A Proposed Conceptual Framework in Measuring Social Interaction and Knowledge Construction Level in Asynchronous Forum among University Students

This paper presents a conceptual framework of a study that aims to measure students’ social interaction and knowledge construction in an asynchronous online forum. In order to acquire meaningful learning through online forum, the proposed framework is grounded on three theories, namely social constructivism, theory of online learning and connectivism theory. In addition, a combination of multi analysis techniques in analyzing the forum messages was proposed, which include content analysis, cluster analysis and social network analysis. This study intends to elucidate the proposed conceptual framework with particular emphasis on the advantages of applying each method of analysis.