By warning students of their failure behavior earlier in the course, they will be compelled to address their procrastinative tendencies and greatly reduce their chances of failing.

Boicu, M., & Lalwani, J., & Daga, A. (2023, March), Analyzing Student Procrastination to Identify At-Risk Behavior Paper presented at ASEE Southeast Section Conference, Arlington, Virginia. 10.18260/1-2--44985

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