7.1 Lecture Class / Social Network

Some lecture classes at Cornell are pretty big, but I would not have expected any of them to act as a fully functioning dually online and offline social network. CS/INFO 130 (intro to design and programming for the web), which I am a grading TA for, plays this role. The online component of the social network are a course website with active forums, a newsgroup, and a wiki; while the offline components are lectures, sections, and weekly TA meetings.

Using the SNA to examine INFO130, it is clear that there are different classes of actors who are bound to each other through both strong and weak ties. The majority of the relationships are weak: students in the large, lecture class tend to initially not to be close with each other, nor the TAs, or and certainly not the professor. Some TAs have established relationships with each other based on prior work experience, but most are only in the same social network based on a shared skill in web-design—thus they exhibit weak ties and occasional contact with other TAs and students.

The common ground in this social network is seemingly limited. Everyone in the class is related to the Cornell community, and in some way, has an interest in web design (whether it is academic or recreational). Nevertheless, these slight similarities in the context of a goal-oriented setting (both the students and teaching staff want to see excellent websites being constructed) cause reciprocity to increase and relationships to form. Social network characteristics become enhanced through FtF interaction such as physical office hours and collaborative sections, but the real remarkable aspect of the INFO130 social community is the CMC intensity. At the beginning of the semester, students would post issues with their HTML code on the forums and TAs would respond—however, as bonds have been forming and familiarity increases, students have been answering each other’s questions (without any incentives)—and acting in a very social manner. Additionally, with respect to the teaching staff, our grading procedures and assignment creation has been increasingly collaborative—INFO130 is one of the only classes with office hours via AIM. Our weekly FtF meetings have become shorter and subsequently replaced by higher activity in the e-mail newsgroup.

As the semester becomes busier for all the actors involved in the INFO130 social network, the importance of the online components of the class seems to be drastically increasing. Having the class materials, student advice, and teaching assistance all archived and accessible through a database-backed website creates a situation where both relationships between actors are strengthening and goals are being achieved more efficiently.

Comment 1

Comment 2