Dr. Alessandro Hill (industrial and manufacturing engineering) and Dr. Steffen Peuker (mechanical engineering) are collaborating on a multidisciplinary research project investigating students’ social networks. In their latest publication [1], they presented a novel method for positively influencing the class social network based on optimization and sociocentric network analysis. The technique focuses on maximizing individual student opportunities to establish new ties, systematically optimizing the overall number of new ties during a team project. The data-driven approach is designed for practical use in class and has been proven effective in a study of 10 industrial engineering classes with 253 students and 77 project teams. When applying the strategy to virtual classes, the number of new student connections could almost be quintupled compared to when students self-select their teammates. Overall, network growth could be accelerated by a factor of 3.5. The work has been presented at four major international conferences and has attracted interest from educators across different countries.
“As we all know, teamwork is so important in active learning and has the potential to improve an inclusive and equitable environment,” Peuker said. He continued: “What excites me about our optimization algorithm is that we now have a tool to assign students to teams with purpose, not just randomly.” The algorithm assigns students to teams based on the following criteria:
- Maximizing connections between students: students get to work with as many students as possible they don’t know yet.
- Pre-assigning students: a student has a strong preference to work on a certain senior design project.
- Balancing teams: team project requirements may necessitate that a certain number of teammates hold specific attributes.
- Forcing teammates: two or more students are required to be on the same team.
- Averting teammates: students indicate that they don’t want to be with particular classmates on a team before teams are assigned.
- Maximizing existing intra-team ties: for projects that are time-critical and where the initial setup cost of getting to know each other might hinder the students from accomplishing the project goals.
Hill and Peuker’s new method is not limited to educational settings but can also be applied to other settings, including corporate operations, workshops, sports, professional development courses, committees, and social events. More details on implementation, comparison to existing methods, and student feedback can be found in the paper which was recently published in the journal Annals of Operations Research [1]. Instructors that are interested in implementing this approach are invited to contact the authors.
Currently, Hill and Peuker are researching the social network aspects of seating arrangements, seating assignments, and class section assignments and plan to publish their results soon.
[1] Hill, A., Peuker, S. Expanding students’ social networks via optimized team assignments. Annals of Operations Research (2023).
By Dr. Alessandro Hill and Dr. Steffen Peuker
