{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,16]],"date-time":"2026-02-16T20:12:15Z","timestamp":1771272735253,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":54,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"20","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,10,18]],"date-time":"2022-10-18T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1666051200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"the FCT\u2014Funda\u00e7\u00e3o para a Ci\u00eancia e a Tecnologia, I.P.","award":["UIDB\/05105\/2020"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["UIDB\/05105\/2020"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sustainability"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The indicators of student success at higher education institutions are continuously analysed to increase the students\u2019 enrolment in multiple scientific areas. Every semester, the students respond to a pedagogical survey that aims to collect the student opinion of curricular units in terms of content and teaching methodologies. Using this information, we intend to anticipate the success in higher-level courses and prevent dropouts. Specifically, this paper contributes with an interpretable student classification method. The proposed solution relies on (i) a pedagogical survey to collect student\u2019s opinions; (ii) a statistical data analysis to validate the reliability of the survey; and (iii) machine learning algorithms to classify the success of a student. In addition, the proposed method includes an explainable mechanism to interpret the classifications and their main factors. This transparent pipeline was designed to have implications in both digital and sustainable education, impacting the three pillars of sustainability, i.e.,economic, social, and environmental, where transparency is a cornerstone. The work was assessed with a dataset from a Portuguese higher-level institution, contemplating multiple courses from different departments. The most promising results were achieved with Random Forest presenting 98% in accuracy and F-measure.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/su142013446","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,10,19]],"date-time":"2022-10-19T02:54:25Z","timestamp":1666148065000},"page":"13446","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Interpretable Success Prediction in Higher Education Institutions Using Pedagogical Surveys"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"14","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4418-2590","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"F\u00e1tima","family":"Leal","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Science and Technology Department, University Portucalense, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"},{"name":"REMIT\u2014Research on Economics, Management and Information Technologies, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7980-0972","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Bruno","family":"Veloso","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Science and Technology Department, University Portucalense, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"},{"name":"INESC TEC\u2014Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Tecnologia e Ci\u00eancia, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3545-6265","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Carla Santos","family":"Pereira","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Science and Technology Department, University Portucalense, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"},{"name":"REMIT\u2014Research on Economics, Management and Information Technologies, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"},{"name":"IJP\u2014Instituto Jur\u00eddico Portucalense, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0816-1445","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Fernando","family":"Moreira","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Science and Technology Department, University Portucalense, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"},{"name":"REMIT\u2014Research on Economics, Management and Information Technologies, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"},{"name":"IJP\u2014Instituto Jur\u00eddico Portucalense, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"},{"name":"IE<span style=\"font-variant: small-caps\">et<\/span>A\u2014Institute of Electronics and Informatics Engineering, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0845-263X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Nat\u00e9rcia","family":"Dur\u00e3o","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Science and Technology Department, University Portucalense, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"},{"name":"REMIT\u2014Research on Economics, Management and Information Technologies, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"},{"name":"IJP\u2014Instituto Jur\u00eddico Portucalense, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6014-5602","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Natacha Jesus","family":"Silva","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Science and Technology Department, University Portucalense, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"},{"name":"IJP\u2014Instituto Jur\u00eddico Portucalense, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,10,18]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Vossensteyn, J.J., Kottmann, A., Jongbloed, B.W., Kaiser, F., Cremonini, L., Stensaker, B., Hovdhaugen, E., and Wollscheid, S. 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