Abstract—This study analyzed the interactive behaviours
among students in online course forum. The subject of this
study was 30 students who participated in a course. The course
was delivered in a mixed mode which contained online mode
and face-to-face mode. The whole semester was divided into
three six-week periods which represented the earlier stage, the
mid stage and the late stage of the semester. The online relation
networks were respectively reconstructed among the
participants according to the interactive behaviours in the
forum by Social Network Analysis method. The relation
networks among the students in the course forum were
high-density networks. The students in these networks got in
touch with most active participants and information could be
shared among most participants. The important indicators such
as “density”, “mean distance” and “reciprocity” in the three
periods of the semester were calculated. The results showed that
the characteristics of the relation networks generated in the
three periods differed. Finally, some suggestions were propsed
for teacher, limitations and further research plans were
proposed.
Index Terms—Forum communication, computer-mediated
communication, learning analytics.
The authors are with the School of Educational Information Technology
of Central China Normal University, China (e-mail: 116350703@qq.com,
xiadanchina@163.com).
Cite: Dan Xia, Huirong Ke, Yuan Tian, Qiusha Min, and Zhifeng Wang, "Analysis of Learners’ Interactive Behaviours in Online Forum," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 8, no. 7, pp. 525-528, 2018.