Are forum networks social networks?: a methodological perspective

The mission of learning analytics (LA) is to improve learner experiences using the insights from digitally collected learner data. While some areas of LA are maturing, this is not consistent across all LA specialisations. For instance, LA for social learning lack validated approaches to account for the effects of cross-course variability in learner behavior. Although the associations between network structure and learning outcomes have been examined in the context of online forums, it remains unclear whether such associations represent bona fide social effects, or merely reflect heterogeneity in individual posting behavior, leading to seemingly complex but artefactual social network structures. We argue that to start addressing this issue, posting activity should be explicitly included and modelled in forum network representations. To gain insight to what extent learner degree and edge weight are merely derivatives of learner activity, we construct random models that control for the level of posting and post properties, such as popularity and thread hierarchy level. Analysis of forum networks in twenty online courses presented in this paper demonstrates that individual posting behavior is highly predictive of both the breadth (degree) and frequency (strength) in forum communication networks. This implies that, in the context of forum-based modelling, degree and frequency may not reflect the social dynamics. However, results suggest that clustering of the network structure is not a derivative of individual posting behaviour. Hence, weighted local clustering coefficient may be a better proxy for social relationships. The empirical results are relevant to scientists interested in social interactions and learner networks in digital learning, and more generally to researchers interested in deriving informative social network models from online forums.