CourseNetworking and community: Linking online discussion networks and course success
Adrienne L. Traxler, Andrew Gavrin, Rebecca S. Lindell
Physics Education Research Conference 2016
Network design
Nodes
Students participating in an introductory-physics online discussion forum.
Ties
A weighted connection between students based on their mutual participation in discussion threads.
Methods
Two-mode actor-event network construction, weighted student projection, centrality analysis, and comparison with final course grades.
Source: PER-Central
Reviewed summary
Online forums can give commuter and non-traditional students a way to participate in a course community outside class. The study examined whether structural position in one introductory-physics discussion forum was linked to final course outcomes.
Students and discussion threads were first represented as a two-mode network, then projected into a weighted student network based on shared thread participation. Contrary to the researchers' expectation, forum-network centrality did not show a strong relationship with final grades.
SNA
How SNA was used
The forum was represented as a bipartite network of student actors and discussion-thread events. Its weighted student projection captured mutual thread participation, allowing the researchers to compare central and peripheral network positions with final course grades.
Source
Physics Education Research Conference 2016 Proceedings, 352-355
DOI: 10.1119/perc.2016.pr.083
