Student Storytelling in Asynchronous Online Discussions: Structure, Dynamics, and Influence of Familiarity on Student Interactions

Students’ stories often enhance their understanding of course subject matter, particularly stories about related work experiences shared in graduate courses.  Online discussions enable students to communicate stories about what they learned in and beyond the classroom, hence fostering peer learning.  Asynchronous online discussions are effective storytelling tools because they remove barriers such as production blocking and cognitive interference. In this study we collected discussion data over three weeks in an online graduate nursing course in which students from three nursing programs were enrolled. We used social network analysis to examine the structure and evolutions of students’ interactions, and the influence of familiarity defined by program membership, on who ‘listened’ and responded to other students’ stories.  Our findings provide insight on optimal student discussion groups to avoid interaction fault-lines or individual dominance in online storytelling. These results help course instructors craft fine-grained design and instructions for effective student online discussions.