An Exploration of Social Network Analysis on Cohesion in Online Collaborative Learning

Cohesion is one of key factors influencing the performance of collaborative learning. But it is hart to reckon and assess it in online collaborative learning environments. Social network analysis (SNA) is a new method and technique analyzing the properties of the interaction relations between participants. In this paper, we introduced the related key concepts in SNA, and presented an analysis model which can analyze the cohesion of groups effectively and precisely, and then showed a case study which was from a quasi-experiment in our instruction practice, lastly, drew several useful principles on reckoning cohesion in online collaborative learning by SNA.