A Method for Measuring Cooperative Activities in a Social Network Supported Learning Environment

Cooperative learning, which can foster an active learner-oriented learning environment and induce active interaction among students, is an important element that can enhance the effects of learning in the online learning environment as well. As most existing studies on cooperative learning are based only on a qualitative evaluation in the offline environment, however, it is difficult to measure cooperative learning in the online learning environment. Thus, for this study a group cooperative activity (GCA) was proposed to quantitatively measure the cooperative learning of learners in the online learning environment, and a social network analysis (SNA) method was used to visualize the cooperative activities among the learners. The result of the experiment shows that the GCA among teachers was higher than the GCA among learners in the Formal Learning Group, whereas many high-density network models were observed in the Non-Formal Learning Group and the GCA among learners was higher. The proposed GCA uses the interaction data generated among the learner group to measure its cooperative learning. Also, this study verified the effectiveness of the GCA by using an SNA for visualization purposes.