COVID-19's Effects on the Scope, Effectiveness, and Roles of Teachers in Online Learning Based on Social Network Analysis: A Case Study

The COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020 brought online learning to the forefront of education. Scholars in China and abroad have conducted many studies on online learning during the pandemic, but only a few have performed quantitative comparative analysis on this topic during and before the outbreak. The current paper presents social network analysis of a course hosted on China's MOOC platform "icoursel 63". Specifically, this study aimed to uncover (1) variations in the scale of online learning amid COVID-19; (2) the characteristics of online learning interaction during COVID-19; and (3) teachers'/teaching assistants' authority over online learning before, during, and after COVID-19. Results revealed that the scale of online learning interaction increased greatly during the pandemic but was not effectively maintained once the outbreak was under control. Online learning interaction became more frequent during the pandemic and more effective thereafter. The roles of teachers/teaching assistants in online learning during the pandemic were not as noteworthy as expected.