Detecting At-Risk Students: Empirical Results and Their Theoretical Explanation

Authors

Edgar Daniel Rodriguez Velasquez, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Olga Kosheleva, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Vladik Kreinovich, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow

Publication Date

11-2018

Comments

Technical Report: UTEP-CS-18-84

Abstract

In teaching, it is very important to identify, as early as possible, students who may be at risk of failure. Traditionally, two natural criteria are used for this identification: poor grades in previous classes, and poor grades on the first assignments in the current class. Our empirical results show that these criteria do not always work: sometimes a student deemed at-risk by one of these criteria consistently succeeds, and sometimes a student who is not considered at-risk frequently fails. In this paper, we provide a theoretical explanation of our quantitative empirical results, and we use these results to provide recommendations on how to better detect at-risk students.