Patterns of interaction in a networked learning community

The aim of this paper is to study the nature of the interaction within a networked learning community (NLC), and the way its members share and construct knowledge together. Our goal is to explore interaction patterns among the members of a NLC and the quality of the discourse between its members. The paper is a short report of a continuing international study that is investigating networked collaborative learning among an advanced community of learners engaged in a master’s program in e-learning. The study is undertaking empirical work using content analysis (CA), critical event recall (CER) and social network analysis (SNA). The first two methods are employed previously and we will use these results to analyze and interpret the social network studies conducted in this study. The paper reports some of the current findings of this work and discusses future prospects.