The field of distance education (DE) is dynamic and constantly evolving; it reflects and adapts according to changes in socio-cultural, demographic, political, and technological domains. Thus, there is a need to understand past and present activities in the field, in order to better inform future research. The main purpose of this study was to…

There has been a long-standing issue of sparse discussion forums participation in online learning, which can impede students' help seeking practices. Researchers have examined AI techniques such as link prediction with network analysis to connect help seekers with help providers. However, little is known whether these AI systems will treat…

The purpose of this research is to examine the research that has been done on MOOCs by applying data mining and analytic approaches and to depict the current state of MOOC research. The text mining revealed four broad themes: (I) MOOCs as a mainstreaming learning model in HE, (II) motivation and engagement issues in MOOCs, (III) assessment issues…

There are few studies devoted to analyze the relationships between the structure of the social network and performance in the online learning process as group. In this study, the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model is used as an analytical framework, along with quantitative content analysis and social network analysis, in order to identify the effect…

The widespread adoption of digital e-learning environments and other learning technology has provided researchers with ready access to large quantities of data. Much of this data comes from discussion forums and has been studied with analytical methods drawn from social network analysis. However, within this large body of research there exists…

This article aims at characterizing the research community of Distance Education (DE) with respect to coauthorship, a special kind of collaboration among researchers, according to publications of 11 relevant DE journals. This article identified who the central researchers are, the topological properties of the coauthorship networks analyzed, the…

In this research paper, the authors analyse the collected data output during a 36-week cMOOC. Six-week data streams from blogs, Twitter, a Facebook group, and video conferences were tracked from the daily newsletter and the MOOCs' hashtag (#Change 11). This data was analysed using content analysis and social network analysis within an…

The rise of the networked society has not only changed our perceptions but also the definitions, roles, processes and dynamics of online learning networks. From offline to online worlds, networks are everywhere and gatekeepers are an important entity in these networks. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to explore gatekeeping and…

The aim of this study is to reveal Open Education related social media usage in Turkey through social network analyses. To this end, the most widely used social media network in Turkey, Facebook, was chosen. All the pages and groups created on Facebook related to Open Education were found. A total of 207 groups and 521 pages were accessed and…

Teacher professional development (PD) that supports the emergence of professional learning communities (PLCs) is effective for teachers' learning and instructional improvement. Our work focuses on supporting the emergence of online PLCs and an emergent issue in this work is how to maintain the quality of teachers' experiences in online PLCs when…

To further develop rich and expressive ways of modelling roles of contributors in discussion forums of online courses, particularly in MOOCs, networks of forum users are analyzed based on the relations of information-giving and information-seeking. Specific connection patterns that appear in the information exchange networks of forum users are…

In this study, we assessed the communication structure in an educational online learning environment using social network analysis (SNA). The communication structure was examined with respect to time, and instructor's participation. The course was implemented using ELGG, a network learning environment, blended with face-to-face sessions over a…

This study aimed to analyze the student's behaviour in relation to their degree of commitment, participation, and contribution in a MOOC based on a social learning approach. Interaction data was collected on the learning platform and in social networks, both of which were used in the third edition of a social MOOC course. This data was then…

In just a short period, social media have altered many aspects of our daily lives, from how we form and maintain social relationships to how we discover, access, and share information online. Now social media are also affecting how we teach and learn. In this paper, we discuss methods that can help researchers and educators evaluate and understand…

The practice and application of education data mining and learning analytics has become the focus of educational researchers. However, it is still a difficult task to explore the law of group learning and the characteristics of individual learning. In this study, the online learning logs of 1,088 students from 22 classes were analyzed from the…