What is online learner participation? A literature review

Visualizations of Online Course Interactions for Social Network Learning Analytics

“…Inspection of figure 5, with bigger nodes (higher participation) having blue colors (higher grades) confirms prior evidence that student's active participation is positively related to academic performance (e.g. [32][33][34]), and allows the coordinating professor to use this information as proxy of the relative level of engagement in each classroom, so that instructions may be given by the coordinating professor to consultant teachers in order to foster participation in their classroom. Furthermore, it helps identifying relationships between students, an information that can be useful for group configurations based on relatedness, in case group assignments are planned.…”

Student Interaction in Small Private Online Courses

“…It is widely known that discussion forums play a major role in online learning, since these create opportunities for interaction [15][16][17][18][19]. However, we do not know whether this also really induces social interaction and social coherence between students and teachers and among peers.…”

Technology-enhanced learning and teaching in higher education: what is ‘enhanced’ and how do we know? A critical literature review

“…richer discussion or knowledge building). Six differing conceptions of 'online learner participation' were identified in a review of research articles (Hrastinski 2008(Hrastinski , 1761 What students gain from participating in group activities depends more on how they engage actively with peers than simply upon their online presence. While quantitative measures of student participation might be easy to capture, they contribute little to understanding how participation in collaborative processes can promote qualitative developments in learning.…”