some notes during reading "Networks, Crowds and Markets" by David Easley and Jon Kleinberg - Introduction

a network is a pattern of interconnections among a set of things

adding resources in a network can undermine its efficiency - Braess's paradox

a notion of equilibrium - a state that is self-reinforcing in that it provides no individual with an incentive to unilaterally change his or her strategy, even knowing how others will behave

we have a fundamental inclination to behave as we see other to behave: 1) the behavior of others convey the information or it is a direct benefit from aligning your behavior with that of others

in many cases you care more about aligning your own behavior with the behavior of your immediate neigbors  in the social network, rather than with the population as a whole.

a new behavior starts with a small set of initial adopters and then spread radially outward through the network.

a diffusion of technologies can be blocked by the boundary of a densely connected cluster in the network- a "closed community" of individuals who have a high amount of linkage among themselves, and hence are resistant to outside influences,

Things to learn about didactics - need to know for teachers and students

A month ago i was participating in the workshop organized by IMA, ZLW & IfU. The aim was to develop the concept for the interdisciplinary learning event. I suppose that this group was working mostly on the preparation of the workshop.

It was a great event. Just think that we plan a learning discipline with about 15 people where students were involved to!


I hope the event will take place at the summer term. Different departments should participate in it: databases and information systems, business administration, sociology, and product engineering. Therefore, before we start to conceptualize the event, we listened to some didactic tips that many of us know but forget. 


methods for learner interactions:

• think-pair-share (think alone, talk about it with a partner and present to others)
• buzz groups (lecturer provides some information and asks a question, the group is formed and the question is discussed in the group, the solution is presented to others)
• jigsaw (the same procedure as in previous cases but group formation is different. all experts of topics are distributed in groups, so that each group has an expert of each topic)

Memory:

• ultra short-term memory may give the information to the next memory if it is interesting. According to different sources it works  from 2 to 20 seconds.
• short-term memory can work till 20 minutes and send the information to the next memory if it is interesting. The capacity is limited in 7 entries (formulas, parameters, words, sentences - depends on how good a mind is trained). The capacity can be extended. 
• long-term memory stores the information for a long time. There are episodic (when did it happen?), declarative(general) and procedural memory (how did it happen?). BUT the information can be lost!!!

How can you prevent to loose the information from the long-term memory? 

• repeat the learned material by and by
• repeat the material in continuously increasing time intervals  
• 5 minutes pause after the learning block

Cultural dimensions of Hofstede

I'm working on one paper devoted to cultural differences in Web and find cultural dimensions of Hofstede extremely important for those who are looking for cultural differences. Here i'm sharing my findings. 

"The great work of Hofstede proposes cultural dimensions of people working at IBM in over 50 countries (Hofstede, 1991). He identified 5 dimensions of differences between national cultures: power distance, collectivism versus individualism, femininity versus masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation. Following we are going to explain these dimensions.

The acceptability and expectance of the power of members within society institutions like family, school and a community at work shows the power distance of the society. This dimension is about respect according to the distance between people in different levels of hierarchy.

Everyone is responsible for herself in individualistic culture while groups are responsible for their members in collectivistic culture. In other words, individualism describes the situation when a person thinks firstly about his interests as long as collectivism describes the situation when a person thinks firstly about group interests.

Masculinity and femininity refer to social gender roles. Either the roles are clearly distinct, i.e. “men are focused on material success, whereas women are concerned with the quality of life” – masculinity is higher. Or the roles overlap, i.e. both women and men take care about life quality and material success.

The attitude to the uncertainty is reflected in uncertainty avoidance (UA) dimension. Representatives of some cultures react negatively to uncertainty and need clear idea about what is going to happen. These cultures have a high level of UA dimension.

Long-term vs. short-term orientation in life explains cultural differences in spending and saving money and accepting quick results. People with long-term orientation of life (LTOL) use to save more money and adopt themselves to the modern context while people with short-term orientation use to overspend but respect traditions without any or with minor adaptations. Moreover, in the first case results should be immediate while in the second case it is very preferable."