THE INITIAL DESIGN OF A LEARNING ANALYTIC TO IMPROVE COLLABORATIVE PROCESS IN A DIGITAL FORUM

Abstract

In the field of higher education, the educational proposals involving the use of digital forums have taken a leading role. The potential of these forums to maintain a multidirectional communication based on written texts that do not require spatial or temporal coincidence for participation are especially suitable for promote collaborative learning processes. However, the results of multiple investigations show that, often, the conversations in forums acquire a superficial nature and participants are incapable of engaging in effective learning processes. In an attempt to optimize the learning process in forums, there have been several lines of research that put emphasis on providing information to participants about the activities performed in order to help them improve collaborative processes and learning outcomes. In this paper, from the concept of distributed educational influence and the model developed for its analysis, the relationship between two different types of information and the degree of usefulness for students to guide their participation and improve their collaborative processes in an online forum is explored. Specifically, the two different types of information are based on two different types of indicators: indicators derived from the structural analysis of students’ activity in the forum, and indicators derived from the content analysis of their contributions. A study with 24 undergraduate students was conducted; the students participated in 5 forums developing a report of the core themes as a final product of their activity in the online forums. In order to help them to improve their activity, a particular type of information about the activity developed by the students on previous forum was provided before the beginning of the next forum. In order to value the usefulness that participants gave to the information provided to improve their collaborative processes and guide their own participation in the forums, a questionnaire was administered after each forum. The results show that majority of participants who received information derived from the content analysis of their contributions, assessed it as much more useful than participants who received information derived from structural analysis. The contrasting results between the two types of information suggest that indicators based on qualitative aspects of students’ activity are most useful to help them engage in more effective collaboration processes. From above, we reinforce our interest in further analysis of the relationship between the collaborative processes performed and the learning outcomes with the use of information and its usefulness to promote collaborative learning processes.