{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,6,19]],"date-time":"2025-06-19T04:24:01Z","timestamp":1750307041829,"version":"3.41.0"},"reference-count":30,"publisher":"Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2012,5,1]],"date-time":"2012-05-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1335830400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.acm.org\/publications\/policies\/copyright_policy#Background"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["dl.acm.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["SIGKDD Explor. Newsl."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2012,5]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>There is a growing number of courses delivered using elearning environments and their online discussions play an important role in collaborative learning of students. Even in courses with a few number of students, there could be thousands of messages generated in a few months within these forums. Manually evaluating the participation of students in such case is a significant challenge, considering the fact that current e-learning environments do not provide much information regarding the structure of interactions between students. There is a recent line of research on applying social network analysis (SNA) techniques to study these interactions.<\/jats:p>\n          <jats:p>Here we propose to exploit SNA techniques, including community mining, in order to discover relevant structures in social networks we generate from student communications but also information networks we produce from the content of the exchanged messages. With visualization of these discovered relevant structures and the automated identification of central and peripheral participants, an instructor is provided with better means to assess participation in the online discussions. We implemented these new ideas in a toolbox, named Meerkat-ED, which automatically discovers relevant network structures, visualizes overall snapshots of interactions between the participants in the discussion forums, and outlines the leader\/peripheral students. Moreover, it creates a hierarchical summarization of the discussed topics, which gives the instructor a quick view of what is under discussion. We believe exploiting the mining abilities of this toolbox would facilitate fair evaluation of students' participation in online courses.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/2207243.2207247","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2012,5,7]],"date-time":"2012-05-07T18:47:42Z","timestamp":1336416462000},"page":"20-29","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":28,"title":["Social network analysis and mining to support the assessment of on-line student participation"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"13","author":[{"given":"Reihaneh","family":"Rabbany k.","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Mansoureh","family":"Takaffoli","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Osmar R.","family":"Za\u00efane","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2012,5]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_1_1_1","unstructured":"Blackboard. http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Blackboard\\_Learning\\_System.  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British Journal of Educational Technology, 2009."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_3_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/ICDMW.2010.40"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_4_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/WIIAT.2008.24"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_5_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/CASoN.2009.29"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_6_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.compedu.2005.07.003"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_7_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1103\/PhysRevE.70.066111"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_8_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ijhcs.2006.02.001"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_9_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1467-8535.2009.00970.x"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_10_1","first-page":"125","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Networked Learning","author":"Dawson S.","year":"2010","unstructured":"S. Dawson , A. Bakharia , and E. Heathcote . SNAPP: Realising the affordances of real-time sna within networked learning environments. In L. Dirckinck- Holmfeld, V. Hodgson, C. Jones, M. De Laat, D. Mc- Connell, and T. Ryberg, editors , Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Networked Learning , pages 125 -- 133 , 2010 . S. Dawson, A. Bakharia, and E. Heathcote. SNAPP: Realising the affordances of real-time sna within networked learning environments. In L. Dirckinck- Holmfeld, V. Hodgson, C. Jones, M. De Laat, D. Mc- Connell, and T. Ryberg, editors, Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Networked Learning, pages 125--133, 2010."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_11_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s11412-007-9006-4"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_12_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/ICETC.2009.48"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_14_1","first-page":"523","volume-title":"Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Conference","author":"Gruzd A.","year":"2008","unstructured":"A. Gruzd and C. A. Haythornthwaite . The analysis of online communities using interactive content-based social networks. extended abstract . In Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Conference , pages 523 -- 527 , Columbus, OH, USA , October 2008 . A. Gruzd and C. A. Haythornthwaite. The analysis of online communities using interactive content-based social networks. extended abstract. In Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Conference, pages 523--527, Columbus, OH, USA, October 2008."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_15_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1017\/CBO9780511606373.011"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_16_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.compedu.2008.05.005"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_17_1","volume-title":"IADIS international conference","author":"Laghos A.","year":"2006","unstructured":"A. Laghos and P. Zaphiris . Sociology of student-centred e-learning communities: A network analysis . In IADIS international conference , Dublin, Ireland , July 2006 . e-Society. A. Laghos and P. Zaphiris. Sociology of student-centred e-learning communities: A network analysis. In IADIS international conference, Dublin, Ireland, July 2006. e-Society."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_18_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1103\/PhysRevE.80.056117"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_19_1","volume-title":"Handbook of Social Network Analysis","author":"Marin A.","year":"2010","unstructured":"A. Marin and B. Wellman . Handbook of Social Network Analysis . Sage , forthcoming, 2010 . A. Marin and B. Wellman. Handbook of Social Network Analysis. Sage, forthcoming, 2010."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_20_1","unstructured":"Moodle. http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moodle.  Moodle. http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moodle."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_21_1","unstructured":"NetMiner. http:\/\/www.netminer.com\/NetMiner\/.  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Emergence of the most knowledgeable other (mko) : Social network analysis of chat and bulletin board conversations in a CSCL system. Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 8:191--208 , 2010 . B. Sundararajan. Emergence of the most knowledgeable other (mko): Social network analysis of chat and bulletin board conversations in a CSCL system. Electronic Journal of e-Learning, 8:191--208, 2010."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_29_1","unstructured":"UCINET. http:\/\/www.analytictech.com\/ucinet\/.  UCINET. http:\/\/www.analytictech.com\/ucinet\/."},{"key":"e_1_2_1_30_1","unstructured":"WebCT. http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/WebCT.  WebCT. http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/WebCT."},{"issue":"9","key":"e_1_2_1_31_1","first-page":"46","article-title":"Using social network analysis techniques to examine online interactions","volume":"2","author":"Willging P. A.","year":"2005","unstructured":"P. A. Willging . Using social network analysis techniques to examine online interactions . 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