Notable differences
Evaluating the data revealed that up to three months after the intervention, students who were at the introduction event and part of the same group had significantly higher friendship ties with one another. Seven months after the intervention, they were found to have mutual friends more often. After nine months, researchers found evidence of a higher number of mixed-sex friendships. Researchers also describe how other social processes play a role in the formation of students’ social networks: for instance, the tendency to befriend people with similar characteristics or the attraction that people feel to those who have many friends already. But all of these processes require that first spark – the initial contact – to unfold their potential. This means that early network interventions such as introduction events can be highly effective means of fostering student interactions and relationship ties.
Mixing things up
According to study co-author Timon Elmer, one of the primary goals of a university is to support students who have the potential, talent, will and motivation to succeed in their chosen field of study. “We can't let students who have the potential fail their exams or drop out of school because they didn't manage to integrate well enough into a social network or because they end up socially isolated,” he explains. This is most likely to happen to students who come from groups that are underrepresented in the general student body.
Female students are one potentially disadvantaged social group in STEM subjects (
s
cience,
t
echnology,
e
ngineering and
m
ath), as they have an increased likelihood of dropping out of their study programme. Elmer believes that helping female students better integrate into the student community could create a more equitable basis for the sexes and other groups.
Turning theory into practice
The potential of these kinds of network interventions is clearly not just limited to the sexes: they can also be used to overcome barriers that arise from having different languages or countries of origin. According to researchers, more interaction and contact between social groups creates more equal opportunities not only during students’ time at university, but also later when they enter the job market. The reason? When students actively maintain relationship and friendship ties with one another, they share more information that is relevant both to their fields of study and their careers.
But what does this mean for ETH Zurich? Stadtfeld says that his research group is in an ongoing dialogue with departments and instructors in order to integrate findings from their multi-year research project into how teaching is conducted at ETH. What’s more, ETH’s long-established practice of holding pre-semester orientation events has been shown to be a good investment. Especially now that so many events have gone online because of the coronavirus pandemic, it is important not to lose early opportunities for students’ social integration, says Stadtfeld.
Researchers at the Social Networks Lab are part of the Open ETH quality initiative (previously known as
ETH+
). This social network research was conducted as part of the
Future Learning
Initiative.
