«Analysis of student behavior and their interests in virtual learning communities»

Abstract

The constant development of new Internet platforms is changing the role of users of this type of platform, from viewers to main actors. In the field of education, teachers can take advantage of these new technologies for the design of pedagogical content. Face-to-face observation of behavior patterns allows teachers to detect and track new problems and apply possible corrections that could improve the teaching/learning process. However, with a remote methodology, these types of observations are not possible.

When forums are created they are intended to discuss specific topics. It is important to be able to record and follow the topics discussed in these forums and determine if they are the topics that the forums were created for in order to achieve the objectives of the course. To address this deficiency, our work studies the dynamics of relevant topics in discussion forums, and this is done by analyzing the large number of student interactions that are generated in the forums of our Management System. of Learning (LMS) . In particular, the behavior model in the student forums is analyzed, and to characterize the relevant themes and sub-themes of the student forums through the messages belonging to two academic courses. From the statistical and graphical results obtained, a series of valuable recommendations are also given.

Bios

Mª de los Llanos Tobarra has been a computer engineer since 2004 and a doctorate in computer science since 2009, both degrees from the University of Castilla-La Mancha. Currently, she is an assistant in the Department of Communication and Control Systems, within the National University of Distance Education (UNED). Her research includes security for distributed systems and social network analysis for e-Learning. She has made more than 20 research contributions, between international journals and conferences on these topics.

Salvador Ros is a full professor in the Department of Communication and Control Systems of the Spanish University of Distance Education (UNED) and vice-dean of technologies in the Faculty of Informatics of the UNED. His research is focused on learning technologies and their application to learning processes, including service-oriented platforms, learning analytics, and multimodal learning environments. Prof. Ros has a Doctorate in Engineering from the UNED School of Industrial Engineering. He is a senior fellow at the IEEE and a member of the STEM-Horizon 2012 advisory council.