Dataset of Gratitude Messages in Online Discussion of International Education Course

Students’ posted messages on the message board of Moodle were monitored, and the following data of individual students were collected. Evaluation scores (0-10) of the messages by a teacher, the number of letters involved in messages, the number of accesses to the message board, the number of messages with gratitude, the number of links or references shown in messages, the number of figures in messages, sex (man or female), the target country name of an assignment answer, the target item number (1-4) of an assignment answer, and the post number of messages. After their communication in the discussion board, the teacher gave a reflection lecture to provide a deeper understanding of the topic, and a questionnaire of the Expression of Gratitude in Relationships Measure was executed. Collected data were introduced into analyses. NodeXL Pro, a toolkit for social network analysis, was used to arrange the data, calculate metrics, and generate social graphs. The analysis was processed by the exponential random graph models in which the ‘statnet’ and the ‘stargazer’ packages for R were used.