Monitoring Activity in e-Learning: a quantitative model based on web tracking and Social Network Analysis.

In this chapter we will focus on the monitoring of students’ activities in e-learning contexts. We will start from a socio-cultural approach to the notion of activity, which is conceived of as a context composed by actions, which, in turn, are composed by operations. Subsequently, we will propose a model for monitoring activities in e-Learning, which is based on two principal measures. Firstly, we will take into consideration specific data collected through web tracking, which we will elaborate further in order to obtain indicators that do not simply express frequencies, but that measure individuals’ actions within a web environment. Secondly, we will suggest a possible application of Social Network Analysis (SNA) to web interactions occurring in collective discussions within web environments. In the model that we will present, web tracking data are considered as indicators of individual actions, whereas SNA indices concern two levels: collective indices referring to the activity carried out by groups and individual indices referring to the role that members play in collective e-Learning activities