Balancing Friendship and Exploration: Grouping Strategies and Their Impact on Classroom Dynamics

Abstract

This article studies how group formation strategies affect friendship, collaboration, and academic reputation networks in high school classrooms. Using MRQAP models, it shows that affinity-based teams tend to collaborate inwardly with existing friends, while randomly assigned teams encourage outward collaborative ties across groups.

Javier Pulgar

Physics Department, Universidad del Bío Bío

Diego Ramirez

Ph.D. Candidate

Cristian Candia

Associate Professor, Data Science Institute, School of Engineering, Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile. Director of CRiSS-LAB.

Cristian Candia is a computational social scientist studying human and collective behavior with large-scale data, network science, experiments, and AI.