A Review on Predicting Student's Performance Using Data Mining Techniques

Predicting students performance becomes more challenging due to the large volume of data in educational databases. Currently in Malaysia, the lack of existing system to analyze and monitor the student progress and performance is not being addressed. There are two main reasons of why this is happening. First, the study on existing prediction methods is still insufficient to identify the most suitable methods for predicting the performance of students in Malaysian institutions. Second is due to the lack of investigations on the factors affecting students achievements in particular courses within Malaysian context. Therefore, a systematical literature review on predicting student performance by using data mining techniques is proposed to improve students achievements. The main objective of this paper is to provide an overview on the data mining techniques that have been used to predict students performance. This paper also focuses on how the prediction algorithm can be used to identify the most important attributes in a students data. We could actually improve students achievement and success more effectively in an efficient way using educational data mining techniques. It could bring the benefits and impacts to students, educators and academic institutions.