Prediction of e-Learning Efficiency by Neural Networks

A model for prediction of the outcome indicators of e-Learning, based on Balanced ScoreCard (BSC) by Neural Networks (NN) is proposed. In the development of NN models the problem of a small sample size of the data arises. In order to reduce the number of variables and increase the examples of the training sample, preprocessing of the data with the help of the methods Interpolation and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is performed. A method for optimizing the structure of the neural network is applied over linear and nonlinear neural network architectures. The highest accuracy of prognosis is obtained applying the method of Optimal Brain Damage (OBD) over the nonlinear neural network. The efficiency and applicability of the method suggested is proved by numerical experiments on the basis of real data.