Predicting Student Grades Based on Their Usage of LMS Moodle Using Petri Nets

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I contemporary education the introduction of information and communication technologies (ICT) into practice has brought changes. In order to fully utilize the potential of these technologies, a new approach to education is needed. In the presented paper authors show an approach to modeling courses with the help of Petri nets. The aim of this research is to use modeling using Petri nets to predict the student's success based on his/her passage through the virtual learning environment and thus to design models that could be used to create better e-courses for LMS Moodle.

The paper is well prepared and interesting. So, I have only some minor comments:

In Abstract, before you start using acronym, name it - learning management system (LMS) Key words: with or without capital initials In figure 3 and 4 you use weight 3 – additional explanation needs Do students must agree with using their personal data – log files? Research sample missing Conclusion – please add to conclusion some main results

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the opportunity to revisit our paper “Predicting student’s grades based on their usage of LMS Moodle using Petri nets” and fix the critical issues.

Reviewer comments:

„In Abstract, before you start using acronym, name it - learning management system (LMS)”

Authors respond:

We revisited the usage of acronyms in the abstract and throughout the paper.

 

Reviewer comments:

“Key words: with or without capital initials“

Authors respond:

We revisited all keywords and they are with capital initials.

 

Reviewer comments:

“In figure 3 and 4 you use weight 3 – additional explanation needs.”

Authors respond:

Figure 3 is representing 3 arcs from P0 to P1. Figure 4 is representing the same value as Figure 3. There is only one arc with weight 3. The three arcs replace the one with the same firing value.

 

Reviewer comments:

“Do students must agree with using their personal data – log files?”

Authors respond:

When students are registered to the LMS Moodle, they accepted the agreement about consent to data processing.

 

Reviewer comments:

“Research sample missing Conclusion – please add to conclusion some main results”

Authors respond:

We tried to describe all research samples in the results and discussion sections. We expanded the conclusion section.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presents a student modeling approach for Learning Management Systems (LMS) using Petri nets. The authors argue that their main motivation is to develop a prediction model which predicts student grades based on the students; usage of LMS Moodle. This is a very interesting research topic since student modeling and accurate prediction models can be used to improve tutoring and education systems.

The authors present a desciption of petri nets, as well as a proposed modeling approach for an e-course on LMS Moodle. They analyzed the collected data by computing and visualizing the correlations between student grades and access to materials.

The paper includes useful information for other researchers but I believe an improved presentation and structure of the paper could improve the overal quality of this manuscript. Below, please find some comments and suggestions. 

First of all, it feels like the paper is written in an "informal" way, more like a report and not as a journal manuscript. I would suggest proofreading and rewriting parts of the paper which include informal language, e.g., it's anted to know, we watched the correlations, etc. Moreover, the authors should follow a more concise way to define acronyms. When an acronym  firstly appears you need to write what its stands for. For the rest of the paper you then use the acronym. There are terms ie., LMS and LMS moodle that need to be properly defined in the introduction (personally, I had to search what Moodle is). I suggest reforming the introduction into three main parts: advances and needs in LMS, student models and petri networks, motivation, etc. Th eintrodction itself should mention all the required information for the reader to go through the rest of the paper. I think that the title is misleading, since the proposed petri net model is presented in the discussion section. I believe a more detailed statistical analysis would strengthen the argument of using models to predict student grades. It would be really interesting to provide more guidelines and discuss how such models can be used to design better and more efficient LMS. 

I believe that the paper includes interesting information in the domain of student modeling but its presentation and quality should be improved.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the opportunity to revisit our paper “Predicting student’s grades based on their usage of LMS Moodle using Petri nets” and fix the critical issues.

Reviewer comments:

“First of all, it feels like the paper is written in an "informal" way, more like a report and not as a journal manuscript. I would suggest proofreading and rewriting parts of the paper which include informal language, e.g., it's anted to know, we watched the correlations, etc.”

Authors respond:

We revisited the paper style and made the proofreading with an English native speaker.

 

Reviewer comments:

“Moreover, the authors should follow a more concise way to define acronyms. When an acronym  firstly appears you need to write what its stands for. For the rest of the paper you then use the acronym.”

Authors respond:

We revisited the usage of acronyms in the abstract and throughout the paper.

 

Reviewer comments:

“There are terms ie., LMS and LMS moodle that need to be properly defined in the introduction (personally, I had to search what Moodle is). I suggest reforming the introduction into three main parts: advances and needs in LMS, student models and petri networks, motivation, etc. The introdction itself should mention all the required information for the reader to go through the rest of the paper. “

Authors respond:

We revisited the introduction and added relevant information about used technology, systems and defined some relevant keywords. We used information from the authors who wrote it earlier.

 

Reviewer comments:

“I think that the title is misleading, since the proposed petri net model is presented in the discussion section.”

Authors respond:

We think, that the title could correspond with the paper. Petri nets were used over the paper, we can change the title if it is possible and necessary.

 

Reviewer comments:

“I believe a more detailed statistical analysis would strengthen the argument of using models to predict student grades. It would be really interesting to provide more guidelines and discuss how such models can be used to design better and more efficient LMS. I believe that the paper includes interesting information in the domain of student modeling but its presentation and quality should be improved.”

Authors respond:

We revisited the section 1 (Introduction) and section 3 (Material and Methods). We tried to implement to the paper all reviewer comments.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The current version of the manuscript is improved. The authors took into consideration the comments and edited the manuscript.

I believe that the manuscript should be accepted in its current form with some text editing and rephrasing. The introduction and results section were improved. However, the abstract needs some improvement; please rephrase the following sentences, making them more formal:

Paper deals with the possibility of predicting... It's wanted to know... we watched the correlations... We realized that these correlations could also be used to... We therefore decided to create... Obviously, it won’t be possible to predict

It is highly suggested that you go through the manuscript and edit such phrases. There are parts that still seem informal

Other comments:

references should not be used as nouns, etc Line 62 Line 166 and 168: rephrase "We can implement real values, learning outcomes..." and "We can complete models" Line 179: "The Uncertainty" uppercase is not needed conclusion needs more details on "For lower correlations,  however, it will not be possible to predict the grade with sufficient accuracy, so we recommend using 399 this method for materials for which the correlation is highest." and discuss it as a limitation of the study

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We have revisited the paper based on the reviewers’ comments.

The abstract has been reviewed and improved based on the reviewer comments (the abstract in the system cannot be changed now but it is updated in the paper).

As you can see, the improvement has been considered and implemented. The comment which states, “Obviously, it won’t be possible to predict.” suggests that we might need to reconsider even the title which includes the word “predict”. Please, advise us if it is recommended from your part and we would amend it.

Then it was one of the last comments which states:

< Line 166 and 168: rephrase "We can implement real values, learning outcomes..." and "We can complete models">

This caused a little confusion since between line 166 and 168 in our last submitted version, there is:
 
166  [...] place p1 of t1 and W(p2,t1)=2 tokens from input place p2 of t1, respectively, and then added
167  W(t1,p3)=2tokens to output place p3 of t1[16].
168  3. Materials and Methods

We checked our article and the two sentences in the comment have already been amended.

All of the other issues have been reviewed and corrected.

Should you have any questions do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you very much.

Kind regards

Zoltan Balogh