SNA Project Proposal: Jane Kaminski

Background:

This project builds upon the social network research for the HHL MBA full-time and part-time students. With many students commuting in from long distances, the school has been working to improve networking and student connections.  Previous research revealed that Fridays were a time when students could most easily interact with one another, so a "TGIF" Happy Hour was established to encourage socializing, with some success.

Objective:

The objective of this network analysis will be to identify and exploit further opportunities to deepen student connections to build a more cohesive, connected student body. 

Central Question:

What can be done to strengthen connections and improve density for the HHL full-time and part-time MBA students?

Hypothesis:

I hypothesize that an opportunity for deeper student engagement could include an enriched orientation program, intramural team sports, language table, or class research trips that target students with mutual areas of interest.

Methodology:

This analysis will build from the surveys already produced in HHL research.  We will write a survey that will further study student interests, means of communication, and connections to classmates.  Once the survey results are collected, we will analyze factors that draw cliques together, created new connections, and take into account the results of the polling to prescribe new programming to deepen student connections.

Survey questions could include:

Who are the top 5 people you interact with?

What is your main method of communication outside of the classroom?

Would you be interested in participating in an intramural sports team?

If so, which of the following sports are  you interested in playing?

Would you be interested in going on an informational weekend trip to learn more about XXXXXX businesses?

Would you be interested in a language round table to practice a non-native language?

If so, what language(s) would you be interested in practicing?

Due to potential linguistic limitations, these research questions will very carefully crafted before being presented to the students and reviewed by native German speakers to ensure clarity for the surveyed students.

Potential limitations:

Although these students have proven dedicated to responding to surveys in the past, a lack of responses from surveyed students could be a limiting factor to information.  As we've discussed, linguistic difficulties could also limit the quality of responses, so the survey will need to be very carefully written.  Another limiting factor could be students' lack of interest in undertaking extracurricular activities, which would limit the recommendations to strengthen connectivity.