Exploring Social Network Analysis in Blended Learning Teacher Training Programs

Learning Analytics is an educational application of web analytics and it is used to analyze the learners' activities on educational platforms, in order to predict their behaviour. Learning Analytics reflects a field at the intersection of numerous academic disciplines and is using different methods like: statistics, visualizations, data/web mining, and social network analysis. Social network analysis aim is to discover patterns in individual interactions. Network analysis is based on the intuitive notion that these patterns are important attributes of the individuals' lives. The social network analysis can be made with different software applications and it's very important to support networked learning. Learning Analytics tools for social network analysis are providing a framework for interpreting and developing an understanding of the observed patterns of exchanges that occur between social actors. The on-line/blended educational programs from the last decades have collected an enormous quantity of data. These data include initial evaluation information, data from the training process and results of the training program. These data can be used to validate the learning analytics theory. Since the definition and purpose of learning analytics is still disputed, comparing the predictions results obtained on the basis of initial data with the final results obtained by learners can contribute to the validation of such applications. This article present the findings and conclusions obtain after analyzing series of forum posts on the educational platforms used in teachers training programs. (C) 2016 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.org.uk