Automated analysis of cognitive presence in online discussions written in Portuguese

Valter Neto, Vitor Rolim, Rafael Ferreira, Vitomir Kovanović, Dragan Gašević, Rafael Dueire Lins, Rodrigo Lins

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    42 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    This paper presents a method for automated content analysis of students’ messages in asynchronous discussions written in Portuguese. In particular, the paper looks at the problem of coding discussion transcripts for the levels of cognitive presence, a key construct in a widely used Community of Inquiry model of online learning. Although there are techniques to coding for cognitive presence in the English language, the literature is still poor in methods for others languages, such as Portuguese. The proposed method uses a set of 87 different features to create a random forest classifier to automatically extract the cognitive phases. The model developed reached Cohen’s κ of.72, which represents a “substantial” agreement, and it is above the Cohen’s κ threshold of.70, commonly used in the literature for determining a reliable quantitative content analysis. This paper also provides some theoretical insights into the nature of cognitive presence by looking at the classification features that were most relevant for distinguishing between the different phases of cognitive presence.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationLifelong Technology-Enhanced Learning
    Subtitle of host publication13th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2018, Leeds, UK, September 3–5, 2018 Proceedings
    EditorsViktoria Pammer-Schindler, Mar Perez-Sanagustin, Hendrik Drachsler, Raymond Elferink, Maren Scheffel
    Place of PublicationCham Switzerland
    PublisherSpringer
    Pages245-261
    Number of pages17
    Edition1st
    ISBN (Electronic)9783319985725
    ISBN (Print)9783319985718
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2018
    EventEuropean Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL) 2018 - Leeds, United Kingdom
    Duration: 3 Sept 20185 Sept 2018
    Conference number: 13th
    https://ea-tel.eu/the-13th-european-conference-on-technology-enhanced-learning-ec-tel-2018/
    https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-98572-5 (Proceedings)

    Publication series

    NameLecture Notes in Computer Science
    PublisherSpringer
    Volume11082
    ISSN (Print)0302-9743
    ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

    Conference

    ConferenceEuropean Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL) 2018
    Abbreviated titleEC-TEL 2018
    Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
    CityLeeds
    Period3/09/185/09/18
    Internet address

    Keywords

    • Community of Inquiry (CoI) model
    • Content analytics
    • Online discussions
    • Text classification

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