Analysis of Networks in a College of Agriculture Course

Abstract

Technology advances occur almost daily and how they share information is constantly evolving. Educators must understand how their students prefer communicating especially relating to coursework. By mapping social networks present in courses, it may allow educators to determine how students prefer to communicate and also determine if there are constant identities that are stable throughout the semester (Edgar, Amaral, and Edgar, 2010). For the participants in this study, contacts between students increased from the initial to the final assessment of the semester. Face-to-face communication was the preferred method of communication followed by text messaging and Facebook. Communicating for social reasons was most cited with planning and venting closely being the reasons cited for contact after social. Overall, venting increased substantially as did planning throughout the course of the semester but social kept somewhat constant. No perpetual key players were identified through this study with the exception of one from the middle to the end iteration which disagrees with previous research.