Analyzing the students' behavior and relevant topics in virtual learning communities

The constant development of new Internet platforms is shifting the users' role of such platforms, from viewers to main actors. In the field of education, faculty can take advantage of these new technologies for the design of pedagogical contents. The face-to-face observation of behavioral patterns allows faculty to detect and track new problems, and to apply possible corrections which would improve the learning/teaching process. However, with a distance methodology, these observations are not possible. When forums are created they are intended to discuss particular topics. It is relevant to monitor that the topics discussed are the intended ones in order to achieve course objectives. To tackle this shortcoming, our work studies the dynamics of relevant topics in on-line asynchronous discussion forums, and this is done by analyzing the large amount of students' interactions generated in the forums of our Learning Management System (LMS). In particular, we analyze the students' behavior patterns in the forums of a distance subject, and characterize the relevant topics and subtopics from the forums' messages belonging to two academic years. From the statistical and graphical results obtained, a set of valuable recommendations are also given.