A predictive study of students’ social presence and their interconnectivities in the social network interaction of online discussion board

• Main Authors: Harati, H. (Author), Miller, A. (Author), Ozkeskin, E.E (Author), Tankari, M. (Author), Tu, C.-H (Author), Yen, C.-J (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kaplan Singapore 2022
• Subjects: Learning community; social interconnectivity; social learning analytics; social network analysis; social presence
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 Effective online interaction is beyond interacting with whomever. The quality of social interconnectivity matters. Social presence plays a vital role in building an effective online learning community. This study empirically examined: how online social presence will predict various aspects of students’ social interconnectivities (i.e., in-degree, out-degree, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, eigenvector centrality, reciprocated vertex pair ratio, & PageRank) in the social network of discussion board within an online course? The predictive utility of social presence for all social network interconnectivity was supported, but reciprocated vertex pair ratio, so-called two-way interconnectivity was not. Social presence serves as a strong predictor for social interaction and interconnectivity. Learners with higher social presence are more likely to play distinguished roles of influencer, liaison, transmitter, social strategist, and prestigious figure of a community of learners. The findings would support online instructors to facilitate, guide, and support their students to navigate through the convoluted social interconnectivity effectively and continuously. © 2022 Cherng-Jyh Yen, Chih-Hsiung Tu, Moussa Tankari, Emrah Emre Ozkeskin, Hoda Harati and Alexandra Miller.