Identifying Key Learner on Online E-Learning Platform: An Effective Resistance Distance Approach

Teachers are never the only teacher in the class, especially in online e-learning environment. The key learner who is supposed to be more active and eager to spread knowledge and motivation to other classmates has a huge potentiality to improve the quality of teaching. However, the identification of such key learner is challenging which needs lots of human experience, especially when the contact channels between teachers and students are much more monotonous in online e-learning environment. Inspired by resistance distance theory, in this paper, we apply resistance distance and centrality into an interactive network of learners to identify key learner who can effectively motivate the whole class with discussion in e-learning platform. First, we define the terms of interactive network of learners with the node, edge, and graph. Then the distance between nodes is replaced with effective resistance distance to gain better understanding of propagation among the learners. Afterward, Closeness Centrality is utilized to measure the centrality of each learner in interactive network of learners. Experimental results show that the centrality we use can cover and depict the learners’ discussion activities well, and the key learner identified by our approach under apposite stimuli can effectively motivate the whole class’ learning performance.