Social Network Analysis of Teacher’s Role in Students’ Online Discussion Community

Abstract

Because of the popularization of mobile devices and social media platforms, an increasing number of teachers have begun to adopt online student discussion groups as a method of teaching. Some teachers have asked students to add teachers to their discussion groups, while others have made no such request. The present study recruited college students and teachers for a “special project” course. The online discussion group without the teacher was defined as the control group, while the group with the participation of the teacher was defined as the experimental group. Without knowing that it was an experiment, the students were asked to use the online group for discussion for a period of three months. The messages and interactions of the two groups were then analyzed. The results showed that the number of messages of the control group was significantly higher than that of the experimental group, and the experimental group was relatively passive in leaving messages and less active in interactions. Additionally, the key figure of the community changed from being a student (group leader) in the control group to the teacher in the experimental group.