A research on collaboration knowledge construction in the virtual learning community by social network analysis

This paper took the social knowledge construction as the perspective and “Introduction to Educational Technology” online course as an example to analyze knowledge construction level implied in those posts contributed by learners with the method of content analysis. Meanwhile, social network analysis (SNA) was adopted to explore the density, centrality, cohesion sub-group in this online learning community and to discuss strategies for effective collaborative learning in virtual learning community. Results indicated that the entire network centralization is comparatively low but still some points with higher betweenness centrality and some points functioned as bridges exist in our sample network.