NeSy-Drop: Interpretable Dropout Prediction and Personalized Intervention via Neuro-Symbolic Graph Learning in MOOCs

Dropout prediction in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has been extensively studied, yet existing systems share three fundamental limitations: Accurate models are black boxes, post-hoc explanations approximate rather than faithfully represent model decisions, and predictions are rarely translated into concrete instructor actions. This paper presents NeSy-Drop, a neuro-symbolic framework that simultaneously addresses prediction, explanation, and personalized intervention routing for MOOC dropout. NeSy-Drop constructs a heterogeneous graph per course cohort encoding student–resource–assessment interactions, processed through a heterogeneous graph transformer encoder, five behavioral atom predictor MLPs, and a differentiable symbolic rule layer producing guaranteed faithful ante-hoc explanations. A three-level explainability stack provides symbolic rule chains, SHAP embedding attribution, LIME raw-feature importance, and gradient-based counterfactual prescriptions. Each at-risk student is routed to one of five concrete interventions at one of three severity levels. Evaluated on OULAD covering 32,593 students across 22 cohorts, NeSy-Drop achieves AUC of 0.961 and macro F1 of 0.8983, within 2.2% AUC of the best non-interpretable baseline under a fair evaluation protocol, while being the only system that simultaneously predicts, explains, and prescribes actions at the individual student level.