The Push and Pull of Social Gravity: How Peer Relationships Form Around an Undergraduate Science Lecture

Abstract

Undergraduate students benefit from academic-centered peer interactions, especially in large lecture courses. However, little is known about how students come together and form relationships around a course. I conduct a mixed-methods study of students peer networks to explore how students choose peers for academic-focused interactions. The network of connections among students in a large undergraduate physics class decreases over time, leaving students looking for study partners later in the course at a disadvantage. While community structure might limit relationship formation late in the semester, students who connected across campus capitalized on network internalities that facilitated opportunities for collaboration. Disciplines Curriculum and Instruction | Curriculum and Social Inquiry | Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research | Educational Psychology | Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Comments This article is published as Brown, M. The Push and Pull of Social Gravity: How Peer Relationships Form Around an Undergraduate Science Lecture., Review of Higher Education, Winter 2019, 43(2); 603-632. Doi: 10.1353/rhe.2019.0112. Posted with permission. This article is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/edu_pubs/144 Running head: PUSH AND PULL 1 The Push and Pull of Social Gravity: How peer relationships form around an undergraduate science lecture Michael Brown Michael Brown is an Assistant Professor of Student Affairs and Higher Education in the School of Education in the College of Human Sciences at Iowa State University. His research agenda is focused on the development of curriculum, instruction, and instructional technology in undergraduate education. His current research projects include the design of digital dashboards to support students’ study strategy development in large lecture courses and a study of how undergraduate students develop social and academic networks through study groups. He is an affiliate researcher of the Pathways through College Research Network. Running head: PUSH AND PULL 2 Abstract Undergraduate students benefit from academic-centered peer interactions, especially in large lecture courses. However, little is known about how students come together and form relationships around a course. I conduct a mixed-methods study of students’ peer networks to explore how students choose peers for academic-focused interactions. The network of connections among students in a large undergraduate physics class decreases over time, leaving students looking for study partners later in the course at a disadvantage. While community structure might limit relationship formation late in the semester, students who connected across campus capitalized on network internalities that facilitated opportunities for collaboration.Undergraduate students benefit from academic-centered peer interactions, especially in large lecture courses. However, little is known about how students come together and form relationships around a course. I conduct a mixed-methods study of students’ peer networks to explore how students choose peers for academic-focused interactions. The network of connections among students in a large undergraduate physics class decreases over time, leaving students looking for study partners later in the course at a disadvantage. While community structure might limit relationship formation late in the semester, students who connected across campus capitalized on network internalities that facilitated opportunities for collaboration. Running head: PUSH AND PULL 3 A small number of social connections, perhaps as few as two or three, can positively impact a student’s campus engagement (Chamblis & Takacs, 2014) and performance in a course (Rizzuto, LeDoux, & Hatala, 2009). The importance of interaction among peers for learning is especially apparent in math and science where work is often completed in pairs or small groups (Callahan, 2008; Deslauriers, Schelew, & Wieman, 2011). When students interact to complete course tasks, they exhibit significant learning gains in comparison to students who work independently, especially in undergraduate courses like mathematics (Callahan, 2008) and physics (Brewe, Kramer, & Sawtelle, 2012) where the material is provided in an ordered progression of complexity. As such, it would be useful for scholars and instructors to understand the factors that foster student participation in academic-centered interactions. However, very little is known about the mechanisms that facilitate students’ academic interactions. Researchers advocate for the importance of peer interactions focused around academic work (e.g. Brewe, Kramer, & Sawtelle, 2012; Tinto, 2003), but they have yet to account for the ways that classroom connections are “developed, composed, maintained, and abandoned” (Dawson, 2010, p. 739). Instead, research on social learning in large lecture halls tends to examine the number of connections students have in isolation from the larger classroom network that shapes and structures their interactions (e.g. Rizzuto et al., 2009). Focusing on the number of connections rather than the nature and arrangement of those connections may overlook the ways that the structure of connections (the network and its organization) can limit the agency of individuals to participate in social opportunities and access different informational and social support resources (Lin, 2002). Running head: PUSH AND PULL 4 This is particularly true in postsecondary contexts where tightly connected undergraduate peer networks can restrict access to individual and institutional informational resources (McCabe, 2016). Tightly knit networks result in configurations where students have fewer contacts on campus and the majority of their contacts are connected to each other. There are few loose ties that provide diverse informational resources or opportunities. Few connections mean fewer friends of friends to connect with to form study groups. As a consequence, the structure of the network of peers that forms around a course may impact students’ ability to participate in crucial academic activities like out-of-class study groups. The purpose of this exploratory study is to identify some patterns in the ways that students formed and made changes to socioacademic peer relationships connected through a large undergraduate science lecture course. Background: Connecting with Peers The impact of undergraduate experiences is mediated and informed by “the extent and content of one’s interactions with major agents of socialization on campus” like peers and instructors (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991, p. 620), especially when these interactions involve academics (Anaya & Cole, 2001; Deil-Amen, 2011; Kuh & Hu, 2001; Tinto, 1993). Peer interactions where academic and social worlds collide, or what Deil-Amen (2011) refers to as “socio-academic integrative moments,” can enhance social and academic integration by providing students spaces and times in which their social and academic worlds align. For undergraduate students, academic and social groups overlap (Nespor, 1994), an effect even more pronounced for students in STEM fields like physics where those Running head: PUSH AND PULL 5 without significant overlap among their academic and social worlds are less likely to persist in their undergraduate major (Forsman, Linder, Moll, Fraser, & Andersson, 2012; Forsman, Moll, & Linder, 2014). Network structures may influence the kinds of interactions students experience on campus. For example, through close personal relationships (what network researchers call “strong ties”), students are able to access emotional support, while those with lots of loosely connected peers (weak ties) are able to access more diverse informational resources through peer interaction on campus (McCabe, 2016). Peer interactions may even motivate students to focus on academic performance (Summers, 2006). The clearest evidence of benefits from academic interactions in peer networks can be found in the classroom. Undergraduate students in classrooms that are organized to support interaction post greater learning gains than their peers in traditional ‘sage on the stage’ lecture courses (Baepler & Walker, 2014; Ge & Land, 2003). Peer networks in a course can provide important informational support, which is crucial for academic success (Canche, D Amico, Rios-Aguilar, & Salas, 2014; Carolan, 2013). Peer interaction has been linked to “cognitive development, identity development, self-confidence, selfefficacy, and social and academic integration into the university” (Callahan, 2008, p. 361). Cooperative classroom environments, which facilitate collaboration on academic tasks, are associated with gains in student achievement as well as increased motivation and persistence in undergraduate education (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). The benefits of peer interaction to learning appear to be contingent upon high levels of interaction and the dynamics of student groups (which facilitate engagement and feedback; Webb & Farivar, 1999). Running head: PUSH AND PULL 6 Individuals who participate in a social network benefit from network externalities, where the more participants there are a network, the easier it becomes to access different types of resources through that network (because of its increasing size and potential diversity; Christakis & Fowler, 2009). Individuals who do the work of networking around a class and who create relationships that span socio-academic realms may also benefit from what Tufekci (2017) terms “network internalities.” According to Tufekci, [network internalities encompass] the benefits and collective capabilities attained during the process of forming durable networks which occur regardless of what the task is, or how trivial it may seem, as long as it poses challenges that must be overcome collectively and require decision making, building of trust, and delegation a