====== Education ======


===== Practical/interesting syllabus materials? =====



<code>
Subject:   Re: practical/interesting syllabus materials? 
From:   "Alan Neustadtl" <alan.neustadtl@GMAIL.COM> 
Date:   Tue, June 25, 2013 17:04 
</code>

Natalie,

If you and your students hace access to MS Excel you can use the an add-in
called NodeXL (http://nodexl.codeplex.com/) for collecting, analyzing, and
visualizing networks.  Bernie Hogans Facebook generated data can easily be
imported to NodeXL and it is really easy to use the built-in data
collectors to get twitter, youtube, and flickr data.  You can see lots of
examples at the NodeXL gallery (
http://www.nodexlgraphgallery.org/Pages/Default.aspx).  Also, Marc Smith,
who is the head of the group working on NodeXL has office hours using
Google+ where you could get some support.

Personally, as others have suggested, having students look at their own
Facebook networks is really educational and illuminating.  I am also a fan
of checking out current events using NodeXL and twitter.

Best,
Alan

<code>
Subject:   Re: practical/interesting syllabus materials? 
From:   "Ian McCulloh" <cusum6@GMAIL.COM> 
Date:   Tue, June 25, 2013 16:21 
</code>

I did something similar for an intro psych course (all first year students).  I
showed Krackhardt's network of centrality measures and made an analogy to mean,
median, & mode.  I then showed them how Newman grouping worked.  I took them through
an activity where they downloaded their Facebook network, ran centrality measures
(they are maximally central), then had them delete themselves, run centrality and
subgroup analysis using the visualizer in ORA.  There was an immediate intuitive
understanding of centrality, structure, subgroups, and it tapped into their interest
effectively.  

If I were to do this again, I would add Lothar's idea of also taking the bipartite
agent to 'like' page, folding it, and comparing it to the agent by agent network.

While I think it is critical to include mathematical calculations of network metrics
in a network course, I think the above approach is good for familiarization.

Best of luck!

Ian McCulloh

 
 
 
 

<code>
Subject:   Re: practical/interesting syllabus materials? 
From:   "Eric C Jones" <ecojones@UNCG.EDU> 
Date:   Tue, June 25, 2013 16:17 
</code>

Hi Natalie,

SocioScope (socioworks.com) uses attribute and alter lists and tie lists
that you type into it, to collect data directly in the software so there is
no need to manipulate data formats to get data into a typical network
analysis package. There are some  flexible visualization capabilities in
it, but no analytical capabilities. This works very well for seminar-type
sessions involving social networks, especially when you want to actually
generate a social network from scratch but you're not going into the
descriptive or statistical metrics that social network analysis algorithms
generate. Good luck!

eric

<code>
Eric C Jones
UNCG Department of Anthropology
1003 Spring Garden St, 426 Graham Bldg
Greensboro NC 27412-5001
email. ecojones@uncg.edu
</code>
 
 
 
 


<code>
Subject:   Re: practical/interesting syllabus materials? 
From:   "Alexander Semenov" <semenoffalex@GMAIL.COM> 
Date:   Tue, June 25, 2013 15:21 
</code> 
 

Hi, Natalie.

I think, that playing around with their Facebook ego-network should
entertain them a bit. You should try Bernie Hogan's NameGenWeb application
for that:
https://apps.facebook.com/namegenweb/

Another interesting tool for social network exploration is theyrule.net,
which shows how companies are connected through common board members (and
vice versa):
http://theyrule.net/

Hope that helps,
Alex.