Subject: Re: practical/interesting syllabus materials? From: "Alan Neustadtl" <alan.neustadtl@GMAIL.COM> Date: Tue, June 25, 2013 17:04
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
Subject: Re: practical/interesting syllabus materials? From: "Ian McCulloh" <cusum6@GMAIL.COM> Date: Tue, June 25, 2013 16:21
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
Subject: Re: practical/interesting syllabus materials? From: "Eric C Jones" <ecojones@UNCG.EDU> Date: Tue, June 25, 2013 16:17
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
Eric C Jones UNCG Department of Anthropology 1003 Spring Garden St, 426 Graham Bldg Greensboro NC 27412-5001 email. ecojones@uncg.edu
Subject: Re: practical/interesting syllabus materials? From: "Alexander Semenov" <semenoffalex@GMAIL.COM> Date: Tue, June 25, 2013 15:21
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.