Abstract:

Scholar desertion is one of the biggest problems in Mexican educative system, it is common that more than a half of the students that enter the medium level (the one before superior education) drop out their studies. There are several causes for this, some of them are personal, familiar, laboral or educative. When a student drop out their studies, it not only affects it, but all the family environment and the reasons of this failure could be seen from different perspectives.

A student could have a certain vision about the aspects that affect their academic performance causing it has to drop out their studies; however, this point of view is not always the same that its parents could have. A lot of data related with this issue can be found in the National Poll about Scholar Desertion in Medium Level in Mexico, whose questions can be divided in three general categories: Personal, Laboral and Familiar. This poll was applied to more than 4000 students, and also some of the questions were also asked to their parents.

Nowadays, the amount of information makes it difficult for understanding, so, new techniques and approaches are being using for analyzing and presenting data. Visual Learning Analytics refers to the use of techniques which consist on performing an statistical processing and using different schemes for visually presenting data in order to show patterns of interest related to an educational environment.

This work presents a study over a set of answers to question asked to students that finished or not their medium level education, some of these questions were also asked to their parents and the perspective it is not always the same. The data was analyzed using statistical techniques and presented using different graphs considering the concept of Visual Learning Analytics. Main goal of the work was present the different perspectives that students and parents have about the characteristics that could cause a scholar drop out.

Dropping out studies is always analyzed from the point of view of students, however, it is clear that the actions of parents have a big influence over their performance, for this reason an study that integrates the characteristics of both, students and their parents, could help in determining those that have a bigger effect in the studies drop out.


This study shows the aspects consider for both groups to be the most important factors for dropping out studies. Also, shows the common patterns that students, and their parents, which finished or not their studies, have.

Results from this kind of works could help identifying the main characteristics that students and parents share and determining the level of impact that these could have in the academic performance of students, more specifically in the fact that they could or not finish their studies.

Keywords:

Scholar desertion, students performance, parents and students perspective, learning analytics, issues in education.