What network science adds to education

Education is relational. Students learn with peers, teachers coordinate interventions, programs compete and complement one another, and institutions shape trajectories through rules, admissions, and information.

Network science gives us a way to make those relationships explicit. It helps distinguish isolated students from well-integrated ones, redundant collaboration from diverse information access, and fragile course pathways from robust educational ecosystems.

For CRiSS-LAB, this is not only a modeling preference. It is a practical stance: better relational evidence can support better pedagogical decisions, better student support, and better institutional design.