Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

Award Date

2019

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department / School

Mathematics and Statistics

First Advisor

Sharon Vestal

Keywords

centrality, Facebook, social network

Abstract

One of the successes of the Rural Enhancement of Mathematics And Science Teachers (REMAST) Scholarship Program at South Dakota State University is the community we have built. This community has been built through a summer conference and a closed Facebook group. As we near the end of our Phase II Noyce funding, we are using social network analysis to examine the connections within the REMAST Facebook group. What we learn in this research project will be useful to other Noyce projects as it is a model for developing a strong professional learning community. In order to determine information about the connections within the group of alumni and scholars, we created adjacency matrices based on cohort number, the number of semesters of funding, and subject area. From these adjacency matrices, we used the software programs Gephi and MATLAB to generate data and to create images that illustrate friendships between group members. Looking at the images, we made conjectures about the Facebook group and analyzed these conjectures using various attributes, such as degrees, eigenvector centralities, and triangles, of the data.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Facebook (Electronic resource) -- Social aspects.
Online social networks.
Science teachers -- Scholarships, fellowships, etc.
Mathematics teachers -- Scholarships, fellowships, etc.
South Dakota State University. Rural Enhancement of Mathematics And Science Teachers Scholarship Program.
South Dakota State University -- Funds and scholarships.

Format

application/pdf

Number of Pages

91

Publisher

South Dakota State University

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Rights Statement

In Copyright