Influence of learning styles on social structures in online learning environments

In e-learning settings, the interactions of students with one another, with the course content and with the instructors generate a considerable amount of information that may be useful for understanding how people learn online. The objective of the present research was to use social network analysis to explore the social structure of an e-learning environment and analyse how the structure depends on user learning style. Applying Felder and Silverman's inventory of learning styles to an online course with 214 adult graduate-level participants, we found that some styles occupied more central positions than others. These findings may help designers improve learning activities by tailoring them to the learning styles of the participants.