Epistemic network analysis: literature review and case study

Abstract

Computer programming is a creative but complex task and findings have shown that it can be facilitated with collaboration. Advances in network and collaboration technologies allow the development of powerful collaborative tools, while communication is considered as one of the main factors for successful collaboration, and as such, chats provide rich information on the process of collaboration. This Thesis consists of two parts. The first one is a literature review for Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) to analyze this method and also investigate the applications of it in different fields. The second part is two case studies for which we used ENA to analyze chat to see if we can detect differences between the connections made by Computer Science undergraduate students with different performance levels in an Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) course and their scores in a collaborative solving OOP assignment. The contribution of this Thesis is that we summarize and present the applications of ENA based on their characteristics and also propose a coding scheme of OOP elements using Epistemic Frame Theory in order to analyze how students are collaborated using chat messages for solving an OOP assignment and thus shade light on what type of connections are made in the groups of students with different computer programming skills. The results were mixed concerning the significant differences between the collaborative discourse networks of groups with different programming skills but we drew some interesting findings on the characteristics of the epistemic networks that groups of students with different programming skills form. Finally, limitations and future research are discussed.