Predicting students’ learning style using learning analytics: a case study of business management students from India

Business Management Education in India has shown an upward growth trend in the last couple of decades. Due to the diverse nature of the course, students from diverse academic backgrounds are being admitted to the course. Therefore, differences in students’ abilities and their learning styles have a significant effect on their learning outcomes. Meanwhile, with the development of learning technologies, learners can be provided a more effective learning environment to optimise their learning. The purpose of this study was to develop a model to automatically detect the students’ learning styles from their personal, academic and social media data and make recommendations for students, teachers, educators and administrators for overall improvement of learning outcomes. Data analysis in this research was represented using data collected from post-graduate business management students in India. A 10-fold cross-validation was used to create and test the models. The data were analysed by R and R-Studio. Classification accuracy, Precision, Recall, Kappa, ROC curve and F measure were observed. The results showed that the accuracy of classification by the C4.5 technique had the highest value at 95.7%, and it could be applied to develop Felder–Silverman’s learning style while taking into consideration students’ academic, personal information and social media preferences.