Social Network Synthesis: A Dynamic Approach for Building Distance Education Programs

Abstract

Distance Education is more preferable by both learners and institutions in the 21st century. The technology, teaching-learning and communication processes are in a change that each stakeholder should comply with. One up-to-date form of these processes is social networking. Social networks have the potential of providing access to more resources and improving the quality of communication and interaction. Social Network Analysis and Network Weaving approaches are useful to determine the social network structure and improve it. Further to that, in this chapter, "Social Network Synthesis" approach is introduced, obtained by applying synthesis process on Social Network Theory. The approach is thought to allow for the establishment of optimum relationships between the concerned actors in a newly configured goaldirected social network. An illustrative framework that can be used for building Distance Education programs is also presented