An investigation into knowledge discovery in collaborative learning communities

While collaborative community is applied comprehensively in school learning and organisational training, research on collaborative learning process is emerging. Traditional statistical methods make it difficult to perform large volume in-depth analysis on interaction regulations and mechanisms in collaborative communities, especially when bottom-up analysis is required. In this study, data-mining methodology is addressed to discover knowledge from large-scale and real interaction data in collaborative learning communities. We propose to use Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) approach for knowledge discovery in collaborative communities. A case study of role discovery in collaborative learning is developed to demonstrate the usefulness of the approach.