Research Phases of University Data Mining Project Development

Abstract

Educational Data Mining becomes one of the challenging new research fields where data mining methods and tools could help universities in taking timely and data analysis based management decisions, thus contributing to gaining competitive advantages in their successful policy introduction. This paper presents the research activities performed for the implementation of a data mining project initiated in one of the most prestigious Bulgarian universities. The project main goal is to reveal the high potential of data mining applications for university management, referring to the optimal usage of data mining methods and techniques to deeply analyze the collected historical data. That will lead to better understanding the student behavior and building well structured educational process that meets the university policy and supports the management decision making process.