Page 126 - Educational Technology A Primer for the 21st Century

116 7 Social Learning Perspective of Educational Technology

Fig. 7.4 A sociogram generated from an online social network

The density of this sociogram is 0.65, which means it is a high-density network.
Groups in the network are in touch with most of the other groups, and the infor-
mation can flow freely among different groups.
Table 7.1 indicates that Group 4 is most active in sharing information and has a
strong influence on the network. Group 2 receives the most information but has a
minimum of sharing. That is to say, Group 2 is in control of other groups and has
little influence on others.

7.4.2 Content Analysis

When individuals interact with each other, especially discussing and chatting, the
understanding of the content could become deeper within the interaction. The social
interaction is usually related to knowledge building.
Knowledge building can be considered as a form of deep constructivism
(Scardamalia, 2002). Scardamalia and Bereiter (2006)defined knowledge building
as the production and continual improvement of ideas of value to a community that
involves individuals and groups coming to a deeper understanding through inter-
active querying, discussing, and continuing improvement of ideas. It is worth
noting that this notion of deep learning by educational psychologists and

Table 7.1 Degrees of each group in the network
G1 G2 G3 G4 G5 G6 G7 G8 G9 G10 G11 G12 Mean Std. Dev.
Out-degree 12 7 17 30 12 23 19 25 13 12 14 24 17.33 6.59
In-degree 16 29 21 14 11 10 18 19 20 12 22 16 17.33 5.15