Classroom activities for teaching networks

Networks structure almost all aspects of the social and natural worlds. However, teaching about networks can be challenging because it requires shifting from thinking about things to thinking about their relationships. The goal of this special issue is to share a set of interactive activities designed to help students understand networks and make the shift to relational thinking. Each activity is described in detail in a standalone article, while this introduction provides a brief summary of the activities to help instructors select the ones that are the most appropriate for their contexts.

Table 1 summarizes the key features of the 10 classroom activities for teaching networks that are included in this special issue. The DOI links provide direct access to articles with detailed instructions for the activity’s goals, setup, procedure, and lessons. These activities are designed to illustrate a diverse set of network concepts ranging from real-world phenomena such as inequality (e.g., Neal et al., 2026) to more technical network topics such as small worlds (e.g., Rice, 2026). They vary in the time required, ranging from relatively brief pre-class discussions (e.g., Landry et al., 2026) to labs and discussions that may span multiple days (e.g., Jin et al., 2026). Although most are intended for use in undergraduate classrooms, some have been used with younger children also (e.g., Citron, 2026), and some have been used in large settings (e.g., Gomez-Zara et al., 2026; Tanaka et al., 2026). Finally, although all of the activities involve an interactive component, they vary in their mode of interaction, including physical activities that get participants moving around (e.g., Braden, 2026), seated activities that are more focused on discussion (e.g., Clegg, 2026), and web-mediated activities that rely on software (e.g., Harris-Coble, 2026). Instructors can use this table to identify activities that suit their needs, and then click the link to obtain instructions and materials.

The first two activities in the issue offer all-ages physical games that capture different types of diffusion. Citron (2026) invites participants to move around as they high-five each other, which represents the transmission of an illness from a single infected patient-zero until participants eventually recover following two more high-fives. Recording the number of infected participants throughout the game using stickers, this activity reproduces the diffusion curves characteristic of a susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) epidemiological model. After assigning participants to positions in a hidden network, Neal et al. (2026) also invite participants to move around, exchanging pieces of candy with their network contacts in a series of rounds. Although all the participants start with the same amount of candy, inequality quickly emerges between the candy haves and have-nots, revealing how certain network positions give their occupants more power than others.

A second set of activities, designed for somewhat older participants in classroom settings, are still interactive but without the need for physical movement. Rice (2026) traces acquaintanceship chains (and illustrates their matrix representation) by asking one student to identify another student in class whom they know personally, incrementally building a set of standing students with the goal of reaching a secretly selected target student. Also building on secrets, Clegg (2026) uses envelopes passed between groups to illustrate the use of cryptographic keys to preserve privacy, and to illustrate the risk of interference by a malicious broker between the groups. While the networks in these activities emerge as students stand or groups pass encrypted messages, Landry et al. (2026) instead reveal a picture of the ‘Network of the Day’ at the outset, and invite students to discuss what the mystery network represents and how it might be described.

The next set of activities rely on web-based resources to facilitate interaction among a potentially much larger set of participants. Two of these tools allow participants to build networks among themselves. Participants using the MDT tool interactively build networked teams of other participants that meet their specifications (Gomez-Zara et al., 2026), while participants using the 6DoS tool attempt to route messages to target participants using only their own perception of the network (Tanaka et al., 2026). Two other tools help participants explore empirical networks in different domains. The FAOSTAT database paired with ArcGIS helps participants understand where their food comes from (Harris-Coble, 2026), while the SNoMaN tool guides participants through a series of lessons for analyzing spatial social networks such as GitHub collaborations and Mafia connections (Jin et al., 2026).

The final activity in this issue simulates not only network formation, but also resource allocation and exchange. Mirroring the resource constraints faced by organizations in the art world, Braden (2026) assigns participants to roles of arts organizations, politicians, and funders. Participants in these roles negotiate with each other while requesting and granting legitimacy and resources, logging each successful and unsuccessful interaction. The simulation yields participant-generated network data that is analyzed during a debrief phase, or throughout the course.

As networks become increasingly central parts of many disciplines’ methodological toolboxes, it will be important to expose students to relational thinking early. Non-technical interactive activities that do not require prior experience with networks or network analysis offer one way to do so. Such activities can play an important role as early introductions to networks in primary school or in college general education courses, but they can also be useful reinforcements in more advanced network courses. The activities in this special issue not only offer instructors a range of ready-to-use options, but also starting points for adaptation and the development of variants to meet more specific needs.