Research On The Characteristics Of Online Interactive Networks Under Different Social Tie Definitions In A SPOC Forum

Social network analysis plays an important role in the analysis of forum interactions in online learning.More and more scholars have taken this method as an important tool to visualize social learning activities,extract interaction patterns from them to understand the learning process of online learners.However,most of the existing research literature on social network analysis in the field of education has used different social tie definitions to create online interactive networks without any explanations.It is still unclear whether different tie definitions have an impact on the final research results.In addition,most of the existing studies focus on MOOC forums characterized by completely online learning,and less attention has been paid to SPOC forums with blended learning characteristics.Based on this,this study takes a SPOC forum as an example,using SNA method to systematically explore and compare the differences in the overall network structure,internal substructure and individual network structure of the online interactive networks under seven different social tie definitions,and adopting the correlation analysis method to further explore the relationships between social network centrality,condensed subgroup density,core-periphery structure and learning performance under seven different tie definitions.The results show that different tie definitions have certain influence on the overall network structure,internal substructure and individual network structure of the online interactive network.Different tie definitions have certain influence on the relationship between condensed subgroup density and learning performance,but have little influence on the relationship between social network centrality and core-edge structure and learning performance.Research helps to clarify the advantages,disadvantages,applicable conditions of each tie definition method,and its influence on the research results and interpretation.It is helpful for teachers and teaching researchers to choose appropriate tie definitions in future research.Future researchers should clearly point out the selected relationship definition and the reasons for choosing the tie definition,which will make future research more transparent and promote the formation of a unified theoretical framework of tie definition in social network analysis.