Roles of initiators and interaction patterns: exploring an informal online community at the interpersonal plane

Authors:
Gyeong Mi Heo;Alain Breuleux
Affiliations:
Department of Educational & Counselling Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada;Department of Educational & Counselling Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Venue:
CSCL'09 Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Computer supported collaborative learning - Volume 1
Year:
2009

Citing 5
Cited 1

Content analysis schemes to analyze transcripts of online asynchronous discussion groups: a review

Computers & Education - Methodological issue in researching CSCL
Content analysis: what are they talking about?

Computers & Education - Methodological issue in researching CSCL
Using social network analysis to explore the dynamics of telementor' meta-support in practice

CSCL'07 Proceedings of the 8th iternational conference on Computer supported collaborative learning
Using social network analysis to highlight an emerging online community of practice

CSCL'07 Proceedings of the 8th iternational conference on Computer supported collaborative learning
Emergence of learning in computer-supported, large-scale collective dynamics: a research agenda

CSCL'07 Proceedings of the 8th iternational conference on Computer supported collaborative learning

Personalised information retrieval through the use of a collaboration awareness tool, a chat and a forum tool in a computer supported collaborative learning task

International Journal of Knowledge and Web Intelligence

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.02

Visualization

Abstract

We present a study exploring learning in an informal online community (OC) for foodservice professionals according to three planes (i.e., community, interpersonal, and individual planes). Among these planes, this paper focuses on the interpersonal plane (i.e., how do participants interact with each other and what do they share through their interactions?) and highlight the importance of initiators' roles and the subsequent interaction patterns. To investigate interaction and learning processes, we collected 227 discussion threads posted in the year 2006, analyzed them through a multi-layered analysis approach, and graphically presented the results to show the complex components of interactions at a glance. Finally, we discuss the characteristics of interaction and learning processes in this OC and the relationship between initiators roles and interaction patterns.