ABSTRACT
In an education environment, a forum provides a valuable tool that can be used to foster reflection and a deeper analysis of subjects being discussed. However, as an asynchronous communication tool, participation can occur at any time, demanding a constant attention of the teacher to satisfactorily mediate the group and the discussion. In addition, a reasonable number of messages can be posted in a short period of time, making it hard to follow up and coordinate the discussion. This paper proposes an approach based on statistical and visual analysis of messages characteristics to alert the teacher about potential problems.
