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Collaborative Learning of Students in Online Discussion Forums: A Social Network Analysis Perspective

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Educational Data Mining

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 524))

Abstract

Many courses are currently delivered using Course Management Systems (CMS). Discussion forums within these systems provide the basis for collaborative learning. In this chapter, we present the use of Social Network Analysis (SNA) to analyze the structure of interactions between the students in these forums. Various metrics are introduced for ranking and determining roles, while clustering and temporal analysis techniques are applied to study the student communications, the forming of groups, the role changes, as well as scrutinizing the content of the exchanged messages. Our approach provides the instructor with better means to assess the participation of students by (1) identification of participants’ roles; (2) dynamic visualization of interactions between the participants and the groups they formed; (3) presenting hierarchy of the discussed topics; and (4) tracking the evolution and growth of these patterns and roles over time. The applicability of the proposed analyses are illustrated through several case studies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We are using the levels of the learning domains from Bloom’s taxonomy [14]. According to Bloom, the cognitive domain is divided into the following six levels of thinking/learning: Knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

  2. 2.

    The figures presented in this chapter illustrate the structure of the graphs; where, the figure tags label nodes represent different students, but their text is not relevant to be extended.

  3. 3.

    http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~rabbanyk/MeerkatED/.

Abbreviations

CSCL:

Computer supported collaborative learning

CMS:

Course management systems

MOOC:

Massive open online course

SNA:

Social network analysis

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

    Reihaneh Rabbany, Mansoureh Takaffoli & Osmar R. Zaïane

  2. Campus Saint Jean, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

    Samira Elatia

Authors
  1. Reihaneh Rabbany
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  2. Samira Elatia
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  3. Mansoureh Takaffoli
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  4. Osmar R. Zaïane
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Correspondence to Reihaneh Rabbany .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica, Zacatenco (ESIME-Z), World Outreach Light to the Nations Ministries (WOLNM), Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN), Gustavo A. Madero, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico

    Alejandro Peña-Ayala

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Rabbany, R., Elatia, S., Takaffoli, M., Zaïane, O.R. (2014). Collaborative Learning of Students in Online Discussion Forums: A Social Network Analysis Perspective. In: Peña-Ayala, A. (eds) Educational Data Mining. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 524. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02738-8_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02738-8_16

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