Analysis of Students’ Engagement and Activities in a Virtual Learning Community

2013 ◽  
pp. 80-100
Author(s):  
Ben Daniel ◽  
Richard A. Schwier
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Learning Communities ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Student Perceptions ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Research Laboratory ◽  
Virtual Learning ◽  
Community Research ◽  
Online Pedagogy ◽  
Virtual Learning Community

With advances in communication technology and online pedagogy, virtual learning communities have become rich learning environments in which individuals construct knowledge and learn from others. Typically, individuals in virtual learning communities interact by exchanging information and sharing knowledge and experiences with others as communities. The team at the Virtual Learning Community Research Laboratory has employed an array of methods, including social network analysis (SNA), to examine and describe different virtual learning communities. The goal of the study was to employ mixed methods to explore whether the content of students’ interaction reflected the fundamental elements of community. SNA techniques were used to analyse ties and relationships among individuals in a network with the goal of understanding patterns of interactions among individuals and their activities, and interviews were conducted to explore features and student perceptions of their learning community.

Analysis of Students’ Engagement and Activities in a Virtual Learning Community

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 31-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Daniel ◽  
Richard A. Schwier
Keyword(s):  
Learning Communities ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Student Perceptions ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Communication Technology ◽  
Research Laboratory ◽  
Virtual Learning ◽  
Community Research ◽  
Online Pedagogy ◽  
Virtual Learning Community

With advances in communication technology and online pedagogy, virtual learning communities have become rich learning environments in which individuals construct knowledge and learn from others. Typically, individuals in virtual learning communities interact by exchanging information and sharing knowledge and experiences with others as communities. The team at the Virtual Learning Community Research Laboratory has employed an array of methods, including social network analysis (SNA), to examine and describe different virtual learning communities. The goal of the study was to employ mixed methods to explore whether the content of students’ interaction reflected the fundamental elements of community. SNA techniques were used to analyse ties and relationships among individuals in a network with the goal of understanding patterns of interactions among individuals and their activities, and interviews were conducted to explore features and student perceptions of their learning community.

Knowledge Access and Interaction Evolution in Virtual Learning Communities

2012 ◽  
pp. 1019-1038
Author(s):  
Maria Chiara Caschera ◽  
Alessia D’Andrea ◽  
Fernando Ferri ◽  
Patrizia Grifoni
Keyword(s):  
Learning Communities ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Intelligent Agents ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Virtual Learning ◽  
Virtual Learning Environment ◽  
Software Systems ◽  
Virtual Learning Community ◽  
Support Interaction ◽  
Interesting Alternative

Interaction among members in Virtual Learning Communities influences the communities’ evolution. Starting from this consideration, this chapter provides a discussion on the more widely used software systems that support interaction between virtual communities’ members and virtual learning environment underlining the advantages and the disadvantages considering the several processes that characterize the VLCs. Moreover in education environments interactions are important in order to facilitate the learning process, and this chapter describes how the intelligent agent approaches can bean interesting alternative to a human facilitator. The analysis of intelligent agents describes how they allow both analysing interaction and improving the level of participation of members of a Virtual Learning Community.

Knowledge Access and Interaction Evolution in Virtual Learning Communities

2010 ◽  
pp. 113-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Chiara Caschera ◽  
Alessia D’Andrea ◽  
Fernando Ferri ◽  
Patrizia Grifoni
Keyword(s):  
Learning Communities ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Intelligent Agents ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Virtual Learning ◽  
Virtual Learning Environment ◽  
Software Systems ◽  
Virtual Learning Community ◽  
Support Interaction ◽  
Interesting Alternative

Interaction among members in Virtual Learning Communities influences the communities’ evolution. Starting from this consideration, this chapter provides a discussion on the more widely used software systems that support interaction between virtual communities’ members and virtual learning environment underlining the advantages and the disadvantages considering the several processes that characterize the VLCs. Moreover in education environments interactions are important in order to facilitate the learning process, and this chapter describes how the intelligent agent approaches can bean interesting alternative to a human facilitator. The analysis of intelligent agents describes how they allow both analysing interaction and improving the level of participation of members of a Virtual Learning Community.

Observing the Evolution of a Learning Community Using Social Network Analysis

2011 ◽  
pp. 215-231
Author(s):  
Francesca Grippa ◽  
Marco De Maggio ◽  
Angelo Corallo
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Community Development ◽  
Learning Communities ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Computer Scientists ◽  
Clear Identification ◽  
Network Metrics ◽  
Contribution Index

During the last decades, social and computer scientists have been focusing their efforts to study the effectiveness of collaboration in both working and learning environments. The main contributions clearly identify the importance of interactivity as the determinant of positive performances in learning communities where the supportive dimension of exchanges is balanced by the interactive one. In this chapter, authors describe a method based on social network metrics to recognize the stages of development of learning communities. The authors found that the evolution of social network metrics - such as density, betweenness centrality, contribution index, core/periphery structure – matched the formal stages of community development, with a clear identification of the forming, norming, and storming phases.

scholarly journals Teachers Access to a Brazilian Virtual Learning Community Over Time: Why They do Not Come Back

EAD em FOCO ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauricio Pinto da Luz ◽  
Daniel Salvador ◽  
Luiz Rolando
Keyword(s):  
Learning Communities ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Development Program ◽  
Virtual Learning ◽  
Biology Teachers ◽  
Sharp Drop ◽  
Virtual Learning Community ◽  
Demographic Profiles ◽  
Digital Skills

A virtual learning community, created in association with courses offered within an online professional development program for Brazilian biology teachers, was reviewed over a two-year period. This virtual learning community is designed to be moderated and managed solely by the teachers themselves without any guidance. The results showed a recurring participation pattern, expressed by a large number of page and message views, for short periods of time during the courses, followed by a sharp drop in those views after the courses closed. This pattern was unrelated to course subject or duration. The questionnaires revealed that teachers who did or did not access the virtual community after the end of their courses were indistinguishable from their demographic profiles or digital skills. The analysis of teachers responses to the questionnaire showed that the lack of time due to work overload was the main reason why teachers abandoned the virtual learning community, regardless of highly positive user evaluations. The implications of the results for the future implementation of virtual learning communities in developing countries are discussed. Keywords: In-service teacher education. Lifelong learning. Virtual Learning Communities

Re-Visiting Democratic Pedagogy in the Context of Virtual Learning Communities

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 47-58
Author(s):  
Hayriye Tugba Oztürk
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Learning Communities ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Democratic Education ◽  
Virtual Learning ◽  
Open Education ◽  
Virtual Learning Community ◽  
Democratic Pedagogy

The purpose of this research is two-fold. First, it provides an overview of the debates over whether technology facilitates democratic education. Second, from this emergent body of discussions in the literature, it critically examines the potential of a virtual learning community to materialise democratic education, both through its underpinning of ideal values such as autonomy, participation and mutuality and through the technological spaces which learners inhabit. Virtual learning communities (VLCs) are increasingly appearing in the field of open education and in that sense, these emerging virtual communities demand a new understanding of democratic pedagogy. With regard to this, drawing on the theoretical debates, it aims to discuss how technology can take place in re-exploring the democratic pedagogy under the scope of VLCs. In doing this, a critical in-depth literature review was undertaken in an emergent area of virtual communities by aiming to contribute to the discussions over conceptualizing the democratic VLCs.

Virtual Learning Communities in Google Plus, Implications, and Sustainability in MOOCs

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 18-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita Martinez-Nuñez ◽  
Oriol Borras-Gene ◽  
Ángel Fidalgo-Blanco
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Learning Communities ◽  
Informal Learning ◽  
Learning Community ◽  
Collective Intelligence ◽  
Virtual Learning ◽  
Business Professionals ◽  
Virtual Learning Community ◽  
New Model ◽  
Over Time

Two major educational strengths that MOOCs provide are informal learning and harnessing the collective intelligence of the students and the interactions among other users like former students, future students, business professionals, other universities, etc. These features may lead to the emergence of new sustainable in time educational elements wherein knowledge and learning continue enriching once the course finished. At present, one of the main limitations of the MOOC platforms is the lack of social open tools to enhance and take advantage of the collective intelligence generated in the course. This article proposes a new model to allocate informal learning and collective intelligence in MOOCs using external virtual learning communities through social networks, based on Google +. The main aim of this article is to assess the virtual learning community performance and analyze the interactions and the kinds of learning that take place inside the community and over time. A case of study of a MOOC course with Google + community is presented.

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