The rich club phenomenon in the classroom

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So, the rich club is this network theory phenomenon in which the most highly-connected nodes tend to be connected with other highly-connected nodes. It's a big deal in connective neural networks, and the discovery of rich club networking in the brain appears to be taking network scientists by storm for some reason.

Anyway, while I was looking up a rich club neural network article for class, I came upon this, and thought it was really interesting for a variety of reasons.

http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130130/srep01174/full/srep01174.html

Here's the abstract:

We analyse the evolution of the online interactions held by college students and report on novel relationships between social structure and performance. Our results indicate that more frequent and intense social interactions generally imply better score for students engaging in them. We find that these interactions are hosted within a "rich-club", mediated by persistent interactions among high performing students, which is created during the first weeks of the course. Low performing students try to engage in the club after it has been initially formed, and fail to produce reciprocity in their interactions, displaying more transient interactions and higher social diversity. Furthermore, high performance students exchange information by means of complex information cascades, from which low performing students are selectively excluded. Failure to engage in the rich club eventually decreases these students' communication activity towards the end of the course.

Interested in hearing other people's thoughts about this, even if you just read the abstract and not the whole article. I'll chime in with my own as well, but I don't want to taint the thread with my ideas about it before the discussion gets rolling.

[Doktor Howl]

Is this a deliberate thing on either or both sides, or is it an unconscious interaction?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Is this a deliberate thing on either or both sides, or is it an unconscious interaction?

I guess I can spill my take on it, at least in terms of my rewrite of the abstract, but this is what went through my head:

Nerds find each other early in the term and start nerding out, which reinforces their nerdery. Students who aren't that into studenting try to get help from the nerds late in the term once they realize they're not doing well, but by then the nerds are just not that into working with people who usually ignore them and are just using them for a grade.

[Doktor Howl]

Is this a deliberate thing on either or both sides, or is it an unconscious interaction?

I guess I can spill my take on it, at least in terms of my rewrite of the abstract, but this is what went through my head:

Nerds find each other early in the term and start nerding out, which reinforces their nerdery. Students who aren't that into studenting try to get help from the nerds late in the term once they realize they're not doing well, but by then the nerds are just not that into working with people who usually ignore them and are just using them for a grade.

Well, I understand that hanging out with smart people makes you smarter (which does not bode well for me in my current situation).  I can also see how the more avid students could also lock out the less avid students without making a conscious decision to do so.

Of course, it can indeed be deliberate.  Nobody likes being someone else's ride.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

In other words, I don't think that it is a case of

A. The most socially adept people immediately building a social network, resulting in better exchange of information and therefore better grades,

or

B. The smartest and best students happening to naturally also be the most sociable,

or

C. The smartest and best students forming a clique and deliberately excluding the poorer students.

I think it's largely that people who are really into a subject and may not have the best social skills tend to find it easy to bond over studying, and so quickly form tight-knit nerd clusters which mostly talk about nerd shit, which reinforces the curriculum. Meanwhile, the less studious among the class kind of avoid the nerds, and engage in more social activity outside of academia, until they realize they're struggling with the class and try to join study groups or get tutoring from the nerds, who naturally are kind of put off by the sudden attempt to engage and recognize that they're not being approached due to shared interests, but primarily being used for their knowledge.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Is this a deliberate thing on either or both sides, or is it an unconscious interaction?

I guess I can spill my take on it, at least in terms of my rewrite of the abstract, but this is what went through my head:

Nerds find each other early in the term and start nerding out, which reinforces their nerdery. Students who aren't that into studenting try to get help from the nerds late in the term once they realize they're not doing well, but by then the nerds are just not that into working with people who usually ignore them and are just using them for a grade.

Well, I understand that hanging out with smart people makes you smarter (which does not bode well for me in my current situation).  I can also see how the more avid students could also lock out the less avid students without making a conscious decision to do so.

Of course, it can indeed be deliberate.  Nobody likes being someone else's ride.

I've never consciously locked out a struggling student who was trying to hitch a ride late in the term, but I'm less likely to go out of my way for them (my attitude being, why should I, if they haven't put the effort in?) and I often find them irritating as fuck, like the girl who joined our Cell bio study group and then was totally unprepared, hadn't brought a practice test (we were IN the library, which has free printing) and kept trying to hijack the study session with chitchat about random bullshit.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

On the other hand, if suddenly the hottest and dumbest guy in class was trying to take me out a week before Finals...



...well, honestly I'd see through his motives, lure him to my house with promises of copying my notes, get him drunk, ride him hard and put him away wet.

[Doktor Howl]

In other words, I don't think that it is a case of

A. The most socially adept people immediately building a social network, resulting in better exchange of information and therefore better grades,

or

B. The smartest and best students happening to naturally also be the most sociable,

or

C. The smartest and best students forming a clique and deliberately excluding the poorer students.

I think it's largely that people who are really into a subject and may not have the best social skills tend to find it easy to bond over studying, and so quickly form tight-knit nerd clusters which mostly talk about nerd shit, which reinforces the curriculum. Meanwhile, the less studious among the class kind of avoid the nerds, and engage in more social activity outside of academia, until they realize they're struggling with the class and try to join study groups or get tutoring from the nerds, who naturally are kind of put off by the sudden attempt to engage and recognize that they're not being approached due to shared interests, but primarily being used for their knowledge.

Yeah, and I can say from experience that nerds can be fucking vicious about stuff like that, especially when they're younger.  It's like "Hey, BMOC, you're in my house now, and I've hated bastards like you since I was in short pants."

Especially when it's a transparent case of people palling up because they are out of their depth.

When I was a kid, I was in the gear-head crowd.  You know, motorcycle jackets and engineer boots.  Because I am a gamer, I had friends in the nerd crowd.  I eventually got the two crowds to mix, more or less by accident.  The nerds got drunk and the gear-heads got exposed to something more intellectual than beer and back seat sex, and both groups were better for it.  The gear-heads got slowly drawn into the rich club, and did better.  The nerds got to unwind and have some fun around people who had decided to accept them on equal terms for reasons that were never really all that clear.

But that sort of happened naturally.  If the gear-heads had tried to cozy up because senior finals were 4 weeks away, the nerds would have found ways to avoid the whole thing.

[Doktor Howl]

On the other hand, if suddenly the hottest and dumbest guy in class was trying to take me out a week before Finals...



...well, honestly I'd see through his motives, lure him to my house with promises of copying my notes, get him drunk, ride him hard and put him away wet.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

In other words, I don't think that it is a case of

A. The most socially adept people immediately building a social network, resulting in better exchange of information and therefore better grades,

or

B. The smartest and best students happening to naturally also be the most sociable,

or

C. The smartest and best students forming a clique and deliberately excluding the poorer students.

I think it's largely that people who are really into a subject and may not have the best social skills tend to find it easy to bond over studying, and so quickly form tight-knit nerd clusters which mostly talk about nerd shit, which reinforces the curriculum. Meanwhile, the less studious among the class kind of avoid the nerds, and engage in more social activity outside of academia, until they realize they're struggling with the class and try to join study groups or get tutoring from the nerds, who naturally are kind of put off by the sudden attempt to engage and recognize that they're not being approached due to shared interests, but primarily being used for their knowledge.

Yeah, and I can say from experience that nerds can be fucking vicious about stuff like that, especially when they're younger.  It's like "Hey, BMOC, you're in my house now, and I've hated bastards like you since I was in short pants."

Especially when it's a transparent case of people palling up because they are out of their depth.

When I was a kid, I was in the gear-head crowd.  You know, motorcycle jackets and engineer boots.  Because I am a gamer, I had friends in the nerd crowd.  I eventually got the two crowds to mix, more or less by accident.  The nerds got drunk and the gear-heads got exposed to something more intellectual than beer and back seat sex, and both groups were better for it.  The gear-heads got slowly drawn into the rich club, and did better.  The nerds got to unwind and have some fun around people who had decided to accept them on equal terms for reasons that were never really all that clear.

But that sort of happened naturally.  If the gear-heads had tried to cozy up because senior finals were 4 weeks away, the nerds would have found ways to avoid the whole thing.

In my experience, that is exactly how things go. There's usually one nerd who is a crossover nerd, and somehow manages to socially merge the nerds, who have social integration issues, with some other group that is cooler but maybe less academic... and everybody wins.

[Reginald Ret]

In other words, I don't think that it is a case of

A. The most socially adept people immediately building a social network, resulting in better exchange of information and therefore better grades,

or

B. The smartest and best students happening to naturally also be the most sociable,

or

C. The smartest and best students forming a clique and deliberately excluding the poorer students.

I think it's largely that people who are really into a subject and may not have the best social skills tend to find it easy to bond over studying, and so quickly form tight-knit nerd clusters which mostly talk about nerd shit, which reinforces the curriculum. Meanwhile, the less studious among the class kind of avoid the nerds, and engage in more social activity outside of academia, until they realize they're struggling with the class and try to join study groups or get tutoring from the nerds, who naturally are kind of put off by the sudden attempt to engage and recognize that they're not being approached due to shared interests, but primarily being used for their knowledge.

Huh, very interesting!

Here's what I thought, I see that it is similar to your thoughts now that I typed it out:

D. Learning is improved by social interactions with peers (people who are studying the same thing at the same time) because you are engaging with the subject matter in different ways and integrating it into your culture. After that it is a simple case of time is limited and social interactions take time.

[axod]

A) Because like LMNO said, and I paraphrase, damn commies don't understand the benefit of a free-market system

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

In other words, I don't think that it is a case of

A. The most socially adept people immediately building a social network, resulting in better exchange of information and therefore better grades,

or

B. The smartest and best students happening to naturally also be the most sociable,

or

C. The smartest and best students forming a clique and deliberately excluding the poorer students.

I think it's largely that people who are really into a subject and may not have the best social skills tend to find it easy to bond over studying, and so quickly form tight-knit nerd clusters which mostly talk about nerd shit, which reinforces the curriculum. Meanwhile, the less studious among the class kind of avoid the nerds, and engage in more social activity outside of academia, until they realize they're struggling with the class and try to join study groups or get tutoring from the nerds, who naturally are kind of put off by the sudden attempt to engage and recognize that they're not being approached due to shared interests, but primarily being used for their knowledge.

Huh, very interesting!

Here's what I thought, I see that it is similar to your thoughts now that I typed it out:

D. Learning is improved by social interactions with peers (people who are studying the same thing at the same time) because you are engaging with the subject matter in different ways and integrating it into your culture. After that it is a simple case of time is limited and social interactions take time.

I think that's exactly it.

If what's important to you is the subject matter of the class you're going to find other people who are into the same thing, ie. studying. People often say that nerds don't have social lives, but it's actually that the social lives of nerds revolves around learning.

[Cain]

Our results indicate that more frequent and intense social interactions generally imply better score for students engaging in them. We find that these interactions are hosted within a "rich-club", mediated by persistent interactions among high performing students, which is created during the first weeks of the course.

Hmm, that's a possible explanation.

But it feels pretty insufficient, given the evidence shows children from more affluent backgrounds perform better regardless of other factors when it comes to education.  Is it possible they have the causation here backwards?  I think sociology has a lot to say on why people tend to network with their own socio-economic class background, and the education factor could be separate from that.

I'm just speculating though, I've not read the paper to form any specific conclusions about whether they've sufficiently controlled for this factor already or not (work night, aint nobody got time fo that).

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Our results indicate that more frequent and intense social interactions generally imply better score for students engaging in them. We find that these interactions are hosted within a "rich-club", mediated by persistent interactions among high performing students, which is created during the first weeks of the course.

Hmm, that's a possible explanation.

But it feels pretty insufficient, given the evidence shows children from more affluent backgrounds perform better regardless of other factors when it comes to education.  Is it possible they have the causation here backwards?  I think sociology has a lot to say on why people tend to network with their own socio-economic class background, and the education factor could be separate from that.

I'm just speculating though, I've not read the paper to form any specific conclusions about whether they've sufficiently controlled for this factor already or not (work night, aint nobody got time fo that).

If it helps, it's about college students, who are, unfortunately, generally already selected for a certain socioeconomic class.

I also haven't read the study with enough depth to see whether they controlled for nontraditional college students, who have other obligations such as jobs, families, or other external factors that limit their opportunities for social interaction with classmates.