Kreijns et al defined sociability as “the extent to which a CSCL environment is perceived to be able to facilitate the emergence of a sound social space with attributes as trust and belonging, a strong sense of community, and good working relationships” This group developed and then preliminarily tested a “Sociability Scale” to aid in experimental measurement of perceived sociability, with the intention of facilitating research into the factors that affect students’ perceptions of sociability.
De Laat, Lally, Lipponen, & Simons proposed the use of Social Network Analysis (SNA) to analyze interactions among participants in CSCL contexts. SNA is a tool used in organizational studies that allows “mapping” of group interactions for a visual representation of the social patterns within a group. In investigating group dynamics, SNA focuses on “density,” which indicates the overall number of connections within the group, and “centrality,” which measures behaviors of the individuals in the group. This technique is extremely time-intensive, but the results of such analysis may serve to clarify the importance of group cohesiveness in CSCL, and to aid investigation of effective methods for facilitating group cohesion.
Neither the best means of facilitating sociability, nor the best means of measuring it, have been agreed upon in the educational and research community.
REFERENCES
de Laat, M., Lally, V., Lipponen, L., & Simons, R. (2007). Investigating patterns of interaction in networked learning and computer-supported collaborative learning: A role for social network analysis. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 2(1), 87-103.
Kreijns, K., Kirschner, P. A., Jochems, W., & van Buuren, H. (2007). Measuring perceived sociability of computer-supported collaborative learning environments. Computers & Education, 49, 176-192.
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