SAPPNet: students’ academic performance prediction during COVID-19 using neural network

A variety of reasons have made it more difficult for educators and tutors to anticipate students' performance. Numerous researchers have used various predictive models to identify students who may be at-risk of dropping out early. Additionally, these methods were used to forecast final semester grades based on various datasets. However, these prediction models still fall short of meeting educational management requirements. In this paper, we propose the deep learning (DL) based model named students academic performance prediction network (SAPPNet) to predict the students' grades. We consider the questionnaire-based Jordan University dataset which contains demographic information, usage of digital tools before and after COVID-19, sleep times before and after COVID-19, social interaction, psychological state, and academic performance. SAPPNet consists of spatial convolution modules which are designed to extract spatial dependencies includes categorical and numerical attributes that represent static features (gender, level/year, age, digital tools used before and after COVID-19, psychological condition using prolonged e-learning tools) and temporal module for temporal dependencies involves sequences that capture changes before and after COVID-19. Additionally, we also try to implement classical machine learning (ML) models including support vector machine, k nearest neighbor, decision tree, and random forest, and DL models named artificial neural network, convolutional neural network, long short-term memory, and students learning prediction network. Simulation results show that SAPPNet achieved the best performance compared to state-of-the-art methods, with an accuracy, precision, recall, and an F1-score of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:mn>93</mml:mn> <mml:mo>%</mml:mo></mml:mrow> </mml:math> . The proposed model with spatial and temporal modules improves the prediction performance, and it implies new aspect of the educational dataset.