Dissemination Matters: Influences of Dissemination Activities on User Types in an Online Educational Community

Abstract

Emerging online educational communities provide spaces for teachers to find resources, create instructional activities, and share these activities with others. Within these online communities, individual users’ activities may vary widely, and thus different user types can be identified. In addition, users’ patterns of activities in online communities are dynamic, and further can be affected by dissemination activities. Through analyzing usage analytics in an online teacher community called the Instructional Architect, this study explores the influences of dissemination activities on the usage patterns of different user types. Results show that dissemination activities can play an important role in encouraging users’ active participation, while the absence of dissemination activities can further increase participation inequality.