Analyzing learners' behavior and discourse within large online communities: a Social Learning Analytics Dashboard

Abstract

Online Learning Communities (OLC) are nowadays one of the most important producers of Big Data in education. However, the investigation of such environments is underrepresented in educational research. There is a lack of methods and tools that characterize the massive learning associated with the student participation in large OLC. This paper presents a Social Learning Analytics Dashboard (SLAD) to analyze temporal trend models that outline the evolution of learners behavior over time. Such models suggest that ongoing collaboration and positive emotion have a fundamental role for knowledge creation and sharing in large scale social learning. These findings can be used to take actions in order to enhance and regulate social interaction within large OLC.