Projects

Check out some of our recent work, upcoming events, and presentations. More project information to come!

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    Assessing Learning Networks: Using Network-based Methods to Conceptualize, Measure, and Tell the Story of Your Community (National Learning Communities Conference 2024)

    "Community" can be conceptualized as patterns of relationships, or networks, that shape students' meaning-making. Focusing on what drives students' relationship network formation and the educational outcomes such networks are associated with allows us to more intentionally shape environments to facilitate learning. However, most learning community assessment measures focus on individual behaviors, experiences, and outcomes. This session will draw on examples of social network analysis (SNA) based assessments of learning communities for students exploring majors to help you examine the relational mechanisms you use to form community, practice network-based assessment methods, and apply findings from network-based assessment to strengthen your learning community's subsequent development. Participants will gain a basic understanding of SNA, develop a network assessment activity for use with their LC students, and depart with a toolkit for further network-based assessment applications.

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    Campus Ecological Networks - new in JCSD

    Collegiate environments that aim to support equitable learning are rarely conceptualized and studied in a manner that is explicitly relational and structural, leaving room for theorizing about how social constructions of meaning and power operate on campus. We apply social network theory and methods to campus ecological frameworks to develop a campus ecological network model. Rather than focusing on sets of individuals, a network-oriented stance traces the relationships of multiple individuals to uncover the latent structure of social boundaries that cannot be observed from a single perspective. Network specification facilitates the study of students' dynamic micro- and mesosystem construction where relational learning is supported or bounded. We also add modality as a relational feature across levels to account for physical and virtual connections. We illustrate the model with examples of learning, identity negotiation, and boundary crossing to describe how network perspectives can inform both research on and the practice of creating learning environments. Our approach illuminates how power operates through relationships and how, even when students participate in programming and interventions that are designed to foster engagement and persistence, unequal opportunities and outcomes can result.

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