Time Analysis of Forum Evolution as Support Tool for E-Moderating

Abstract

The web forum is a key tool in new knowledge building among students in Learning Management Systems. Unfortunately, the huge number of messages makes difficult, for tutors and teachers, to correctly evaluate the evolution of the forum and its efficacy in the learning process. In order to support the tutors in this effort, a solution, based on simple statistical indices inspired by the work in the text analysis and social network analysis field, is proposed. The obtained results show good performance with a minimum computational effort.