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Social Network Analysis to Blog-based Online Communities

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Outline <ul><li>Introduction </li></ul><ul><li>Social Learning </li></ul><ul><li>Social Media Experiments </li></ul><ul><li>User Survey </li></ul><ul><li>Conclusions </li></ul>

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Introduction <ul><li>Introduction </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Blog </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Social Network Analysis (SNA) </li></ul></ul>

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Introduction - Blog <ul><li>Blogs create a context for dialogues between bloggers and readers. </li></ul><ul><li>Most blog platforms provide a personal writing space that is easy to publish, sharable. </li></ul><ul><li>Blogs can combine solitary and social interaction in the learning processes . </li></ul><ul><li>Considerable research has been carried out on the educational use of blogs (Richardson, 2006;Williams and Jacobs, 2004; Oravec, 2002;Dailey 2006) </li></ul>

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Introduction – Social Network Analysis (1) <ul><li>Social Network Analysis (SNA) is used as a research vehicle to investigate the structural patterns of blogging communities. </li></ul><ul><li>SNA is a sociological methodology for analyzing patterns of relationships and interactions between social actors in order to discover the underlying social structure . </li></ul>

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Introduction – Social Network Analysis (2) <ul><li>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. </li></ul>

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Blogs as Learning Communities - Social Learning <ul><li>Social Learning </li></ul><ul><ul><li>The intrinsic structure of blogs enables social learning. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Blogs is a form of Social Media </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>Share opinions, experiences, viewpoints </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>Collaborative Learning </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Blogs have the potentials to upgrade personal learning to social learning. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Social construction of knowledge through social media such blogs help explain why assessing other’s work may be conducive to social learning. </li></ul></ul>

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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

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Link Patterns: Trackback & Dialogues <ul><li>Trackback Links </li></ul><ul><ul><li>created by students to their blogs </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Dialogue Links </li></ul><ul><ul><li> created by students to read another’s postng and make comments. </li></ul></ul><ul><li>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. </li></ul>

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Social Media Experiments <ul><li>Sample </li></ul><ul><li>Platform </li></ul><ul><li>Purpose </li></ul><ul><li>Procedure </li></ul><ul><li>Results </li></ul><ul><li>Limitations </li></ul>

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Social Media Experiments (1) <ul><li>Sample </li></ul><ul><ul><li>36 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory computer science course at a university </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Platform </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Google Blogger </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Purpose </li></ul><ul><ul><li>In order to measure the connectedness of social interactions in the learning groups </li></ul></ul>

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Social Media Experiments (3) <ul><li>Procedure </li></ul><ul><ul><li>First of all, student took a tour to a local science fair. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>A short essay was written by each student . </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>After the essay was finished, each student was asked to browse their peers’ work and make at least 3 comments on others’ essays </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Conducting social network analysis to investigate the student behaviors in terms of social learning. </li></ul></ul>

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Social Media Experiments (4) <ul><li>Results </li></ul>Table 1 : Metrics of Social Learning

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Social Media Experiments (4) <ul><li>social network analysis </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Including three research questions : </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>Q1: How many student works will be read and commented ? </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>Q2: Are there opinion leaders in the learning group under study ? if there are, how many ? </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>Q3: What is the distribution of reaching peers’ works by no more than the number of students clicks through dialogue links on the works ? </li></ul></ul></ul>

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Question 1 <ul><li>Q1: How many student works will be read and commented ? </li></ul><ul><li>A1: (Table1 ). </li></ul><ul><ul><li>83% Receiving Comments </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>and only 6 students receiving nothing at all </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>2 students : with no attractive content in their essays. </li></ul></ul></ul><ul><ul><ul><li>The other four : hand in late </li></ul></ul></ul>

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Question 2 <ul><li>Q2: Are there opinion leaders in the learning group under study ? if there are, how many ? </li></ul><ul><li>A2 :There are 4 students who received at least 7 comments (Figure 1.) </li></ul>Figure 1: Distribution of numbers of comments

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Question 3 <ul><li>Q3: What is the distribution of reaching peers’ works by no more than the number of students clicks through dialogue links on the works ? </li></ul><ul><li>A3 : reference to Figure 2, all below 7 </li></ul>Figure 2. Distribution of numbers of hops versus counts.

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Limitations <ul><li>The results reported are limited for the following reasons: </li></ul><ul><ul><li>The sample size was small </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>The context of learning was narrowly define. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Blogging acted as a supplement to a traditional face-to-face course. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>The social network analysis measures the online community of practice from a structure point of view. </li></ul></ul>

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User Survey <ul><li>Conduct a survey study on a larger sample and collect data regarding non-structural issues </li></ul><ul><li>Sample </li></ul><ul><ul><li>3 undergraduate classes, namely Electronic Commerce, Java Programming Language and Programming for Internet Applications, with 23, 38 and 36 students respectively </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Procedure </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Divided into D-Group with 48 samples and S-Group with 23 samples. </li></ul></ul>

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User Survey <ul><ul><li>D group emphasizes the use of blog as an express lane of delivering finished work for the instructor to check out immediately. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>S group sees the blogs as idea sharing platform, namely encourages students to read peer blogs and make comments. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>The questionnaire was poised by a score on a 5-point scale. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>All the questionnaires are administrated anonymously by a third party without the instructor on the spot. </li></ul></ul>

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User Survey <ul><li>The following five hypotheses are coded in the questionnaire and tested in the survey administrated to the two groups. </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Hypothesis 1: Blogging helps students feel more connected and interactive with classmates. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Hypothesis 2: Blogging helps students more engaged and interested in the subjects covered by the courses . </li></ul></ul>

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User Survey <ul><ul><li>Hypothesis 3: Blogging improved the quality and experience of learning . </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Hypothesis 4: Students take a look at people’s homework first when they don’t have a clue to the problems. </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Hypothesis 5: Students uphold the principle of honesty and make no duplicates of people’s homework, although students may read it at times. </li></ul></ul>

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Summary of Survey <ul><li>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. </li></ul><ul><li>The effects of blogging on learning are supported </li></ul>Table 2. Survey results regarding the tree classes.

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Summary of Survey <ul><li>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. </li></ul>Table 3 : t-test results of S-Group and D-Group

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Summary of Survey <ul><li>Regarding Hypotheses 1, 2 and 3, blogs of the S-Group as tools for social construction help build more sense of community , and better improve experiences of learning than those in D-Group. </li></ul><ul><li>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. </li></ul>

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Conclusions <ul><li>Using blogs is found to simplify the tasks of reducing piracy. </li></ul><ul><li>Blogs are a viable platform for ideas to flat and grow. </li></ul><ul><li>Blags are easy to maintain, low cost, easy to deploy, and simple to get started. </li></ul>