Data pre-processing: a case study in predicting student’s retention in MOOC

Data pre-processing is a crucial phase prior to analytic task and yet rarely been discussedespecially for e-learning data which has multilevel data. Providing a reliable datapre-processing is important to provide quality dataset. Therefore, this study investigates theproblems arise in data pre-processing and in this case, for identifying the significant factors toimplement prediction task. A MOOC dataset is selected for the data pre-processing task. Theprocess in generating the summary of dataset is explained and the ultimate aim is to produce adataset with features that are ready for data mining task. The study also proposed a processmodel and suggestions, which can be applied to support more comprehensible tools foreducational domain who is the end user. Subsequently, the data pre-processing become moreefficient for predicting student’s retention in MOOCKeywords: data pre-processing; e-learning; massive open online course; student’s retention;prediction