Improvising Climate Smart Agricultural Practices Using Design Thinking by Undergraduate Student of Agriculture under Central Agricultural University, Imphal: A Case of Social Network Analysis

Abstract

Aims: This study uses Social Network Analysis (SNA) to investigate the social interaction that shape student collaborative problem solving activity when undergoing Design Thinking (DT) to improvise Climate Smart Agricultural Practices (CSAPs). Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted at the three Colleges of Agriculture (CoAs) under Central Agricultural University, Imphal at Manipur viz., the (1) CoA, Imphal at Manipur, (2) CoA, Pasighat at Arunachal Pradesh; and (3) CoA, Kyrdemkulai at Meghalaya. The study was conducted between November 2019 and February 2020. Methodology: A sample of 28 respondents who constituted fifty percent of population of final year B.Sc. (Agriculture) students was selected through simple random sampling without replacement from the three CoAs. SNA of respondent-students was analyzed using Gephi 0.9.2 software with the following attributes to understand the student community viz., average degree, modularity, average clustering coefficient and average path length. Results: The network for CoA, Imphal displayed the following characteristic as ‘Average Degree’ of 5.69, ‘Modularity’ of 0.149, ‘Average Clustering Coefficient’ of 0.468 and ‘Average Path Length’ of 1.57. In case of CoA, Pasighat, the attributes of social network were as ‘Average Degree’ of 3.63, ‘Modularity’ of 0.513, ‘Average Clustering Coefficient’ of 0.099 and ‘Average Path Length’ of 1.52j; while for the case of CoA, Kyrdemkulai, it had ‘Average Degree’ of 3.86, ‘Modularity’ of 0.024, ‘Average Clustering Coefficient’ of 0.650 and ‘Average Path Length’ of 1.360. Conclusion: For meaningful improvising of CSAPs using DT, the efficiency of social network was more functional on smaller collaborative working groups as information flow was found to be high in small groups leading to development of more ideas on DT.