社交媒体大数据的教育应用研究:价值、路径与挑战

Using social media big data in education:value,pathways and challenges

社交媒体已经成为学生记录生活、表达观点、分享交流等的最主要途径,也是反映学生真实状态可靠、即时的大数据来源之一。真实、准确、及时的社交媒体大数据样本蕴含着巨大的教育价值,为教育研究提供了更丰富的可能。从价值角度看,通过对社交媒体大数据进行情感分析、主题挖掘、社会网络分析等,可以实现学习者画像、学习者危机发现、教学过程优化和教育舆情分析等,从而为利益相关者提供决策参考与支持。从技术角度看,将应用的路径概括为数据采集与预处理、数据存储、数据分析和可视化四个阶段,并总结了每个阶段常用的方法。多源异构数据的整合应用、数据挖掘的合理性与准确性、伦理隐私问题等是社交媒体大数据教育应用所面临的主要挑战,也是未来研究需要重点关注的方面。

Social media is the most important tool that students use to document life,express opinions and share information,hence one of the reliable and instant sources of big data reflecting students’real status.This kind of big data is potentially of significant educational value and opens up new possibilities for educational research.In terms of value,it can be used for sentiment analysis,topic mining and social network analysis,making it possible to profile learners,identify at-risk students,optimize teaching processes,and analyze public opinions on education so as to inform and support stakeholders’decisionmaking.Technologically,four pathways of implementation are suggested,including data collection and preprocessing,data storage,data analysis,and visualization.Finally,it is argued that the use of social media big data in education faces such challenges as integrated application of multi-source heterogeneous data,validity and accuracy of data mining as well as ethics and privacy.