OU Analyse is a project piloting machine-learning based methods for early identification of The Open University students at risk of failing the course. A list of such students is communicated weekly to the module and Student Support Teams to help them consider appropriate support. The overall objective is to significantly improve the retention of OU students.
OU Analyse uses machine-learning and statistical methods. It is developed using R statistical software, Java programming language with Spring MVC framework, MySQL database, Apache Tomcat server, HTML5 & CSS3, jQuery, Twitter Bootstrap and Highcharts.
The potential students will be part of a diverse team in the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) led by Professor Zdenek Zdrahal, consisting of students and researchers, and will work in an international environment. Possible topics include but are not limited to: development of new and improving the current machine-learning models, developing and implementing new features of the web-based application dashboard, creation of new visualisation techniques, design of efficient algorithms for processing large data sets, development of personalised study recommender etc. The scope of the work can be adjusted for a bachelor/masters thesis.
In case of interest contact Professor Zdenek Zdrahal (Zdenek.Zdrahal@open.ac.uk).
The Open University (OU) based in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, is the largest academic institution in the United Kingdom and one of the largest universities in the world with over 200,000 students including over 50,000 overseas students. The OU is constantly being rated as one of the top 10 universities in the UK by student satisfaction. It is a distance learning and research university offering undergraduate and post-graduate courses and degrees in the areas of of Computing and Technology, Mathematics, Science, Arts, Education & Language Studies, Health and Social Care, Law, Social Science and Business and Law.
The Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) is home to internationally recognised researchers in semantic technologies, learning analytics, artificial intelligence, educational multimedia, collaboration technologies, cognitive science, and human-computer interaction. KMi offers students an intellectually challenging environment with exceptional research and computer facilities.
Milton Keynes is a large town with three universities and more than 200,000 inhabitants, located in Buckinghamshire, South East England. The town is located equidistant to London, Birmingham, Oxford and Cambridge. The close distance to these cities makes the town easy to reach from many nearby airports such as from London Luton, London Stansted, London Heathrow or Birmingham. Within the town lies famous Bletchley Park, the headquarters of Britain's World War II codebreaking group including Alan Turing and is the origin of the Colossus – world's first electronic digital programmable computer.