Social Network Analysis to Blog-based Online Communities

Outline

Introduction Social Learning Social Media Experiments User Survey Conclusions

Introduction Introduction

Blog Social Network Analysis (SNA)

Introduction - Blog Blogs create a context for dialogues betwee

n bloggers and readers. Most blog platforms provide a personal writ

ing space that is easy to publish, sharable. Blogs can combine solitary and social inter

action in the learning processes . Considerable research has been carried out

on the educational use of blogs (Richardson, 2006;Williams and Jacobs, 2004; Oravec, 2002;Dailey 2006)

Introduction – Social Network Analysis

(1) Social Network Analysis (SNA) is used as a r

esearch vehicle to investigate the structural patterns of blogging communities.

SNA is a sociological methodology for analyzing patterns of relationships and interactions between social actors in order to discover the underlying social structure .

Introduction – Social Network Analysis (2)

SNA methods have been employed to study organizational behavior (Borgatti and Foster,2003) , interorganizational relations (Stuart, 1998) , citation patterns (Baldi, 1998) , virtual communities (Garton et al., 1999) , and many other domains.

Blogs as Learning Communities -Social Learning Social Learning

The intrinsic structure of blogs enables social learning.

Blogs is a form of Social Media Share opinions, experiences, viewpoints Collaborative Learning

Blogs have the potentials to upgrade personal learning to social learning.

Social construction of knowledge through social media such blogs help explain why assessing other’s work may be conducive to social learning.

Link Patterns: Trackback & Dialogues

Instructor Blog

Student 1

Student 2

Student 3

Links created by students to their blogs

Dialogue Links

TrackbackLinks

The formation of social learning circles

Link Patterns: Trackback & Dialogues Trackback Links

created by students to their blogs Dialogue Links

created by students to read another’s postng and make comments.

The “comments on comments” may even sometimes create a long sequence of discussions or debates involved by more and more people as the dialogues proceed.

Social Media Experiments Sample Platform Purpose Procedure Results Limitations

Social Media Experiments (1) Sample

36 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory computer science course at a university

Platform Google Blogger

Purpose In order to measure the connectedness of social

interactions in the learning groups

Social Media Experiments (3) Procedure

First of all, student took a tour to a local science fair.

A short essay was written by each student . After the essay was finished, each student was a

sked to browse their peers’ work and make at least 3 comments on others’ essays

Conducting social network analysis to investigate the student behaviors in terms of social learning.

Social Media Experiments (4)

ResultsTable 1 : Metrics of Social Learning

Social Media Experiments (4)

social network analysis Including three research questions :

Q1: How many student works will be read and commented ?

Q2: Are there opinion leaders in the learning group under study ? if there are, how many ?

Q3: What is the distribution of reaching peers’ works by no more than the number of students clicks through dialogue links on the works ?

Question 1

Q1: How many student works will be read and commented ?

A1: (Table1 ). 83% Receiving Comments and only 6 students receiving nothing

at all 2 students : with no attractive content in

their essays. The other four : hand in late

Question 2

Q2: Are there opinion leaders in the learning group under study ? if there are, how many ?

A2 :There are 4 students who received at least 7 comments (Figure 1.)

Figure 1: Distribution of numbers of comments

65

1

4

78

12

10 0 0

1012345678

0 2 4 6 8 10 12

No. of comments

Question 3

Q3: What is the distribution of reaching peers’ works by no more than the number of students clicks through dialogue links on the works ?

A3 : reference to Figure 2, all below 7

Figure 2. Distribution of numbers of hops versus counts.

443

117201223195

6714 00

100200300400500

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

hops

Limitations The results reported are limited for the foll

owing reasons: The sample size was small The context of learning was narrowly define. Blogging acted as a supplement to a traditional

face-to-face course. The social network analysis measures the onlin

e community of practice from a structure point of view.

User Survey

Conduct a survey study on a larger sample and collect data regarding non-structural issues

Sample 3 undergraduate classes, namely Electronic

Commerce, Java Programming Language and Programming for Internet Applications, with 23, 38 and 36 students respectively

Procedure Divided into D-Group with 48 samples and S-

Group with 23 samples.

User Survey D group emphasizes the use of blog as an expre

ss lane of delivering finished work for the instructor to check out immediately.

S group sees the blogs as idea sharing platform, namely encourages students to read peer blogs and make comments.

The questionnaire was poised by a score on a 5-point scale.

All the questionnaires are administrated anonymously by a third party without the instructor on the spot.

User Survey

The following five hypotheses are coded in the questionnaire and tested in the survey administrated to the two groups. Hypothesis 1: Blogging helps students fe

el more connected and interactive with classmates.

Hypothesis 2: Blogging helps students more engaged and interested in the subjects covered by the courses .

User Survey Hypothesis 3: Blogging improved the qua

lity and experience of learning . Hypothesis 4: Students take a look at peo

ple’s homework first when they don’t have a clue to the problems.

Hypothesis 5: Students uphold the principle of honesty and make no duplicates of people’s homework, although students may read it at times.

Summary of Survey

According to Table 2., the mean of Hypothesis 1 is greater then 3, and the other four hypotheses receive means with value greater then 4.

The effects of blogging on learning are supported

Table 2. Survey results regarding the tree classes.

Summary of Survey

According to Table 3, Except for Hypothesis 4, the means of two groups are statistically different . It indicates that no matter which of the two ways the blogs are used to support learning acitvities, both groups recognize the possibility of blogs as repository of clues to solve problems.

Table 3 : t-test results of S-Group and D-Group

Summary of Survey Regarding Hypotheses 1, 2 and 3, blogs of t

he S-Group as tools for social construction help build more sense of community , and better improve experiences of learning than those in D-Group.

For Hypothesis 5, both groups show positive signs regarding the principle of honesty .It is worth of noting that the S group is more aware of the ethics issues than the other group.

Conclusions

Using blogs is found to simplify the tasks of reducing piracy.

Blogs are a viable platform for ideas to flat and grow.

Blags are easy to maintain, low cost, easy to deploy, and simple to get started.