Social network analysis of a participatory designed online foreign language course

Abstract

People intensive social systems like WBT (Web-Based Training) Systems are open natured and behave unpredictably with their environment. In other words, these systems are less responsive to well defined scientific methods. Hence a shift in focus from technical to non-technical approaches like Social network analysis (SNA) which is principally used in communication science, is necessitated. This study attempts to evaluate the applicability of Social Network Analysis (SNA) as an analytical and empirical method to analyse the interactions within the online community belonging to a Greek language for English speakers online course. The key objective of this study is to test a hypothesis that relates to the Participatory Design Methodology employed while developing this specific course.