Page 124 - Educational Technology A Primer for the 21st Century

114 7 Social Learning Perspective of Educational Technology
3. Form primary Interact—This step is a normalization phase. The individuals in
the group begin sharing information with each other, for example, discussing the
course contents. Some methods, such as providing feedback on interactions, can
be used to promote interaction between the groups.
4. Promote real collaboration—This step is a real collaboration phase. The indi-
viduals begin to confirm their ideas and actively reflect themselves. Some
methods, such as writing reflection, can be used to enhance group members’
collaboration.

7.4 Analysis and Measure Social Learning

The ability to measure and to appreciate the complexity of the processes of social
learning has benefited from advances in methodologies and development of com-
putational power.

7.4.1 Social Interactions

Individuals’ interaction pattern is an important assessment element of social
learning. When people interact with each other, a social network is forming. The
social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called
“nodes,” which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdepen-
dency, such as interaction, friendship, and kinship (shown as Fig. 7.2).
Assessment of social network should use a method named social network
analysis. According to the constitution of social network, social network analysis
usually focuses on several key terms, such as sociogram, density, centrality,
in-degree, and out-degree (Cho et al., 2007; Jaewoo & Woonsun, 2014; Martınez
et al., 2003).
Sociogram is the visualization to show the situation of the whole or the part of
the social network (shown as Fig. 7.3). In the sociogram, the node represents the
actor, the line represents the relationship between actors, and the arrow direction
represents the information flow (Haythornthwaite & De Laat, 2010).
Density describes the connection degree of a network. It refers to the number of
ties an actor has, divided by the total possible ties an actor could have
(Haythornthwaite & De Laat, 2010). For example, if there are ten actors, each actor
could potentially have nine ties that means the actor could potentially connect to
other nine actors. If an actor has six ties, the density of the network is 66.67% (6/9).
The bigger the number of density stands, the better the connection of the network.
Centrality describes the numbers of ties an actor has. The more ties an actor has,
the higher centrality it is. When the network has direction, there are two indicators
to explain centrality: in-degree and out-degree. For example, if actor A comments
on actor B, then the direction between them is A point to B, so out-degree can be