The document presents a novel swarm-based meta-heuristic algorithm called the Rhizostoma Optimization Algorithm (ROA), inspired by the social behavior of the Rhizostoma octopus. This study addresses the challenges of local optima trapping and slow convergence in optimization problems and demonstrates ROA's effectiveness through comparisons with existing algorithms using benchmark functions and real-world datasets. The research analyzes the exploration and exploitation balance in ROA and applies it to various engineering problems and student performance prediction tasks.