Analysing Students' Interactions through Social Presence and Social Network Metrics

N

8

Interaction; Social Networks; Electronic Learning; Tutors; Network Analysis; Case Studies; Technology Uses in Education; Communities of Practice; Inquiry; Computer Mediated Communication; Qualitative Research; Statistical Analysis; Social Media; Educational Technology; Tutoring; Foreign Countries; College Students; Interviews

In online learning environments, tutors have several problems to carry out their activities, such as evaluating the student, knowing the right way to guide each student, promoting discussions, and knowing the right time to interact or let students build knowledge alone. We consider scenarios in which teaching and learning occurs in online social networks platforms and in order to support tutors' knowledge on the students' interactions, we propose an approach based on social presence and social network analysis. The solution consists on mapping profiles through the observation of interactions occurring in an online social network, then using automatic textual analyses of social presence based on the criteria of affection, interaction, cohesion and strength, as well as metrics for social network analysis to see the interactions and connections of members in the social network. We applied the approach in a case study and the students agreed their profile represented them correctly and the proposed solution had good acceptance. [For full proceedings, see ED571459.]

As Provided

19

2016

ED571598