1. Do Hierarchical Positions Influence Participant’s
Network Behaviour within Communities of Learning?
Martin Rehm, Wim Gijselaers, Mien Segers
AECT 2012, Louisville

2. facilitating an interpersonal
knowledge transfer among
employees constitutes a key
building block in setting up
organizational training initiatives
(Argote and Ingram, 2000)
http://basreus.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/soci
al-currency.jpg?w=720

3. Learning is an interactive process where participants with
diverse backgrounds collaboratively create knowledge within
social networks. (Hakkarainen, Palonen, Paavola, & Lehtinen, 2004)
&
http://media.ascendworks.com/wp-
content/uploads/collaborate.jpg http://www.webtrafficagents.com/i/network2.jpg

4. Communities of
Learning (CoL)
http://www.dentalblogs.com/assets/global-team.jpg
• groups of people “engaging in collaborative learning and
reflective practice involved in transformative learning”
(Paloff and Pratt, 2003, p. 17)
BUT
• “the microcontext of concrete dialogical relationships cannot
be understood without some concept of macroframes”
(Hermans, 2001, p. 264)

5. Hierarchical Positions
and their Impact on
Online Learning Networks
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BUuJl3ajKKs/SzjGsIU3QMI/AAAAAAAAAO8/er4WQCkpLuE/s400/birdstory.jpg

6. VS.
http://hauptwort.at/wp-content/uploads/man-without-
face.jpg http://www.johnlund.com/images/Get-The-
Monkey-Off-Your-Back.jpg
“deindividuation” “monkey on your back”
(Weisband, Schneider, & Connolly, 1995, p. 1125) (e.g. Sutton, Neale, & Owens, 2000)

7. Research Hypotheses

8. • occupying high-level positions within an organization provides
individuals with an intrinsic attraction to lower level
management
(Casciaro, 1998)
• all organizational learning processes are subject to the
influence of a dominant individual or group of individuals
(Holmqvist, 2009, p. 279)
 Participants’ network measures will be positively
related to their hierarchical position (H1 & 2)

9. • “contact between similar people occurs at a higher rate than
among dissimilar people”
(McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001, p. 416)
 Homophily
• “making it easier for them tohave common ground and
common understanding as they embark on work together”
(Haythornthwaite, 2008, p. 148)
 Participants will tend to interact more with colleagues
from the same hierarchical position. (H3)

10. Setting
• online training program of a large international
organization
• 14 weeks of online learning
• 25 CoL
– 249 participants  ~ 10 participants per CoL
– Hierarchical Positions: 82 “Low”, 93 “Middle”, 74 “High”
• asynchronous discussions forums:
– Café-Talk
– Content-Driven (real-life tasks)

11. Instruments
• Social Network Analysis
– Connectivity Measures
 In-Degree
 Out-Degree
– External – Internal Index
 ranges from -1 (all ties are internal )
to +1 (all ties are external
– Read- & Reply-Networks
(Daradoumis, Martínez-Monés, & Xhafa, 2004)

12. Read Network – including Hierarhical Positions
Reply Network
Reply Network
High
Middle
Low

13. - H1
- H2

14. E-I Index : Read-Networks E-I Index : Reply-Networks
,40
,60
,50 ,30
,40
,30 ,20
,20
,10 ,10
,00
Interval 1 Interval 2 Interval 3 Interval 4 Interval 5 Interval 6 ,00
Interval 1 Interval 2 Interval 3 Interval 4 Interval 5 Interval 6
"Low" "Middle" "High" "Low" "Middle" "High"
H3

15. Conclusions
• Read Networks  equally distributed
• Reply Networks  significant differences in participants’
network measures based on hierarchical position
• No homophily
 “neo-apprenticeship style learning”
(Gannon-Leary & Fontainha, 2007, p. 3)

17. rehm@merit.unu.edu