Examining students' online interaction in a live video streaming environment using data mining and text mining

This study analyses the online questions and chat messages automatically recorded by a live video streaming (LVS) system using data mining and text mining techniques. We apply data mining and text mining techniques to analyze two different datasets and then conducted an in-depth correlation analysis for two educational courses with the most online questions and chat messages respectively. The study found the discrepancies as well as similarities in the students' patterns and themes of participation between online questions (student-instructor interaction) and online chat messages (student-students interaction or peer interaction). The results also identify disciplinary differences in students' online participation. A correlation is found between the number of online questions students asked and students' final grades. The data suggests that a combination of using data mining and text mining techniques for a large amount of online learning data can yield considerable insights and reveal valuable patterns in students' learning behaviors. Limitations with data and text mining were also revealed and discussed in the paper. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.