ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses three of the main techniques that are being applied in educational settings: discourse analytics; social network analysis; and sentiment and emotion analytics. Dawson wished to analyse network behaviour in order to guide educators in how to facilitate online networked activities. Using social network analytics in addition to emotion analytics, for example, may help to understand which learners are actively engaging and which are relatively isolated and therefore potentially subject to more negative emotions. Researchers are now attempting to delve deeper than measuring the sophistication of the language used and to develop systems to assess the quality of the ideas that learners are presenting. An innovative approach is attempted in the Cohere system, which encourages learners to tag their own posts with icons describing the type of contribution, such as providing an idea, opinion or theory and presenting a point against, or a point in favour, of the idea.
