Patterns of Interaction in Computer-Supported Learning: A Social Network Analysis

The purpose of the study was to analyze patterns of elementary school students' peer interaction in a computer-supported classroom. The problem addressed in the study was whether students representing different level of school achievement and gender would productively participate in progressive discourse. Technological infrastructure of the study was provided by the Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Environments (CSILE) The study applied social network analysis to investigate written comments logged by 28 grade 5/6 students to CSILE’s database. The study indicated that although the density of interactions within the CSILE class was rather high, there were large individual differences in regard to participation in CSILE-mediated discourse. Further, the analysis revealed that averageand high-achieving female students dominated discourse interaction within the CSILE class, and carried the main responsibility for all students’ collaborative building of knowledge. An important characteristic of CSILE students' culture of interaction was that female and male students interacted mainly within their respective gender groups. Within the groups a significant amount of communication took place between students representing different achievement levels. It is concluded that social network analysis provided new information about patterns and structures of CSILE students' interaction culture that would have been very difficult to obtain by any other means.