Sun, Huaiyi Cici, Dan Calacci, and Alex Sandy Pentland. "Patterns of Interaction Predict Social Role in Online Learning."

Abstract

We identify key factors that influence the social role of students in an online class and predict student grades and roles using communication features. Our results show that students that communicate with others less overall are more likely to work alone on future projects, while future group leaders are more likely to have high rates of communication with other study groups. Interestingly, social patterns seem to be as important as learning performance and more important than demographic information in predicting a student’s social role, and integral in predicting a student’s grade.