Research Study Student’s Psychology Using Social networks
New research found “Students' Online and Offline Social
Networks Can Predict Course Grades”
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's (BGU) Social
Networks Security Research Group in its Department of Information Systems
Engineering has developed a novel method to predict how well or badly a student
will perform in an academic course.
The information can be used to determine which students
need the most help, as well as which ones excel and might be guided to further
study or careers in that subject area. The paper, "Predicting Student Exam
Scores by Analyzing Social Network Data," was presented earlier this month
at the Advanced Media Technology Conference in Macau, Hong Kong.
According to co-author and Ph.D. student Michael Fire,
"While most papers about social network analysis deal solely with
information gathered online, this study draws some of the information from the
real world -- social interactions which were conducted off the grid."
The researchers analyzed data from a BGU course that
included assignments submitted online and Web site logs (containing 10,759
entries) to construct social networks of explicit and implicit cooperation
among the students. The implicit connections are used to model all the social
interactions that happened "offline" among the students: e-mails with
questions, conversations in the lab while preparing the assignments and even
course forums.
"These connections were very important, as we sought
to model the social interactions within the student body," Fire explains.
In addition to analyzing the online submissions of the
students who had to work in pairs or in groups, they also tracked login time
and computer usage. For instance, if two students submitted their assignments
from the same computer, it was a likely indication that the two had worked
together to complete the assignment. If two students submitted assignments from
different computers, but one right after the other on more than one occasion,
the authors gave a value to that data, as well.
"One explanation for what we discovered is that your
friends influence your grade in the course, so, if you pick your friends well,
then you will get a higher grade," Fire says. "Alternatively, social
networks in courses offer conditions whereby good students will pair with other
good students, and similarly weaker ones will pair with weaker students."
Image Source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1382050
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