Using groups’ communication to detect the group roles and discover the group role influence on group learning performance

Gwo-Dong Chen and Kuo-Liang Ou

National Central University

outline Introduction Group roles Methodology Experience and Results Conclusion

Introduction The group members’ influence

As people are brought together, individual behaviors are influenced by members (Stott and Walker, 1995)

The group members’ interaction and influence must be managed (Sommerville and Dalziel, 1998)

Introduction To deal with interaction and influence

Role theory was proposed and indicates the group role and its’ functionality (Belbin and Thomas, 1966)(Heap,1977)

Experience and methods are proposed to explore role influence (Henry and Steven, 1999 ; Sommerville and Dalziel, 1998)

These roles could be obtained by a questionnaires (Belbin, 1981)

However, on a web group learning environment, teachers need an on-line group role extractor and the influence explorer

Introduction Research Goal

Extracting the roles of web group learning on-line by analyzing group interaction

Exploring the influence of group roles on learning performance

Introduction Issues

Group interaction are non-organized, and the number of interactions is large

Group roles are hardly to be extracted from group interaction

Influences of group roles on learning performance are complex and hardly to be discovered

Introduction Method

Text Miner : extract the interaction topics and abstracts for teachers categorizing the interaction

Classification : extracting the group roles by training data defined by teachers’ expert knowledge

Bayesian Belief Network : explore the role influence by causal network

Introduction The indicators of learning

performance Group project grade Resource sharing Drop out rate

Group Roles Group Roles (Benne and Sheats, 1948)

Group task roles Group building and maintenance roles Personal roles

Group Roles Group task roles (heap, 1977)

Initiator-contributor Information-seeker Opinion-seeker Information-giver Opinion-giver Elaborator Coordinator Orienter Evaluator-critic Energizer Procedural technician

Group Roles Group building and maintenance

roles (heap, 1977)

Encourager Harmonizer Compromister Gate-keeper and expediter Standard-setter or ego ideal Group-observer and commentator follower

Group Roles Personal roles (heap, 1977)

Aggressor Blocker Self-confessor Playboy Fence-mender Cover-the cracks Dominator Fellow-traveler Blue-nose Trouble-maker Cynical One track-mind Egocentric Problem orientated

Methodology IBM Intelligent Miner for text

Extracting the communication topics Extracting the communication abstract

IBM Intelligent Miner for data : Classification Teachers observe the communication topics and

abstract Classify some roles of students as the training data with

expert domain knowledge Remain students will be classified into roles by classifier

BKD (Bayesian Knowledge Discover)(Open University, UK)(Ramoni, and Sebastiani ,1997)

Explore the influence of group roles on learning performance and presents with Bayesian Belief Network

Methodology The Data Schema of Communication

From : group 10 , 82556002To : group 10, 82556004Date : 2000,06,05Subject : Could you give me some hint about chapter 4Content : Dear Michelle, I am sorry to be late for the on-line

conference of our group this morning. I have a question and need a favor from you. In the chapter 4, page 45, teachers have illustrated last week. Can you kindly tell me the purpose of a member function in an object in the object oriented programming language?

Attribute Name Group ID Deliver ID Receiver ID Date of Issue

Subject Content

Data Type Number Number Number Date Text Text

MethodologyCategorizing Tool of Text Analysis

Training Discussion in

Category 1

Training Discussion in

Category 2

Vocabulary of Category 1

Vocabulary of Category 2

Full Category Schema

All the Discussion Documents

Categorization Filter

Categorized Documents

Experience and Results Communication topics

classificationCategory List Ranking Score

Question for Chapter 1 0.421165

Question for Chapter 2 0.200785

Question for Chapter 3 0.212877

Question for Chapter 4 0.554322

Inquiry for system and environment 0.287286

Gossips discussion 0.336911

… …

Experience and Results Communication abstract extracting

what is the purpose of a member function in an object in object oriented programming language?

Experience and Results 11 group roles are detected

Group roles Accuracy of classification

Initiator - contributor 92.5

Information - giver 95

Opinion - giver 97.5

coordinator 95

energizer 97.5

Procedural technician 60

encourager 97.5

harmonizer 77.5

Playboy 92.5

dominator 97.5

Fellow-traveler 97.5

Experience and Results Significant of group roles influence

on learning performanceGroup roles Accuracy of classification

Initiator - contributor 0.000*

Information - giver 0.000*

Opinion - giver 0.185

coordinator 0.000*

energizer 0.000*

Procedural technician 0.011

encourager 0.000*

harmonizer 0.018

Playboy 0.008*

dominator 0.000*

Fellow-traveler 0.003*

* p < 0.01

Experience and Results Influence on group project grade

Experience and Results Influence on resource sharing

frequency

Experience and Results Influence on drop out rate

Conclusion Successfully organize and

categorize the group communication by extracting topics and abstracts

Successfully detect 11 group roles by classifying group communications

Conclusion Explore the influence of group roles on

learning performance by Bayesian Belief Network The initiator and dominator improve the group

project grades The procedure technician improve the

resource sharing frequency but follow-traveler not

Both the playboy and follow-traveler have high probability to be dropped out before class end