Authors:
Tianhui Hu
1
;
Huanyou Chai
2
;
Sannyuya Liu
3
;
Qian Zhang
2
;
Guanxian Yi
2
;
Zhi Liu
2
and
Zhu Su
2
Affiliations:
1
National Engineering Laboratory for Educational Big Data, Central China Normal University, Luoyu Road 152, 430079 Wuhan, China
;
2
National Engineering Research Center for E-Learning, Central China Normal University, Luoyu Road 152, 430079 Wuhan, China
;
3
National Engineering Laboratory for Educational Big Data, Central China Normal University, Luoyu Road 152, 430079 Wuhan, China, National Engineering Research Center for E-Learning, Central China Normal University, Luoyu Road 152, 430079 Wuhan, China
Keyword(s):
Online Discussions, SNA, Behavior-based Networks, Content-based Network, Student Interactions.
Abstract:
The online asynchronous forum provides a platform for learners to interact with their peers and furtherly improve their critical skills. Understanding the characteristics of student interactions is thus the key to acquiring some useful insights about how learning occurs in online learning environment. Social network analysis (SNA) as a useful tool is often used to analyze student interactions in behavior-based network, in which network tie is defined as the responsive or co-occurrence relation. However, effective student interactions usually rely on the communication of course content as a form of knowledge, not the behavior itself. To this end, this paper began with the word segmentation of every student’s posts, then constructed a network with ties defined as the relations between learners who have co-occurrence of course contents words in their posts, and finally examined the differences of group and individual indexes between behavior- and content-based networks. Results showed t
hat there existed significant differences in the structural and statistical properties between these two networks, and the content-based network was more conducive to discovering the actual interactions between learners in online discussions.
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