| Sumario: | Asynchronous online discussions are broadly used to support social learning. This paper reports on an undergraduate class's online discussion activities over one semester. Applying social network analysis, this study revealed a participation gap among students reflected by their varied levels of network prestige. The low‐prestige group initiated equivalent volumes of interactions but were less reciprocated. In‐depth analysis found the high‐prestige group also advantageous in other network measures such as closeness centrality and eigenvector centrality, as well as the strength, persistence, and reciprocity of their ties. To probe potential explanations of the revealed gap, we further contrasted post content and posting behaviours between two groups. Results did not identify any significant differences in post content but found low‐prestige students' participation less timely and more temporally compressed. This paper calls for attention to the participation gap in online discussions, microlevel temporal patterns of student activities, and practical means to scaffold student participation in asynchronous online discussions. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic: Social interaction is important for learning, and asynchronous online discussions are broadly used to support social learning.Teaching practices and strategies have been developed to support student participation in online discussions.In some contexts, participation intensity predicts learning performance.However, researchers have documented a participation gap in online discussions.What this paper adds: We applied prestige, a sociological term, to a study of the participation gap in an online undergraduate class and revealed varied levels of prestige among students.Lower prestige students were not inactive; rather, they initiated an equivalent volume of connections with peers but were often ignored.The timing of discussion participation can be a probable contributor to the gap, as lower prestige students' participation was less timely and more compressed together.Implications for practice and/or policy: Pedagogical supports are needed to help students develop advanced self‐regulation skills conducive to productive discussion participation.The design of online discussion environments and analytics tools needs to consider students' discussion dispositions and behaviours.
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