Investigation of temperament characteristics influencing the academic achievement of first-year university students

MACSPro'2019 - Modeling and Analysis of Complex Systems and Processes, Vienna
21 - 23 March 2019

Elena Shadrina, Olga Oshmarina, Marianna Korenkova, Galina Zalesskaya

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Transcript

1. Investigation of temperament characteristics influencing the academic achievement of first-year university students Elena V. Shadrina, Olga E. Oshmarina, Marianna M. Korenkova, Galina M. Zalesskaya March 21, 2019
2. Introduction • Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Nizhny Novgorod • The Faculty of Informatics, Mathematics, and Computer Science • About 30% of students are expelled after the first year • This aim of work is to study the influence of personal features (i.e. temperament as a personality basis) on academic performance and detection of students who will likely fail their exams. Date
3. Temperament • Choleric - high intensity and power of emotional processes. Quick-tempered, passionate and energetic. • Sanguine – low intensity of psyche processes. Cheerful, hard-working, easily coping with various tasks. • Phlegmatic – slowness, lack of energy, quiet feelings. Devoted, difficulty with switching tasks. • Melancholic – depth of emotional. Sensitive to external circumstances, often passive and sluggish Date • Temperament - a set of personal characteristics defined from birth which determines how quickly and how intensively psychological processes take place Date
4. Data: allocation of types of temperament
5. Data: allocation of rationality and extraversion Allocation of rationality Allocation of extraversion
6. Data: allocation of categories Good 15% Medium 35% Bad 50%
7. Data: allocation of categories and types of temperament In number In %
8. Data: allocation of categories and types of temperament no retakes with retakes
9. Methods: correlation coefficient Characteristic Grade average correlation Retaken examination correlation Activeness at school 0.06 0.09 Perseverance 0.19 -0.24 Setting of priorities 0.29 -0.18 Living in a dormitory 0.06 -0.05 Living with parents -0.01 0.02 Living alone -0.04 0 Extraversion 0.07 -0.18 Rationality -0.004 -0.08 Choleric -0.1 0.044 Sanguine 0.05 -0.16 Phlegmatic 0.13 0.017 Melancholic -0.04 0.2 • Pearson correlation coefficient • For the purpose of our investigation the coefficient is significant if its absolute value is more than 0.2 • Characteristics, on which the research is based, were highlighted in bold, if their absolute value at least one of the signs is greater than 0.1.
10. Methods: k Nearest Neighbors algorithm • using all significant traits and a grade average. The best result - 74% (8 nearest neighbors). • all characteristics without grade average. The best result - 60% (5 nearest neighbors). It is twice as higher as random guessing of category (which is 33%) • only grade average. The best result - 77% (4 nearest neighbors). A student with a low grade average is more likely to get to the bad category and, accordingly, more neighbors of such student will be there. Date
11. Methods: decision tree • all characteristics - 74% of accuracy • only Extroversion and Rationality - 62% of accuracy. It is twice as higher as random guessing of category (which is 33%) • only grade average - 76% of accuracy. • the best result: tree basing on Perseverance, Setting of Priorities, Extroversion, Rationality and temperament - 84% of accuracy . Date The best decision tree with 84%
12. Results Predicted category Total number of students Students retaking exams Dropout students or students with ILP high average score (more than 7.5) people % people % people % Bad 22 14 64% 6 27% 0 0% Medium 12 3 25% 1 8% 4 33% Good 6 0 0% 0 0% 6 100% • From category of Bad 2 of 6 students (27%) were expelled from the University , 4 stayed with ILP due to academic debts. • From category of Medium 3 students (25%) retook exams, and were transferred to the second year of studies without any academic debts. One student left the University as she decided to change her career . • As it can be seen, 14 out of 17 (82%) retakes can be predicted using the results of our research. • ILP – Individual learning plan – is a plan of repeating a failed discipline or a number of disciplines for a certain fee. Date
13. Conclusion The following recommendations were given to the educational office of the faculty : • pay close attention to the students from category Bad conversation with students or their legal representatives as a last resort • provide electives for the students of categories Bad and Medium; • engage training assistants for helping students with studying • to pay additional attention to students from category Medium with a low average grade after the first term. Date We believe that our research might be useful to other universities for: • identifying academically unsuccessful students and focusing on "risky" students. • forming an individual and flexible educational trajectory, taking into account students personal characteristics’
14. Conclusion • The most important psycho factors positively affecting students' academic performance: "Perseverance" and "Ability to set priorities“. • Hot-tempered cholerics have a lower average grade, while quietness and steadiness of phlegmatics helps them to study better. • Sanguines retake exams more rarely, while the risk of it for melancholics is significant. • The more extraversion is expressed in a student, the higher his or her average grade is. • Built model shows a generally good percentage of prediction: 64% of guessed students retaking exams, 82% of retakes were predicted • A connection between temperament and academic success was found, making it possible to predict "risky" students Date
15. Further research development Limitation of the study: • small pool of data (140 students) • showed tendencies are specific for the Faculty of Informatics, Mathematics, and Computer Science (HSE – Nizhny Novgorod) Development: • Longitude data • Using other machine learning algorithms
16. Thank you for your attention!
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