Analysis of discussion forum interactions for different teaching modalities based on temporal social networks

López-Flores, Nidia Guadalupe, Óskarsdóttir, María and Islind, Anna Sigriður (2022) Analysis of discussion forum interactions for different teaching modalities based on temporal social networks. NetSciLA 2022 Workshop "Networks and Learning Analytics: Addressing Educational Challenges", NetSciLA 2022, , Virtual, Online. pp. 23-32 .

Abstract

The temporal component has been pointed out as an impactful dimension for educational research, as learning is not a static phenomena. In this paper, we investigate how the students' activity and interaction dynamics in an online forum differ among teaching modalities. The analysis is based on three years of forum interaction data in an undergraduate course where the only significant change was the teaching modality, from on-site (2019) to fully online (2021). We build and analyse temporal networks by studying changes in several networks' measures and features. Our preliminary results show changes in the students' and teachers' interaction dynamics as well as changes in the posts' content with fully online teaching. This on-going research is focused on studying the impact of teaching modalities on the discussion forum interactions. Initial results are promising, and other features such as the students' closeness and betweenness, as well as the dynamics changes' relationship with the academic performance are being explored to improve our understanding on teaching modalities and help generalisation of Network Science and Learning Analytics research in wider educational contexts.

This record has no associated files available for download.

Contributors

Author: María Óskarsdóttir

Download statistics