Abstract:

For many years, discussion forums have been widely utilized in online learning, and they are a successful way of stimulating critical thinking and collaborative work. Research suggests that online discussion forums can be more effective than face-to-face discussions. The purpose of using discussion forums is to increase knowledge while enhancing analytical and critical thinking. Students can expand their knowledge by clarifying vague concepts by reading through the various posts and discussions. At the same time, it is a tough and challenging task to motivate students to participate in online discussions. During the unprecedented change caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many educational institutes switched to the online teaching mode. Students were taught through various synchronous and asynchronous methods. During this period, the essence of dynamic discussions that would occur during the offline classes was lost. Hence, many teachers used Discussion forums to retain students' enthusiasm for the course and encourage students to discuss, analyze, and critique each other's thoughts in online discussions. The research focuses upon students' interactions in an online asynchronous discussion forum using the social network analysis (SNA) method. The social network analysis provides a more detailed description of student interactions.

The authors have identified two research questions for the study:
RQ1: How effectively do students interact in a discussion forum?
- To identify degree of relation between each student with other students.
RQ2: What is the level of participation of students in the discussion forum?
- To identify how close is a student to all other students in the discussion board
- To measure betweenness among the students in discussion board.

The study is spaced over "Engineering Exploration", a project-based learning course. This course is offered to first-year engineering students. This course was taught in an online mode during the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Discussion forums were used as a formative assessment strategy for two of the modules: sustainability in engineering and engineering ethics. Students were asked to participate in the discussion forum and post their replies for a case study in the module of Engineering Ethics. The second discussion was set up on submitting one’s personal carbon footprint in the case of sustainability in the engineering module. The study is spanned over two semesters, including the discussion forum data from two modules. The proposed work on the integration of social network analysis on discussion forums will provide valuable insights to the teacher. This will be a scientific and systematic way to analyze the quality of asynchronous discussion. This work will help in understanding the network structures of learners' interactions. Further, we can extend this work by integrating content analysis of the discussion forum's post and social network analysis to make the analysis more robust.

Keywords:

Discussion Forum, Social Network Analysis, Student Participation, Asynchronous Discussion.