This paper compares the accuracy of Decision
Tree and Bayesian Network algorithms for predicting the
academic performance of undergraduate and
postgraduate students at two very different academic
institutes: Can Tho University (CTU), a large national
university in Viet Nam; and the Asian Institute of
Technology (AIT), a small international postgraduate
institute in Thailand that draws students from 86 different
countries. Although the diversity of these two student
populations is very different, the data-mining tools were
able to achieve similar levels of accuracy for predicting
student performance: 73/71% for {fail, fair, good, very
good} and 94/93% for {fail, pass} at the CTU/AIT
respectively. These predictions are most useful for
identifying and assisting failing students at CTU (64%
accurate), and for selecting Very Good students for
scholarships at the AIT (82% accurate). In this analysis,
the Decision Tree was consistently 3-12% more accurate
than the Bayesian Network. The results of these case
studies give insight into techniques for accurately
predicting student performance, compare the accuracy of
data mining algorithms, and demonstrate the maturity of
open source tools.