Social Networking Initiative:
The Adams Center for Teaching and Learning acknowledges that social networking is just the latest stage in the evolution of communication. Our objective is to extend what we already know about digital interaction to create a better understanding of how we, as educators, fit into virtual communities. We are interested in exploring how faculty participation in these networks might generate a greater amount of positive interaction with students for the progression of Abilene Christian University's mission to educate students for Christian service and leadership throughout the world.
The computer and, more specifically, the Internet have profoundly changed the way we interact and communicate. This change in communication—beginning with email and progressing to blogs, personal websites and instant messaging— is advancing yet again with social networking websites such as MySpace.com and Facebook.com which, as of Janruary 2006, rank as the 2nd and 7th most trafficked sites on the internet respectively.
Social network analysis attempts to reveal the underlying patterns of societal interaction to determine the internal makeup of a particular community (Freeman, 2006). Research in a number of academic fields has demonstrated that this analysis is a critical element in the evaluation of societies on multiple levels from the familial to the national (Hanneman and Riddle, 2005). The social patterns of a particular community determine the manner in which problems are solved, organizations are run and, ultimately, the degree to which communities and individuals succeed or fail in achieving their goals. This comprehensive application makes social network analysis a key component of modern sociology, anthropology, geography, social psychology and information science (Borgatti and Cross, 2003).
The Adams Center for Teaching and Learning believes that social networking has far reaching implications for both education and teacher-student relationships within the context of social learning theory. The proliferation of computer-mediated interaction, especially in the form of online social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, generates new questions about the effects of this form of communication in terms of its psychological, interpersonal, social and cultural impacts.
Within these networks, new types of communities are being established with new sets of social norms and experiential expectations. Questions generated from the development of these new virtual communities include:
• How does appropriate interaction in the face-to-face world differ from appropriate interaction in the virtual world?
• Is faculty entrance into a virtual group more acceptable to student participants than faculty entrance into a group that physically meets?
• Does faculty participation in virtual groups lead to a greater amount of positive dialogue with students that might otherwise be inhibited in a face-to-face setting?
The Adams Center is especially interested in drawing analogies and distinguishing differences between face-to-face and virtual interaction in pursuit of these new questions. The primary intent of this comparative analysis is to inform faculty members of the nature and process of this interaction so that they have the opportunity to be as available to their students in the virtue realm as they are in the physical. Participation in social networks, specifically Facebook, might provide faculty members with the opportunity to develop stronger, more effective and more lasting relationships with their students and colleagues.
Hanneman, Robert A. and Mark Riddle. 2005. Introduction to Social Network Methods. Riverside, CA: University of California, Riverside. Published in digital form at <http://faculty.ucr.edu/~hanneman/>.
Freeman, Lin.<http://www.insna.org/INSNA/na_inf.html> .
Borgatti, Steve and R. Cross. <http://www.analytictech.com/borgatti/publications.htm>.
