It is about timing: Network prestige in asynchronous online discussions

Bodong Chen and Tianhui Huang
Additional contact information
Bodong Chen: University of Minnesota

No wvjpd, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Asynchronous online discussions are broadly used to support social learning. This paper reports on an undergraduate class’s online discussion activities over one semester. Applying Social Network Analysis, this study revealed a participation gap among students reflected by their varied levels of network prestige. The low-prestige group initiated equivalent volumes of interactions but were less reciprocated. In-depth analysis found the high-prestige group also advantageous in other network measures such as closeness centrality and eigenvector centrality, as well as the strength, persistence, and reciprocity of their ties. To probe potential explanations of the revealed gap, we further contrasted post content and posting behaviors between two groups. Results did not identify any significant differences in post content but found low-prestige students’ participation less timely and more temporally compressed. This paper calls for attention to the participation gap in online discussions, micro-level temporal patterns of student activities, and practical means to scaffold student participation in asynchronous online discussions.

Date: 2019-03-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-net and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/5c9062bf2286e80016c3f19b/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:wvjpd

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/wvjpd

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().