Social Network Interaction and Self-regulated Learning Skills: Community Development in Online Discussions

This study empirically investigated: How will various aspects of students’ prominence (i.e., betweenness, closeness, and eigenvector centralities) in the social network interaction of online discussion change over time? And how will Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) skills moderate the trend over time on various aspects of students’ prominence in social network interaction? The results suggested that students’ closeness centrality increased over time regardless of students’ SRL skill levels. With the online discussion, students developed a stronger sense of diversified learning community and thus formed more competent communities of learners by sharing values and resources, actively and interactively, to sustain the learning community.