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Local Preferential Attachment of Posting Behaviour on MOOC Discussion Forum

Received: 25 August 2021    Accepted: 18 September 2021    Published: 29 September 2021
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Abstract

Online education has become a popular education paradigm and foundation for future educations. Compare to traditional offline classes, online education could support massive participants, but also confronting engagement and retention problems. Many studies have analysed participant’s behaviour to enhance the engagement concerning social, cognitive and technical factors, such as 1) knowledge, cognitive process and social dimensions of micro-collaborations; 2) effects of rating visualization on reading behaviour. However, fewer studies have concerned the organization of discussion forum on posting behaviour analysis. Therefore, this study explores patterns of posting behaviours with consideration of forum organization. In detail, this study applied local preferential attachments (LPA) on the posting behaviour of MOOC discussion forum, and discovered their patterns concerning social, emotional and technical factors. The LPA model will measure message attributes on thread page as a factual local environment of posting behaviour. With statistical test on collected data, we validated the significance and linearity of the LPA on measurements of responses number and message length. Results indicated that: 1) most LPA of posting behaviour are significant; 2) comment behaviour expressed sub-linearity on responses number, and others expressed super-linearity; 3) posting behaviour was affected by compound factors of self-identity, knowledge exchange and community citizenship. Their significant preferences suggested that: 1) forum organization is significant to model posting behaviour; 2) re-organize threads and mark message status could improve engagement of participants.

Published in International Journal of Education, Culture and Society (Volume 6, Issue 5)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijecs.20210605.12
Page(s) 167-175
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

MOOC, Massive Open Online Course, Discussion Forum, Local Preferential Attachment, Posting Behaviours, Knowledge Exchange, Community Citizenship

References
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Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Xiaoguang Zhu, Huining Song, Yao Zhu. (2021). Local Preferential Attachment of Posting Behaviour on MOOC Discussion Forum. International Journal of Education, Culture and Society, 6(5), 167-175. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijecs.20210605.12

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    ACS Style

    Xiaoguang Zhu; Huining Song; Yao Zhu. Local Preferential Attachment of Posting Behaviour on MOOC Discussion Forum. Int. J. Educ. Cult. Soc. 2021, 6(5), 167-175. doi: 10.11648/j.ijecs.20210605.12

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    AMA Style

    Xiaoguang Zhu, Huining Song, Yao Zhu. Local Preferential Attachment of Posting Behaviour on MOOC Discussion Forum. Int J Educ Cult Soc. 2021;6(5):167-175. doi: 10.11648/j.ijecs.20210605.12

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijecs.20210605.12,
      author = {Xiaoguang Zhu and Huining Song and Yao Zhu},
      title = {Local Preferential Attachment of Posting Behaviour on MOOC Discussion Forum},
      journal = {International Journal of Education, Culture and Society},
      volume = {6},
      number = {5},
      pages = {167-175},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijecs.20210605.12},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijecs.20210605.12},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijecs.20210605.12},
      abstract = {Online education has become a popular education paradigm and foundation for future educations. Compare to traditional offline classes, online education could support massive participants, but also confronting engagement and retention problems. Many studies have analysed participant’s behaviour to enhance the engagement concerning social, cognitive and technical factors, such as 1) knowledge, cognitive process and social dimensions of micro-collaborations; 2) effects of rating visualization on reading behaviour. However, fewer studies have concerned the organization of discussion forum on posting behaviour analysis. Therefore, this study explores patterns of posting behaviours with consideration of forum organization. In detail, this study applied local preferential attachments (LPA) on the posting behaviour of MOOC discussion forum, and discovered their patterns concerning social, emotional and technical factors. The LPA model will measure message attributes on thread page as a factual local environment of posting behaviour. With statistical test on collected data, we validated the significance and linearity of the LPA on measurements of responses number and message length. Results indicated that: 1) most LPA of posting behaviour are significant; 2) comment behaviour expressed sub-linearity on responses number, and others expressed super-linearity; 3) posting behaviour was affected by compound factors of self-identity, knowledge exchange and community citizenship. Their significant preferences suggested that: 1) forum organization is significant to model posting behaviour; 2) re-organize threads and mark message status could improve engagement of participants.},
     year = {2021}
    }
    

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  • TY  - JOUR
    T1  - Local Preferential Attachment of Posting Behaviour on MOOC Discussion Forum
    AU  - Xiaoguang Zhu
    AU  - Huining Song
    AU  - Yao Zhu
    Y1  - 2021/09/29
    PY  - 2021
    N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijecs.20210605.12
    DO  - 10.11648/j.ijecs.20210605.12
    T2  - International Journal of Education, Culture and Society
    JF  - International Journal of Education, Culture and Society
    JO  - International Journal of Education, Culture and Society
    SP  - 167
    EP  - 175
    PB  - Science Publishing Group
    SN  - 2575-3363
    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijecs.20210605.12
    AB  - Online education has become a popular education paradigm and foundation for future educations. Compare to traditional offline classes, online education could support massive participants, but also confronting engagement and retention problems. Many studies have analysed participant’s behaviour to enhance the engagement concerning social, cognitive and technical factors, such as 1) knowledge, cognitive process and social dimensions of micro-collaborations; 2) effects of rating visualization on reading behaviour. However, fewer studies have concerned the organization of discussion forum on posting behaviour analysis. Therefore, this study explores patterns of posting behaviours with consideration of forum organization. In detail, this study applied local preferential attachments (LPA) on the posting behaviour of MOOC discussion forum, and discovered their patterns concerning social, emotional and technical factors. The LPA model will measure message attributes on thread page as a factual local environment of posting behaviour. With statistical test on collected data, we validated the significance and linearity of the LPA on measurements of responses number and message length. Results indicated that: 1) most LPA of posting behaviour are significant; 2) comment behaviour expressed sub-linearity on responses number, and others expressed super-linearity; 3) posting behaviour was affected by compound factors of self-identity, knowledge exchange and community citizenship. Their significant preferences suggested that: 1) forum organization is significant to model posting behaviour; 2) re-organize threads and mark message status could improve engagement of participants.
    VL  - 6
    IS  - 5
    ER  - 

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Author Information
  • School of Management Engineering, Xuzhou University of Technology, Xuzhou, China

  • School of Management Engineering, Xuzhou University of Technology, Xuzhou, China

  • School of Management Engineering, Xuzhou University of Technology, Xuzhou, China

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