Kimberly Williamson
René F. Kizilcec
ABSTRACT
Online discussion boards serve an important role in college courses by facilitating social learning and student support. However, the student experience and learning outcomes are likely to depend on the structure of student engagement with one another and the teaching staff. Using social network analysis, we investigated the network structure of 616 course discussion boards at a selective research university. We first examine variation in discussion boards using a wide range of composite metrics from the social network analysis literature. We then develop a typology of discussion board networks using principal component analysis and k-Means clustering to arrive at three clusters: dense discussion; distinct discussion groups; and discussion brokers and hubs.
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Index Terms
- Large-scale Analysis of Discussion Networks in College Courses
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