Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Online and Distance Education Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Online and Distance Education
Employing Social Learning Analytic Methods (Slams) To Reimagine The Social Dynamic Of Online Learning Collaborations, Damien Sanchez, Nick Flor, Charlotte Nirmalani Gunawardena
Employing Social Learning Analytic Methods (Slams) To Reimagine The Social Dynamic Of Online Learning Collaborations, Damien Sanchez, Nick Flor, Charlotte Nirmalani Gunawardena
University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications
As online networks expand, learning collaborations will occur across disciplines, countries, and people. A particular challenge is determining the process and progress of these collaborations, and how the social dynamics of interacting groups support knowledge construction. Traditional methods that rely predominantly on content analysis of transcripts to determine social construction of knowledge are time consuming to conduct and often do not provide actionable data to improve the process before it is completed. One answer to this challenge is emerging Social Learning Analytic Methods (SLAMs) that offer robust and expedient means to analyze the performance of interacting groups online. The purpose …
Analyzing Social Construction Of Knowledge Online By Employing Interaction Analysis, Learning Analytics, And Social Network Analysis, Charlotte Nirmalani Gunawardena, Nick V. Flor, David Gomez, Damien Sanchez
Analyzing Social Construction Of Knowledge Online By Employing Interaction Analysis, Learning Analytics, And Social Network Analysis, Charlotte Nirmalani Gunawardena, Nick V. Flor, David Gomez, Damien Sanchez
University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications
This article examines research methods for analyzing social construction of knowledge in online discussion forums. We begin with an examination of the Interaction Analysis Model (Gunawardena, Lowe, & Anderson, 1997) and its applicability to analyzing social construction of knowledge. Next, employing a dataset from an online discussion, we demonstrate how interaction analysis can be supplemented by employing other research techniques such as learning analytics and Social Network Analysis that shed light on the social dynamics that support knowledge construction. Learning analytics is the application of quantitative techniques for analyzing large volumes of distributed data ("big data") in order to discover …