Collaborating in Project Social Networks

How do people come up with new ideas together? And how does an innovative idea spread through an organization? In our new course Project Social Networks, students learn how to conduct empirical research on the structure and functioning of social networks.

This year, fifteen sociology students collaborated on a study of so-called changelabs -collaborative networks in middle and high schools focused on educational innovation. To properly understand a network, it is crucial to interview everyone in the network, otherwise you run the risk of missing exactly one important link in the whole. Together, the students interviewed twenty-five professionals to map out their individual networks.

What is unique about the project is the interwoven way students work together: Putting together all the individual networks collected creates a complete picture of the entire network. In small groups, students then wrote reports on questions such as: How do people in the network work together? and Which individuals have a key role in spreading innovations?

In this way, students not only learned new and essential research skills, but also contributed together to a current and practical issue.