Interaction Behaviors and Social Network Expansion in Online Cross-Class Peer Tutoring: An Empirical Study

Online peer tutoring has the potential to facilitate student interactions and enhance learning in contexts where teacher support and peer interactions are limited. However, further investigation is needed to understand how interactions within online peer tutoring environments can be facilitated. This study examined the antecedents and consequences of cognitive and social interactions in a recommendation-enhanced online peer tutoring system, focusing on the effects of students’ knowledge proficiency and prior interactions on their asking and answering behaviors, as well as on social network expansion. The results indicate that: (1) higher-achieving students tended to ask and answer more questions; (2) students who received more replies might be more likely to provide answers in subsequent interactions; and (3) the anonymization feature might support connections with more diverse peers, and both extroverted and introverted students might be able to expand their social networks through the online peer tutoring system. This study extends the literature on online peer tutoring by demonstrating how interactions are shaped within this context and provides practical implications for facilitating interactions and promoting social network development through online peer tutoring systems.