Studying STEM Faculty Communities of Practice through Social Network Analysis

Ma, Shufeng; Herman, Geoffrey L.; West, Matthew; Tomkin, Jonathan; Mestre, José P.

doi:10.1080/00221546.2018.1557100

Cited by 30 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Using SNA, we examined the social network structures of individual CoPs. We found that the faculty CoPs in Programs I/II that began to use EBIP had strong ties in their teaching networks, whereas CoPs that did not use EBIP did not have these types of ties (Ma et al 2016;Ma et al 2018). These results suggest that strong ties were important for supporting the adoption of EBIP by CoPs; however, these studies did not explore how the CoPs learned about EBIP or how EBIP spread between CoPs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 63%

“…These means and standard deviations were used to perform one-sample t-tests to compare the simulated networks with the mentorless network (Carsey and Harden 2013). We chose a conservative α-value of 0.001 for statistical significance to minimize the likelihood of Type I error for three reasons: our standard error of measurement was 1%, we perform multiple comparisons for significance with these permutation tests, and we have previously demonstrated the relationship of these cohesions metrics with the adoption of EBIP among CoPs (Ma et al 2018).…”

Section: Methods For Research Question 1: Mentors and Overall Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In previous papers, we documented the spread of EBIP between CoPs (Herman and Mena, 2015; and that COPs that adopted EBIP had statistically significantly higher density, higher connectedness, and lower centralization than CoPs that did not adopt EBIP (Ma et al 2016;Ma et al 2018). We determined which CoPs adopted EBIP by triangulating internal reviews provided by mentors, evaluations provided by an external evaluation team, and publication of education scholarship by the CoPs (Ma et al 2016;Ma et al 2018).…”

Section: Purpose Of Current Study and Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Network ties between two individuals can be treated as directed (information or relationship originates from a person and reaches another person) or undirected (information or relationships are treated as reciprocal). Because dyad reciprocity did not vary significantly between CoPs (Ma et al 2018), we treat all ties as undirected in our data.…”

Section: Social Network Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on prior studies indicating that density, connectedness, and centralization (Borgatti et al 2002) were sufficient to distinguish between CoPs that adopted EBIP from those that did not (i.e., additional network measures such as breadth were nearly perfectly correlated with the chosen three measures; Ma et al 2018), we use these same metrics for the present study. Density is calculated as the actual number of ties in a network divided by the possible number of ties.…”

Section: Network-level Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Spreading Teaching Innovations in Social Networks: the Bridging Role of Mentors

Herman

Tomkin

et al. 2018

Journal for STEM Educ Res

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Although Evidence-Based Instructional Practices (EBIP) generally improve students' performance in STEM, traditional lecturing remains the most common instructional practice in postsecondary settings. This study examines an institutional change program that organized STEM faculty into communities of practice (CoPs) to facilitate the adoption and spread of EBIP in postsecondary classrooms. In this program, CoPs were mentored by faculty members who have a track record as advocates for high-quality teaching. In order for practices to spread, knowledge about those practices needs an avenue to spread. We hypothesized that CoP mentors provide these avenues by creating bridging ties between the disparate CoPs, thus spanning structural holes. To test the hypothesis, a sociometric survey was administered to document 100 faculty members' social interactions concerning teaching. A Monte Carlo permutation test revealed that the mentors significantly increased the density, connectedness, and centralization of the institutional change program's teaching social network more than any other random selection of faculty members. We also found that CoP mentors were the most likely individuals to connect otherwise unconnected CoP participants. These findings suggest that the CoP mentors played an important role in providing the bridges that can facilitate the spread of knowledge about teaching innovations across the network.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 63%

Section: Methods For Research Question 1: Mentors and Overall Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Purpose Of Current Study and Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Social Network Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Network-level Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Spreading Teaching Innovations in Social Networks: the Bridging Role of Mentors

Herman

Tomkin

et al. 2018

Journal for STEM Educ Res

Self Cite

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Assessing the impact of online collaborative problem solving on a calculus class for first‐year engineering students: A communities of practice lens

Díaz,

Luengo‐Aravena,

Barahona

et al. 2024

J of Engineering Edu

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BackgroundWe examine the efficacy of an online collaborative problem‐solving (CPS) teaching approach in academic performance and student connections with other peers, among first‐year engineering calculus students at a Latin American university. Our research uses communities of practice (CoP) to emphasize the social nature of learning and the importance of participation and interaction within a community.MethodsThe work applies a quasi‐experimental design and social network analysis (SNA). A total of 202 engineering students were instructed using CPS methodology (experimental group), while 380 students received traditional online teaching methods (control group) during one semester in the first calculus class for engineers.ResultsResults show no significant difference in the grades obtained between the experimental and control groups. However, students exposed to CPS reported a statistically significant higher passing rate, as well as larger and more significant academic and social connections. Additionally, SNA results suggest that CPS facilitated stronger peer connections and promoted a more equitable distribution of participation among students, particularly women, compared to students taught under traditional online teaching methods.ConclusionsThe study underscores the importance of fostering collaborative learning environments and highlights CPS as a strategy to enhance student performance and network formation. Findings suggest that CPS can improve academic outcomes and promote more equitable learning practices, potentially reducing dropout rates among women engineering students. These findings contribute to the ongoing efforts to address systematic biases and enhance learning experiences in engineering education.

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Instructional leadership structures across five university departments

Apkarian

Rasmussen

2020

High Educ

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Studying STEM Faculty Communities of Practice through Social Network Analysis

Cited by 30 publications

References 35 publications

Spreading Teaching Innovations in Social Networks: the Bridging Role of Mentors

Spreading Teaching Innovations in Social Networks: the Bridging Role of Mentors

Assessing the impact of online collaborative problem solving on a calculus class for first‐year engineering students: A communities of practice lens

Instructional leadership structures across five university departments

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