Community Development in Social Network Interaction and Social Presence in Online Discussion

• In Event: 18.058 - MTCC Roundtable Session Four
  In Roundtable Session: 18.058-9 - Networks, Transformation, and Finding Balance in Online Education

Abstract

Social presence is critical to online discussion instructions. But it is unclear how students may develop social network interaction over time and how online social presence may be related to network interaction development. This study empirically investigated how various aspects of students’ prominence (i.e., betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, & eigenvector centrality) in the social network interaction of online discussion will change over time and how online social presence moderate the trend over time in various aspects of students’ prominence in social network interaction. The findings suggested that students’ closeness centrality changed and increased over time. In addition, the upward trend of closeness centrality was generalizable to learners with various levels of online social presence.

Authors

• Cherng-Jyh Yen, Old Dominion University

• Chih-Hsiung Tu, Northern Arizona University

• Laura Esthela Sujo-Montes, Northern Arizona University

• Claudia Rodas, Northern Arizona University

• Hoda Harati, North arizona university

• Shadow William Jon Armfield, Northern Arizona University