Using agglomerative hierarchical clustering to model learner participation profiles in online discussion forums

Cobo, Germán; García-Solórzano, David; Morán, Jose Antonio; Santamaria, Eugènia; Monzo, Carlos; Melenchón, Javier

doi:10.1145/2330601.2330660

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…The objective was to verify whether the degree of taking advantage of the WICAT influenced the final exam grade. The groups were calculated using clustering techniques frequently employed to classify students in previous education studies (e.g., Cobo et al, 2010; Howard et al, 2018; Meehan & McCallig, 2019; Wook et al, 2009).…”

Section: Procedures and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Class participation and feedback as enablers of student academic performance

et al. 2023

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In an educational context focused on student learning, class participation and feedback are key to improving students’ performance. Class participation grading methods are often unclear and subjective, therefore, providing feedback on class participation grades is challenging for lecturers. In this study, the Work-In-Class Assessment Tool (WICAT) designed by researchers is a multidimensional system that grades class participation by assessing students’ attendance, active listening, contribution to class activities, and performance in frequent small tasks. The WICAT allows lecturers to clearly and objectively grade class participation while providing students weekly feedback on their in-class performance. This study aims to analyze the effect of the WICAT and weekly feedback on students’ academic performance. The results from an experiment with 699 accounting students over the 2016 to 2019 period showed that students whose class participation grade was obtained through WICAT performed better on the final exam. Furthermore, the results showed that students assessed by WICAT were 2.28 times less likely to fail the final exam. However, the weekly feedback that WICAT allowed did not affect students’ performance. These results have important implications for curriculum designers and teaching staff on how to plan course syllabuses and where to focus in-class efforts.

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Section: Procedures and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Class participation and feedback as enablers of student academic performance

et al. 2023

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“…The height of the links indicate the distance (i.e. dissimilarity) between pairs of clusters under each link (Cobo et al., 2012). Based on the height, the two bigger sub-groups had views that were closest in similarity while the smaller sub-groups had distinct views and unique themes that deviated most from the majority of the teachers.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following this, an unsupervised classification using the agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithm is employed on the pre-established number of clusters. The algorithm constructs a tree of clusters, or a nested sequence of clusters, known as a dendrogram (Cobo et al, 2012;Stanimirova & Daszykowski, 2018). The dendrogram visually displays relationships at multiple levels of granularity, hence its application is useful for taxonomy building (Ma & Dhavala, 2018).…”

Section: Text Miningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teachers’ Ontological Perspectives of Computational Thinking and Assessment: A Text Mining Approach

Lai

2021

Journal of Educational Computing Research

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As a dynamic and multifaceted construct, computational thinking (CT) has proven to be challenging to conceptualize and assess, which impedes the development of a workable ontology framework. To address this issue, the current article describes a novel approach towards understanding the ontological aspects of CT by using text mining and graph-theoretic techniques to elucidate teachers’ perspectives collected in an online survey (N = 105). In particular, a hierarchical cluster analysis, a knowledge representation method, was applied to identify sub-groups in CT conceptualization and assessment amongst teachers. Five clusters in conceptualization and two clusters in assessment were identified; several relevant and distinct themes were also extracted. The results suggested that teachers attributed CT as a competence domain, relevant in the problem- solving context, as well as applicable and transferrable to various disciplines. The results also shed light on the importance of using multiple approaches to assess the diversity of CT. Overall, the findings collectively contributed to a comprehensive and multi-perspective representation of CT that refine both theory and practice. The methodology employed in this article has suggested a minor but significant step towards addressing the quintessential questions of “what is CT?” and “how is it evidenced?”.

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“…Forums have been a key focus both in xMOOCs and cMOOCs. In the context of xMOOCs, most of the researchers have used social network analysis (SNA) based variables [4,8], forum usage statistics [11,1], and timing patterns [9] to predict grades of the MOOC learners. These methods often use clustering/classification algorithms to cluster/predict the learners' grades.…”

Section: Analysis Of Text In Xmooc/cmoocmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semantically Meaningful Cohorts Enable Specialized Knowledge Sharing in a Collaborative MOOC

Håklev

Sharma

Slotta

et al. 2018

Lifelong Technology-Enhanced Learning

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This study presents an analysis of a MOOC on inquiry and technology for in-service teachers, which was designed to scaffold multiple disciplinary knowledge communities through common weekly themes, and course-long collaboration scripts happening at different social planes. Using our course design to inform the design of the analysis, we examine how the discourse in each semantically meaningful cohort (Special Interest Groups, SIGs) is indexed to the weekly themes, and develops these themes in areas informed by the discipline, and by the group dynamics. We show that SIG membership influences individual contributions, and that more cohesive disciplinary SIGs are correlated with higher quality student work.

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Using agglomerative hierarchical clustering to model learner participation profiles in online discussion forums

Cited by 13 publications

References 5 publications

Class participation and feedback as enablers of student academic performance

Class participation and feedback as enablers of student academic performance

Teachers’ Ontological Perspectives of Computational Thinking and Assessment: A Text Mining Approach

Semantically Meaningful Cohorts Enable Specialized Knowledge Sharing in a Collaborative MOOC

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