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Collaborative learning in contemporary online classes thrives on conversation and interaction among individual members of the class. Yet, many of these settings provide little feedback on interaction beyond summary lists of individual contribution. As more communication happens online for both place-based and distributed education, the more need there is to understand and provide information on online interactivity. This paper uses the data from class-wide bulletin boards of eight iterations of a distance learning class, taught by the same instructor, to explore ways of assessing interactivity. Using the relatively simple data of poster, posting sequence, and subject line text, activity and interactivity are examined with basic statistics and social network visualizations. Results provide details on posting behaviors across these classes which are offered as a baseline for comparison to other classes.
Haythornthwaite et al. (Sun,) studied this question.