INVESTIGATING STUDENT ROLES IN ONLINE STUDENT-CENTERED LEARNING

In this study we used the technique of Social Network Analysis (SNA) to investigate the roles students take on in an online student-centered learning environment, and more specifically in an online Computer Aided Language Learning (CALL) course. SNA is the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers or other information/knowledge processing entities (Krebs, 2004). We studied the interactions and communications of the students in the discussion boards of the language course and carried out Equivalence Analysis. Equivalence of the network members shows when two actors have similar patterns of relations. In other words, students with similar communication behaviors are grouped together. Being able to define, theorize about, and analyze data in terms of equivalence is important because we want to be able to make generalizations about social behaviour and social structure (Hanneman, 2001). Two nodes are said to be structurally equivalent if they have identical ties with themselves, each other and all other vertices. The aim of equivalence is to classify actors with similar roles into role groups by embedding the actors in a certain role space, identifying clusters of students and then carrying out subsequent cluster analysis to identify their roles. After the role types were identified we used a number of other methods in order to get more details and characteristics of the role groups. These methods included the Topic Relation Analysis (TRA) which is a content analysis tool used to group the students messages into conversation categories, the Attitudes Towards Thinking and Learning Survey (ATTLS) which is used to measure the quality of discourse within the course and the extent which a person is a 'connected knower' (CK) or a 'separate knower' (SK), and the Collectivist On-Line Learning Survey (COLLES) which measures students’ perceptions and preferences and was designed to help teachers assess, from a social constructivist perspective, the quality of their online learning environment (Taylor and Maor, 2000). Our findings show that four main roles types (R1-R4) where identified and one of the students in particular (R1) had communication patterns that resembled those of a teacher in classroom settings. The student in R2 would provide his own lectures notes and was connected with a large number of his peer students who depended on him for this material, he was part of a high number of cliques and his contributions in the discussion boards were mainly on course related material. The R3 students interacted with a small number of their peers but at a higher frequency, thus working more in small teams. In addition, the majority of their usage of the discussion boards was about the course material and helping out their peers. Finally, the students in R4 made connections with a large number of their peers, their discussions were mainly on social topics and not course related, they prefer to learn on their own and were mainly using the discussion boards to make friends and socialize with their peers.