Social network development in classrooms

Abstract

Group work is often a critical component of how we ask students to interact while learning in active and interactive environments. A common-sense extension of this feature is the inclusion of group assessments. Moreover, one of the key scientific practices is the development of collaborative working relationships. As instructors, we should be cognizant of our classes’ development in the social crucible of our classroom, along with their development of cognitive and/or problem solving skills. We analyze group exam network data from a two-class introductory physics sequence. In each class, on each of four exams, students took an individual version of the exam and then reworked the exam with classmates. Students recorded their collaborators, and these reports are used to build directed networks. We compare global network measures and node centrality distributions between exams in each semester and contrast these trends between semesters. The networks are partitioned using positional analysis, which blocks nodes by similarities in linking behavior, and by edge betweenness community detection, which groups densely connected nodes. By calculating the block structure for each exam and mapping over time, it is possible to see a stabilizing social structure in the two-class sequence. Comparing global and node-level measures suggests that the period from the first to second exam disrupts network structure, even when the blocks are relatively stable.

Farewell to Virtual Environments and Welcome to Post-pandemic Mathematical Problem Posing and Solving

“…Research has identified that knowledge and experience are the basis for credibility in problem solving with approaches and capabilities to translate mathematical theory into practice [24]. In China, the mathematical model exists as a mathematical competence within the curriculum, which is responsible for providing solutions to real world problems, only using mathematics whose basis for solving these problems is creativity [25], which manages to develop problem-solving skills together with cognitive skills in group tests in which they were forced to create social networks to share information and solve the evaluations [29]. The tasks for students whose approach has creative reasoning overcome the complex versions of learning in the area of mathematics and it is much better if it is programmed because it becomes of great support for the teacher and helps to improve the quality of reasoning in the classroom [39] because there is a change of attitude and surprise in the students where they only exchange glances among them when they start to solve the mathematical problems posed with this methodology of presenting problems with each situation.…”

“…Mathematical modeling develops problem solving skills based on real environment problems, demonstrating that women (teachers) have better mathematical modeling than men (teachers) at all educational levels [28], which implies that in group work this practice has become a great help to teach those who solve less and using common sense in group evaluations, collaborative work is present to support the development of learning [29] and even more so if ICT is present as a link between mathematics learning and students because it is an accessible medium in all classrooms and educational levels, reaching the conclusion that the more ICT is used, the better academic performance is achieved at school [30].…”