A Systematic Review on Process Mining for Curricular Analysis

TL;DR

This systematic review examines how process mining techniques are applied to analyze educational curricula, highlighting current methods, challenges, and future research opportunities for improving educational process analysis.

Contribution

The paper provides a comprehensive overview of existing curriculum mining studies, classifies research objectives, and identifies key challenges and future directions in educational process mining.

Findings

Identification of five main research objectives in curriculum mining

Challenges include standardization and tool integration

Highlights need for improved tools for educational stakeholders

Abstract

Educational Process Mining (EPM) is a data analysis technique that is used to improve educational processes. It is based on Process Mining (PM), which involves gathering records (logs) of events to discover process models and analyze the data from a process-centric perspective. One specific application of EPM is curriculum mining, which focuses on understanding the learning program students follow to achieve educational goals. This is important for institutional curriculum decision-making and quality improvement. Therefore, academic institutions can benefit from organizing the existing techniques, capabilities, and limitations. We conducted a systematic literature review to identify works on applying PM to curricular analysis and provide insights for further research. We reviewed 27 primary studies published across seven major databases. Our analysis classified these studies into five main research objectives: discovery of educational trajectories, identification of deviations in student behavior, bottleneck analysis, dropout / stopout analysis, and generation of recommendations. Key findings highlight challenges such as standardization to facilitate cross-university analysis, better integration of process and data mining techniques, and improved tools for educational stakeholders. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the current landscape in curricular process mining and outlines specific research opportunities to support more robust and actionable curricular analyses in educational settings.