A Social Network Analysis of Online Collaborative Learning Aspects in an Online Course

Online Collaborative Learning is typically developed and maintained through participants' social interaction. For this purpose, this paper chose density, concentration, cohesion subgroup and other network indices to analyze the interaction network characteristics. It was showed interaction density was not high, and the teacher had greater influence on group participation. There are, however, substantial differences in the participants' activities. The results also indicated that power distributions were uneven, and the participants tended to interact frequently with some core participants. The study also revealed that participants had different social roles.