Analyzing two participation strategies in an undergraduate course community

Nowadays, information systems, and more particularly, learning support systems, tend to include social interaction features in their design. These features generally aim to sustain the activities of partially virtual communities and help extend the physical presence of the community in the virtual space. In order to achieve a sustainable community, it is important to understand how the strategies used to promote participation influence the way in which community members interact and relate with each other. This article reports a comparative study on two different student participation strategies mediated by a learning support system. The first strategy stressed the quantity of contributions, and the second one promoted both quantity and quality of contributions. By analyzing the resulting interaction networks, we could better understand the interaction patterns among students in their respective communities and conclude ways to monitor interaction and help maintain the community sustainability in time.