I used to have a fixed class of about 20 people with the same major. We take all major courses together. (1) As we take most of our courses together, and sometines study together after class, we meet each other nearly everyday. So there are strong interpersonal ties. We talk, joke before and after class; we make a new year's party together; we somstimes travel together. There are definitly tight ties among us. (2) Most of the time, our share the same purpose simply just to learn the courses well. When there is academic competition, we make two or three groups. We work on a large information system; we work on an integrate circuit. Each group usually take different tasks, but each works under the name of our class. We are happy no matter which team wins. (3) We certainly have same identity. Basicly, although not wear too often, everyone has a T-shirt with out class symbol on it. We share some "special" words, like we call one a "corn" when he/she does something silly, although without any clear reasons. And we have our own slogn, we may shout that when we participate some sports competitions. So I take our class as a community.
Our class is a social network. It certainly fits the defination of interpersonal web with crisscross relationships and bondings. It is a community has a common ground. As we take the same field of our study, we have mostly the same interesting field of our future jobs. Although every individual has different personal interests, at least we have a very strong intersection point that takes us together. Our class has reciprocity. We are a team with same commom ground and same aim, so we really reciprocate each other to improve the whole team. We want our class to become better and better. And when every one simply considers itself as a member , they help each other to win team benefit.
As CMC, we have personal webs just like facebook. We certainly are "good friends" online. I find we tend to post more and comment more to the people in our tem more than to others. Maybe some people don't talk too much ftf post a lot on each other's wall, which can improve real life interpersonal ties. I think both the online and offline relations affect each other. And both of them make our team denser and closer.
4 comments:
Hello Xiangning, it’s a great post. It should be nice and rare to have a class with such strong interpersonal interactions. I agree with you on that your class is an example of a community consisted with strong ties. This community is consisted of actors, students in your major class, and ties, any interactions take place among the students such as studying together or traveling together. Since all the students in this class share strong common interest in one subject, I think it will be interesting to talk about what kind of social capital this community has and what kind of mobilization takes place to realize the effects of social capital.
Hey Xiangning,
I completely agree that a small class situation such as the one you described fits in with Haythornwaite's definitions of a social community. I loved how you described how your situation fit into each necessary foundation point of the definition.
The one small thing that I picked up on was the changing of tenses. In the first sentence you state "used" telling the reader that this was in the past, however, continuing on, you switch to the present. It confused me.
Hey Xiangning,
You did a really good job describing how your small class is a social network in face to face. Clearly it is reflective of the Haythornwaite’s definition of such a network. As far as CMC goes, does this group have one particular spot online that you guys can gather and speak? You mentioned facebook, are you all a member one common application or perhaps a common group? This would, according to the SNA attributes, really strengthen the ties between your group. As Haythornwaite says, the more ties between actors, the greater the social network becomes.
Hey, I have something more to describe the situation of me and my class. In the last two years,I was in this class, then I transfered to Cornell(as i am now), I left the class. But the class is still living now, only in another university. But i keep contact with them through website now. They still post a lot on my wall, and tell me what is happening. I also post on their walls, telling them the life in Cornell here. So when i wrote the post, I was confused even myself wehther to use the past or present tense.
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