A social network analysis approach to a digital interactive storytelling in mathematics

In this paper we present a social analysis of the interactions among the students involved in a trial of the Italian PRIN project “Digital Interactive Storytelling in Mathematics: a Competence-based Social Approach”. The instructional design is based on collaborative scripts within a digital storytelling framework where the story follows the interactions among the characters played by the students and an expert (teacher or researcher). We report the results of a trial that involved teachers and students from the upper secondary school, analysing from a Social Network Analysis point of view the interventions of the expert, the involvement/participation of the students and the interactions among peers and with the expert. We also briefly discuss potentialities and limitations of the currently available tools to perform this kind of analysis, in view of the broader perspective offered by the Learning Analytics approach.