Network analysis: An indispensable tool for curricula design. A real case-study of the degree on mathematics at the URJC in Spain

Abstract

Content addition to courses and its subsequent correct sequencing in a study plan or curricula design context determine the success (and, in some cases, the failure) of such study plan in the acquisition of knowledge by students. In this work, we propose a decision model to guide curricular design committees in the tasks of course selection and sequencing in higher education contexts using a novel methodology based on network analysis. In this work, the local and global properties stemming from complex network analysis tools are studied in detail to facilitate the design of the study plan and to ensure its coherence by detecting the communities within a graph, and the local and global centrality of the courses and their dependencies are analyzed, as well as the overlapping subgroups and the functions and different positions among them. The proposed methodology is applied to the study of a real case at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.