ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses three research methods—interaction analysis (IA), social network analysis (SNA), and learning analytics (LA)—that can be employed to analyze social construction of knowledge (SCK), the online social environment, and group dynamics within wisdom communities. It also discusses how SCK can be measured by employing IA, and then explores how this analysis can be extended further to understand the social environment that supports knowledge construction by using SNA and LA. SNA can be defined as a method of identifying the relationships among social entities and analyzing the implications of these interaction patterns. The genesis of LA was propelled by the advent of advanced computing power and big data. One of the early contributions to analyzing online interactions was made by Levin, Kim, and Riel, who proposed a multipronged model to illustrate the social environment and participation patterns in online interactions. A specific branch of LA called Social Learning Analytics is directly applicable to analyzing Collaborative Learning.
