It is about timing: Network prestige in asynchronous online discussions

Abstract

Asynchronous online discussions are broadly used to support social learning. This paper reports on an undergraduate class's online discussion activities over one semester. Applying Social Network Analysis, this study revealed a participation gap among students reflected by their varied levels of network prestige. The low-prestige group initiated equivalent volumes of interactions but were less reciprocated. In-depth analysis found the high-prestige group also advantageous in other network measures such as closeness centrality and eigenvector centrality, as well as the strength, persistence, and reciprocity of their ties. To probe potential explanations of the revealed gap, we further contrasted post content and posting behaviors between two groups. Results did not identify any significant differences in post content but found low-prestige students' participation less timely and more temporally compressed. This paper calls for attention to the participation gap in online discussions, micro-level temporal patterns of student activities, and practical means to scaffold student participation in asynchronous online discussions.

Using the problem based learning method and educational technologies to teach open data: A design-based research approach

“…Another potential reason for non-participation could be that students expected the tutor to start the discussion. Indeed, providing sentence openers and suggesting that all students check the forum a couple of times per week have been found to be effective strategies for facilitating online discussions (Ak, 2016 ; Chen & Huang, 2019 ).…”

A model of factors influencing in-service teachers’ social network prestige in online peer assessment

“…In other words, the level of a learner's prestige is positively related to the number of evaluations their assignments have received, and the specific manifestation in the network is the number of directed links received. The analysis of social network prestige helps researchers to analyse and discuss in depth the interaction characteristics and learning impact of social networks from the perspective of individual nodes (Andrews, 2020;Chen & Huang, 2019). Exploring prestige and its related indicators in online peer assessment helps to go beyond counting basic learning behaviours, to uncover the mechanism by which the participation gap influences learning interactions and to suggest ways to reduce the participation gap.…”

“…The attention level of a participant in a social network is referred to as their social network prestige (Chen & Huang, 2019). It is a measure of the interactive influence of an individual learner at the micro level and an important factor in facilitating effective learning.…”

The pandemic semesters: Examining public opinion regarding online learning amidst COVID‐19

“…In the synchronous learning environment, students attend live lectures using learning management systems (LMS) such as Blackboard, D2L, and Moodle. This learning environment enables educators to have real-time teaching interactions, and collaborations with their learners through scheduled class hours (Chen & Huang, 2019;Ng et al, 2012). Also, students are able to access all teaching and resources and submit assessments through LMS in real-time (Çakıro glu & Kılıç, 2020).…”