The content of a discussion board is important, but so is the network created by posts and replies to posts. You can easily see who is off by themselves and who is the center of most class discussions from a network map. I haven’t tried it, so I don’t know how to use it, but Michael Feldstein shares this summary of a tool that builds network maps from discussion boards in Blackboard and other Learning Management Systems. It looks fascinating.
Social Network Analysis and the LMS | e-Literate
