Predicción de resultados académicos de estudiantes de informática mediante el uso de redes neuronales.

In this paper is shown the application of neural networks in order to predict academic marks that will be obtained for the students in the subjects of Data Structures I and II, included both in the Informatics Engineering curricula at Higher Polytechnic Institute José Antonio Echeverría in the Republic of Cuba. The main motivation for the present work is justified because selected subjects have a high level of complexity, demanding from the student to be rigorous and a permanent dedication. As a consequence the academic results obtained at the present time are not satisfactory. To reach the goal mentioned above a software based on MATLAB tool was developed and the marks obtained previously by students in some subjects and others data of interest were used. Two neural networks were employed, both with the same architecture, but each one trained with the specific data of each subject (Data Structures I and II). A group of experiments was carried out to contrast the behavior of the neural networks regarding some specific statistics in the data of the sample. An overall effectiveness in prediction superior to 78% for the case of the first subject was achieved, while for the second one effectiveness superior to 75% was reached. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]