Developing Students’ Awareness of Network Dynamics by Spreadsheet Environment

Ilya Levin¹, Mark Korenblit², Vadim Talis³ 
(1. School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Israel; 2. Computer Science Department, Holon Institute of Technology, Israel;
3. Jerusalem College of Technology, Jerusalem, Israel)

Abstract: This paper deals with the problem of learning in a new digital or networked society. Specifically, the study is focused on the development of students’ network awareness by constructing and investigating the network learning environment. An environment comprising the spreadsheet EXCEL and the visualization tool NodeXL is introduced. Students construct their own models of the network and are able to observe the behavior of the constructed network in the form of a dynamically evolving graph. Models are defined by simple algorithms. The algorithms correspond to different rules of network evolution. Specifically, rules for attaching the next vertex to the existing network are presented. A number of network examples, constructed and studied by using the proposed approach, are presented and discussed.

Key words: networked learning, network awareness, leaning environment, constructionism, spreadsheets, network simulation, scale-free networks