TY - GEN
T1 - Longitudinal analysis and visualization of participation in online courses powered by cohesion network analysis
AU - Sirbu, Maria Dorinela
AU - Dascalu, Mihai
AU - Crossley, Scott A.
AU - McNamara, Danielle S.
AU - Trausan-Matu, Stefan
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the README project "Interactive and Innovative application for evaluating the readability of texts in Romanian Language and for improving users' writing styles", contract no. 114/15.09.2017, MySMIS 2014 code 119286, the FP7 2008-212578 LTfLL project, the National Science Foundation (DRL-1418378) and the Office of Naval Research (N00014-17-1-2300). We would like to thank Tiffany Barnes and Collin Lynch for their help in conducting the previous experiments.
Publisher Copyright:
© ISLS.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Online learning environments are increasingly used by students and instructors. Cohesion Network Analysis (CNA) can be employed by instructors to analyze discourse structure in terms of cohesive links in order to model student participation and interactions in collaborative learning environments. This paper presents an extended longitudinal analysis together with corresponding visualizations of participation generated for an online math course, powered by CNA. Multiple interactive views centered on the evolution of participation and of interactions between students clustered into three layers are generated using the CNA indices provided by the ReaderBench framework. Two types of sociograms are used to show the interactions between learners in the two course weeks that exhibited extreme conditions, namely: a) week 6, when a dramatic decrease of participation was identified, and b) week 16, when the highest number of participants and contributions were logged. In addition to the views centered on participants, we introduce a heatmap depicting the evolution of keyword relevance over time, as well as a Chord diagram for visualizing concept maps based on semantic relatedness. Our analytics dashboard can be used by tutors to monitor students throughout the term and to better ascertain the correlation of course material, schedule, and deadlines with the participation of students, as well as their interactions among themselves and with the tutor.
AB - Online learning environments are increasingly used by students and instructors. Cohesion Network Analysis (CNA) can be employed by instructors to analyze discourse structure in terms of cohesive links in order to model student participation and interactions in collaborative learning environments. This paper presents an extended longitudinal analysis together with corresponding visualizations of participation generated for an online math course, powered by CNA. Multiple interactive views centered on the evolution of participation and of interactions between students clustered into three layers are generated using the CNA indices provided by the ReaderBench framework. Two types of sociograms are used to show the interactions between learners in the two course weeks that exhibited extreme conditions, namely: a) week 6, when a dramatic decrease of participation was identified, and b) week 16, when the highest number of participants and contributions were logged. In addition to the views centered on participants, we introduce a heatmap depicting the evolution of keyword relevance over time, as well as a Chord diagram for visualizing concept maps based on semantic relatedness. Our analytics dashboard can be used by tutors to monitor students throughout the term and to better ascertain the correlation of course material, schedule, and deadlines with the participation of students, as well as their interactions among themselves and with the tutor.
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M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85073350211
T3 - Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Conference, CSCL
BT - A Wide Lens
A2 - Lund, Kristine
A2 - Niccolai, Gerald P.
A2 - Lavoue, Elise
A2 - Hmelo-Silver, Cindy
A2 - Gweon, Gahgene
A2 - Baker, Michael
PB - International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS)
T2 - 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning - A Wide Lens: Combining Embodied, Enactive, Extended, and Embedded Learning in Collaborative Settings, CSCL 2019
Y2 - 17 June 2019 through 21 June 2019
ER -