Communication Networks and Social Capital

Topics

• Students will be able to gain the ability to explain situations in network terms, as well as improve in their ability to evaluate claims made in quantitative network studies. This will be achieved through reading and discussion of social scientific research papers with attention to a) whether knowledge claims are justified by the data analysis presented, and b) ways to reconcile competing claims made in different papers. Students will learn to apply their ability to recognize network-related situations and evaluate factual claims by applying these skills to analysis of scenario documents (see #2).
• Students will be able to improve their ability to do independent research about and to apply critical, theoretical thinking to both real and hypothetical scenarios. This will be achieved through the identification of scenarios where networks and social capital are relevant. Students will be asked to identify scenarios - including news articles.

Official roster learning outcomes