Studying intertextuality, discourse and narratives to conceptualize and contextualize online learning environments

To demonstrate how qualitative methods can be used to guide the planning of online learning within the cultural and intertextual milieu of the Internet, this project gives the data, methods and the results of the contextualization and conceptualization of an online learning environment. The learning environment addressed and invited people with cancer and their supporters to question circulating social and cultural discourses that shape and limit the experiences of and responses to cancer. Cancer‐related websites were analyzed in order to form understandings of how the learning environment would be situated amid similar websites. Four cancer support electronic mailing lists were studied for the types of narratives and discourses engaged with by people living with cancer and their supporters. The results of these two stages provided a basis with which to begin producing a website to support people living with cancer and their supporters in creating non‐linear, flexible, discursive spaces for rewriting social and cultural discourses that shape and inform experiences of cancer. Using this project as a point of reference, suggestions are offered for how to utilize these methodologies to plan other online learning experiences.