Exploring the relationships between students’ network characteristics, discussion topics and learning outcomes in a course discussion forum

Understanding the relationship between interactive behaviours and discourse content has critical implications for instructors' design and facilitation of collaborative discussion activities in the online discussion forum (ODF). This paper adopts social network analysis (SNA) and epistemic network analysis (ENA) methods to jointly investigate the relationships between students’ network characteristics, discussion topics, and learning outcomes in a course discussion forum. Discourse data from 207 participants were included in this study. The findings indicated that (1) the interactive network generated in the collaborative discussion activities was sparsely connected, and there was limited information exchange between instructors and students; (2) students’ discussion topics were mainly related to the learning content; (3) compared with the isolated group, students in the leader, mediator, and animator groups were more concerned about topics related to the learning content; and (4) students who discussed more topics related to the learning content performed better than the students who discussed more topics related to learning methods and social interactions. The learning outcomes of the influencer and leader groups were significantly higher than those of the peripheral and isolated groups. However, there was no significant correlation between students’ individual centrality and their learning outcomes. The findings enrich the ODF research on the comprehensive identification of interactive behaviours and discourse content in the process of collaborative discussion activities and on the discussion topic differences between different role groups. The study findings also have practical implications for instructors to design effective instructional interventions aimed at improving the quality of collaboration in the ODF.