Nolker, Robert

Zhou, Lina

English

AIS Electronic Library (AISeL)

Association for Information SystemsAIS Electronic Library (AISeL)AMCIS 2006 Proceedings Americas Conference on Information Systems(AMCIS)December 2006Mapping Discussion Roles: From the Classroom tothe Online Discussion BoardRobert NolkerUMBCLina ZhouUMBCFollow this and additional works at: http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2006This material is brought to you by the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) at AIS Electronic Library (AISeL). It has been acceptedfor inclusion in AMCIS 2006 Proceedings by an authorized administrator of AIS Electronic Library (AISeL). For more information, please contactelibrary@aisnet.org.Recommended CitationNolker, Robert and Zhou, Lina, "Mapping Discussion Roles: From the Classroom to the Online Discussion Board" (2006). AMCIS2006 Proceedings. 475.http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2006/475Nolker & Zhou                                                                                                                                                        Mapping Discussion RolesProceedings of the Twelfth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Acapulco, Mexico August 04th-06th 2006Mapping Discussion Roles:From the Classroom to the Online Discussion BoardRobert NolkerUMBCRnolker1@umbc.eduLina ZhouUMBCzhouL@umbc.eduABSTRACTIn this study, we look at beginning to explore roles and how individuals fill those roles in face-to-face and online socialnetworks.  The long term goal of the research is to be able to map both the roles and the individuals as they move between thetwo types of social networks.  The mapping of this migration will provide community administrators with tools andknowledge that can be used to better support the community members.  This paper presents the results of a pilot study thatexplored the feasibility of an approach to carry out this research.  A learning environment is studied that utilizes a mixedmode approach, using both the classroom and online bulletin boards.  Through the use of observation, content analysis,surveys and interviews, classroom and online roles are discovered and the beginnings of a meaningful mapping of those rolesand how individuals fill them is uncovered.  Finally our modified approach is presented as the full study is getting underway.KeywordsOnline Communities, Social Network Analysis, Mapping Social Roles, E-learning.INTRODUCTIONThe semantic web offers unparalleled opportunities for the representation and formation of virtual social networks on the web(Finn,  Ding,  Zhou  and  Joshi  2005).   As  the  popularity  of  these  online  social  networks  continues  to  grow,  there  is  anincreasing need to understand the differences between face-to-face and online social networks.  Do people play the sameroles online as they play in face-to-face settings?  While researchers have worked to address how individuals act online andwhat is needed to support the digital community (Preece 2000), there has been little done to fully explore the links betweenface-to-face and online social networks.  Motivated by this need to better understand how and whether people change theirroles when moving from face-to-face to online social networks and coupled with the significance of learning to our modernlife, we chose classroom discussion as the domain to address the following research questions:1. What roles exist in student discussions?2. Are these roles the same in classroom and in the online discussion?3. Does a student take the same role in both the classroom discussion and the online discussion?A social network is defined as a set of people connected by social relationships, such as friendship, co-working orinformation exchange (Garton, Haythornthwaite and Wellman 1997).  The learning environment both in the classroom andonline fosters the forming of social networks as social relationships in both online and face-to-face discussion or informationexchange.  In the context of this paper, discussion and conversation are used interchangeably.Roles in face-to-face social networks have been long studied in the sociology and social network analysis literature (Borgatta1965; Freeman 1979; Wasserman and Faust 1994; Hanneman 2001), but roles in digital networks have been much lessstudied until recent (Donath, Karahalios and Viegas 1999; Nolker and Zhou 2005; Turner, Smith, Fisher and Welser 2005).The work that empirically links the discussion roles from face-to-face to the online networks is even rarer.  There is apreliminary study on comparing the learning processes between classroom and the online environment(Heckman and Annabi 2005).  but it does not examine the role of participants.  Another stream of work links the internet tothe offline community (Carroll and Rosson 1996; Dutta-Bergman 2005; Kavanaugh, Carroll, Rosson, Zin and Reese 2005).However, these studies do not focus on the specifics of individuals and digital networks but look at the movement of groupsand individuals as an aggregate community.  As the focus shifts to actual social networks that are or have moved from face-to-face to online, understanding how individuals move between the two is critical.  By understanding the linkage between 3973Nolker & Zhou                                                                                                                                                        Mapping Discussion RolesProceedings of the Twelfth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Acapulco, Mexico August 04th-06th 2006face-to-face and online networks, tools can be designed to help administrators in facilitating community-supportive socialinteractions.  It is those social interactions that ultimately determine user acceptance and hence the success of the onlinesocial networks.This paper is organized as follows.  The methodology used in a pilot study is explored followed by a presentation of thepreliminary results, discussion and the ongoing study is presented.METHODOLOGYTo understand the roles that students take in discussions, both the classroom and the online learning environment areexplored.  A pilot study was conducted with a graduate seminar course that featured both in-class discussion and onlinediscussion.The pilot study was designed to gather as much data as possible relating to student roles and how the students migrated fromthe classroom to the online setting.  To achieve this data gathering multiple methods were employed including participant(the researcher) observation of the classroom discussions, ethnographic exploration of the discussion forums, student selfassessment surveys, and interviews with students and the instructor.  The observation and ethnographic exploration were usedto provide a level of validation to the data acquired from the surveys and interviews.  It was important to add the additionalgrounding as the data collected from the students and the instructor were perceptions of the discussions and the roles of theparticipants.  While the researcher also brought a bias, the three views (observer, student, instructor) provided fortriangulation where perceptions differed.The survey was used to elicit the student perception of the roles that existed, in the classroom and online, as well as their self-assessment of the types of identified roles they filled in each setting.  Our survey was composed of open-ended questions.   Inparticipants’ response to the roles they filled in themselves, each student did not fill all the roles they identified because therole filled was only related to the participants themselves rather than their peers.  The self assessment survey provided awealth of data on how the students perceived roles in the classroom and online as well as how they fit into those roles.Interviews were conducted with both the students and the instructor. The primary goal of student interviews was to clarify theresearcher’s understanding of definitions supplied with each role.   The student interviews were focused on the roles that hadbeen identified, not the roles the students perceived they filled.  The goal of the instructor interview was to have the instructoridentify the roles taken by those students who did more than just participate. The instructor was not given precise boundariesfor the roles, but rather was free to interpret where the distinctions between roles fell.  This approach was taken to facilitatemore open and reflective discussion on why individuals were assigned particular roles.  All the interviews  provided anopportunity to gain clarification and provide a base measure for how student perceptions map to instructor perceptions.The classroom observations and discussion board ethnographic study were conducted over 15 weeks by one of theresearchers.  The objective of the researcher’s involvement was to collect data that could be used to validate the perceptionsof the students and instructor.  The researcher participated as a student in the class, as a matter of convenience.  The classdiscussions were broken down into topics surrounding specific papers with each topic continuing on the discussion board as athread.  Each student’s role in both classroom discussion and discussion board was assessed based on observed contribution.These assessments were used to validate the accuracy of the student’s self assessment of roles taken and the instructor’sperception of roles students played. The findings of this validation will be discussed in the following section.RESULTSContent analysis of students’ responses was conducted to discover what roles exist in student discussions. The survey datacontained 45 raw entries that equated to 39 different roles.  The responses were categorized yielding the following five majorcategories of roles:· Leader, who initiates and guides conversation;· Motivator, helps focus and stir things in a positive way to keep conversations going;· Fringe, brings out emotions in others with a negative impact on the conversation;· Participant, attentive either following along or contributing to the conversation;· Non-participant, is present but is not attentive or participating. 3974Nolker & Zhou                                                                                                                                                        Mapping Discussion RolesProceedings of the Twelfth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Acapulco, Mexico August 04th-06th 2006These role categories and taxonomy were reviewed and validated with students of the class.  The survey results indicatedunanimously that the same role categories and taxonomy apply to both the classroom and the online discussion.  The onlydifference between the two modes lay in the degree of intensity.  For example, compared with classroom discussion, thefringe roles had less of an impact online, as it was easier to ignore these members, and motivators were better able to drivethe direction of the conversation.  With the roles identified, we were able to look at what roles students assumed in the twomodes.The roles students filled were assessed using three measures: 1) students’ perception of whether other students in theaggregate filled the same roles across classroom and online; 2) students’ self-assessment of the roles they filled in the twomodes; and 3) the instructor’s perception of roles the students filled.  The results revealed that the students were split onwhether their peers assumed the same roles in the classroom and online. The split opinions boiled down to a matter of degreeor individuals’ communication preference. A leader in the classroom was still perceived as a leader even though they did notcontribute at the same level online.  The results on their own role in the discussion showed an interesting breakdown.  Theparticipant role was found to be consistent between the classroom and online discussions. However, the leader and moderatorroles did not map as well.  Students who took these roles indicated that they filled the role in one mode and not at all orseldom in the other. The same pattern of students’ roles was discovered in the analysis of the instructor’s response, as shownin Table 1.Participant Classroom Online1 Motivator Participant4 Participant Leader5 Leader Participant13 Motivator Leader14 Leader Participant18 Leader ParticipantTable 1. Instructor’s Perception of Key Student RolesAll other students were considered to take the role of participant in both the classroom and online by the instructor.  When arole other than participant as  perceived by the student is mapped to that perceived by the instructor, the participant roles mapperfectly while the leader and motivator roles do not.  The mapping exists in that both the student and the instructor perceivedthat a role other than participation was being filled. However, the students tended to under-sell their role by indicating thatthey are motivators rather than leaders, as the instructor perceived them to be.DISCUSSION AND ONGOING WORKThe rich set of roles uncovered contributed to the generalizability of the study as it would be anticipated that these roleswould be found in many different social networks.  As presented by (Kavanaugh et al. 2005) we also found that roles migratebetween face-to-face and online social networks.  This migration lays the foundation for understanding paths that studentsmay take when moving from one mode to the other.  When the migration of individuals between the two modes was exploredstudents  were  found  to  switch  roles.   A  leader  in  the  classroom  did  not  equate  to  a  leader  online.   This  knowledge  haspractical implications for instructors allowing them to better target those individuals who occupy roles in the face-to-facesetting that may have transition trouble moving online and vise-versa.  One of the most important findings to come out of thepilot was that students and instructors perceive the student’s roles the same way.  As shown the degree may differ, with thestudent perceiving themselves a motivator and the instructor perceiving the student as a leader. The critical point is that bothperceive a difference from participation.  The implication of this mapping is that in our ongoing study we do not need toconduct observations or ethnographic studies allowing for a more expansive study.Cautions should be taken in generalizing the results of this study to other social networks. First, most of the participation in e-learning environments is mandatory and part of the student's grade.  While this may limit the generalizability of the results, itwas observed in the study that students may not fill the roles (e.g., leader and participant) that they are assigned to.  Second, 3975Nolker & Zhou                                                                                                                                                        Mapping Discussion RolesProceedings of the Twelfth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Acapulco, Mexico August 04th-06th 2006the e-learning domain is arguably not an anonymous social network like the Usenet Newsgroups.  While the students in anonline class may have never met each other face-to-face, they still use their actual names and profiles and  know each other.As the results from the pilot study indicate there is great potential gain from moving forward with this study.  Parlaying thepilot, we are currently in the process of conducting a full blown study that targets multimodal classes where discussion takesplace both in the classroom and online.  This encompassing study will continue to expand our knowledge on social roles andtheir interplay in face-to-face and online social networks.  This knowledge will be used to design tools and provide feedbackto administrators and members that promotes the goals of the social network.  The role taxonomy developed in this study alsohas the potential to serve as the foundation for developing role ontologies to support e-learning on the semantic web.  Futureworks also includes expanding the study out of the learning environment and into other social networks that have or aretransitioning from face-to-face to online.REFERENCES1.   Borgatta, E. F. (1965) The Analysis of Patterns of Social Interaction, Social Forces, 44,1, 27-34.2.   Carroll, J. M. and M. B. Rosson (1996) Developing the Blacksburg Electronic Village, Communications of the ACM,99,12, 69-74.3.   Donath, J., K. Karahalios, et al. (1999) Visualizing Conversation, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 4,4.4.   Dutta-Bergman, M. J. (2005) The Antecedents of Community-Oriented Internet Use: Community Participation andCommunity Satisfaction, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11,1, Article 5.5.   Finn, T., l. Ding, et al. (2005) Social Networking on the Semantic Web, The Learning Organization, 12,5, 418-435.6.   Freeman, L. C. (1979) Centrality in Social Networks Conceptual Clarification, Social Networks, 1, 215-239.7.   Garton, L., C. Haythornthwaite, et al. (1997) Studying Online Social Networks, Journal of Computer-MediatedCommunication, 3,1.8.   Hanneman, R. A. (2001). Introduction to Social Network Methods: 1-150.9.   Heckman, R. and H. Annabi (2005) A content Analytic Comparison of Learning Processes in Online and Face-toFace-Case Study Discussions, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10,2, article 7.10. Kavanaugh, A., J. M. Carroll, et al. (2005) Community Networks: Where Offline Communities Meet Online, Journal ofComputer-Mediated Communication, 10,4, article 3.11. Nolker, R. D. and L. Zhou (2005) Social Computing and weighting to Identify Member Roles in Online Communities,2005 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence,, 19-22 September, Compiegne, France, IEEE,87-93.12. Preece, J. (2000). Online Communities Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability. John Wiley & Sons, New York.13. Turner, T. C., M. A. Smith, et al. (2005) Picturing Usenet: Mapping computer-mediated collective action, Journal ofComputer-Mediated Communication, 10,4, Article 7.14. Wasserman, S. and K. Faust (1994). Social Network Analysis: Methods and Application. Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, UK. 3976

Mapping Discussion Roles: From the Classroom to the Online Discussion Board

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Mapping Discussion Roles: From the Classroom to the Online Discussion Board

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