TY - GEN
T1 - Does Social Presence Play a Role in Learners’ Positions in MOOC Learner Network? A Machine Learning Approach to Analyze Social Presence in Discussion Forums
AU - Zou, Wenting
AU - Pan, Zilong
AU - Li, Chenglu
AU - Liu, Min
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Low engagement has been a longstanding problem in MOOCs. How- ever, engagement is crucial in social learning contexts. To further understand learners’ engagement in MOOC discussion forum, this study focuses on the perspective of social presence, an important factor that mediates learners’ positions within a learning network. To tackle the challenge of analyzing large amounts of text data, we built and tested a machine learning model to automatically classify the student-generated posts into different categories of social presence. We then measured learners’ position in the learner network using social networking analysis (SNA) parameters (namely in-degree, closeness and betweenness centrality). Correlation tests showed that certain types of social presence have strong positive correlations with learners’ network parameters. We also divided learners into groups based on their network positions to examine the differences of social presence demonstrated across different groups. The findings will inform MOOC learners to strategically present themselves in the discussion forum in order to increase the possibilities of peer interaction and cognitive engagement.
AB - Low engagement has been a longstanding problem in MOOCs. How- ever, engagement is crucial in social learning contexts. To further understand learners’ engagement in MOOC discussion forum, this study focuses on the perspective of social presence, an important factor that mediates learners’ positions within a learning network. To tackle the challenge of analyzing large amounts of text data, we built and tested a machine learning model to automatically classify the student-generated posts into different categories of social presence. We then measured learners’ position in the learner network using social networking analysis (SNA) parameters (namely in-degree, closeness and betweenness centrality). Correlation tests showed that certain types of social presence have strong positive correlations with learners’ network parameters. We also divided learners into groups based on their network positions to examine the differences of social presence demonstrated across different groups. The findings will inform MOOC learners to strategically present themselves in the discussion forum in order to increase the possibilities of peer interaction and cognitive engagement.
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U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-67788-6_17
DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-67788-6_17
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85101379363
SN - 9783030677879
T3 - Communications in Computer and Information Science
SP - 248
EP - 264
BT - Advances in Quantitative Ethnography - Second International Conference, ICQE 2020, Proceedings
A2 - Ruis, Andrew R.
A2 - Lee, Seung B.
PB - Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
T2 - 2nd International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography, ICQE 2020
Y2 - 1 February 2021 through 3 February 2021
ER -