About Net.Create
Net.Create is an open-source network-analysis tool that offers simultaneous multi-user network-data entry, accommodates duplicate and ambiguous network data, provides live visualizations of up-to-the-minute entries from other team members, and is structured around historiographically driven citational and interpretive practices.
Net.Create as Historical Research
While there are several research implications for historians documented in the Journal of Digital History article, “Designing Our Digital Past: Anchoring Digital-History Tool Development in the Historical Method Through Design-Based History Research”, the single most important contribution Net.Create makes to digital-history research is in the preservation of citations and research notes. No other network analysis tool offers built-in citation preservation to its users. The connections documented in other network analysis tools can be analyzed but not traced back to the primary sources from which they came, and so Net.Create provides a historiographic-debate platform as well as a network-analysis platform.
My Role
I started Net.Create as a solo researcher in Fall of 2015 and was personally responsible for the first three rounds of software develoopment and methods design (Fall 2015 through Spring 2018).
With internal funding from IU, I identified a research team of educational researchers and an external software development firm with whom to work (Inquirium). Since then, I have led the Net.Create team in designing new features, identifying and documenting methods for using those features in history research environments, and developing activities for classroom use of Net.Create.
Current Status
Net.Create is currently available for free for MacOS users or for ~$5/month at Digital Ocean.
All of the DBHR features described in the Journal of Digital History article, “Designing Our Digital Past: Anchoring Digital-History Tool Development in the Historical Method Through Design-Based History Research” are included in the current version of Net.Create.
Resources and Guides
The current version of Net.Create uses NodeJS (v10.22.0) and React installed in either a MacOS environment or in a Digital Ocean droplet.
Future Plans
Net.Create’s next steps include another series of grant-funded features identified in our last DBHR include:
- a 1-click process that bypasses some of the more technical requirements in the current installation process
- Integrated data provenance. We have it but it’s in logs, and we’d like to make that more accessible to the team. Provenance supports better researcher positionality (MMATCH as part of the Net.Create DBHR process)
- Integrated commenting. This lets the team have a staged historiographic debate in an asynch collaboration environment without directly changing the node/edge data
- Private comments. This lets each member of the team take separate notes as part of their own historian’s work.
Examples of Net.Create in use
- The Power of the Popular: Dr. Cate Mullen’s dissertation examines the history of community contributions to a music archive. View Dr. Mullen’s video walkthrough to the right.
- Agnellus of Ravenna network: this network traces the interactions between bishops, other people, and places in the account of Ravenna’s bishops between the 2nd and 8th century, which I explored in both my MA thesis and dissertation. I came back to it for my first public use of Net.Create in a research environment. One scholarly contention is whether Agnellus, the author of the Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis (Book of the Bishops of Ravenna, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, vol. 199, ed. Deliyannis), delivered some of his histories orally. My takeaway from this network is that Agnellus uses places the way modern travel writers do, rather than as on-the-spot tour guides might. Places anchor the relationships he documents between bishops and other authority figures in the early Middle Ages for people who have yet to encounter either the people or the places.
- RAPTLab: these pilot networks from 5th and 6th graders learning data literacy through social sciences and STEM networks show the breadth of Net.Create’s impact across disciplines. The networks here are also the basis for a successful 2023-26 round of NSF funding for Net.Create.
Full Funding & Publication List
Net.Create has been funded by NSF awards #1848655 and #2241705 and by Lumina Foundation.
Grants
2023
Joshua A. Danish (PI), Kalani Craig (Co-PI), Cindy Hmelo-Silver (Co-PI), Ben Loh (Co-PI). ITEST (Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers) Program, Award #2241705 ($900,000) for "Collaborative Research: Integrating Students’ Interests, Identities and Ways of Knowing with Network Visualization Tools to Explore Data Literacy Concepts". National Science Foundation (NSF). 2023-2025.
2022
Ann McCranie (PI), Kalani Craig (Co-PI), Kate Eddens (Co-PI), "Data-Driven Human Network Design ($400,000), an oral-history and network-science analysis of Lumina Foundation’s grant-funding and meeting history.
2021
Ann McCranie (PI), Kalani Craig (Co-PI), Kate Eddens (Co-PI), "Data-Driven Human Network Design ($250,000). Lumina Foundation
2018
Kalani Craig (PI), Joshua A. Danish (Co-PI), Cindy Hmelo-Silver (Co-PI), Ann McCranie. EAGER (EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research) Program, Award #1848655 ($299,661) for "Net.Create (network analysis to support reading comprehension in history classrooms". National Science Foundation (NSF). 2018-2021.
Kalani Craig (PI), Joshua A. Danish (Co-PI), Cindy Hmelo-Silver (Co-PI). Faculty Research Support Program—External Resubmission ($59,986) for "Net.Create (network analysis to support reading comprehension in history classrooms". Office of the Vice Provost for Research, Indiana University. 2017-2018.
Digital History Publications
2022
Net.Create (netcreate.org and github.com/netcreateorg/netcreate-2018). Kalani Craig & Joshua A. Danish. Initial development, 2016. Full release, 2018. Current version: v6, 2022. (NSF #1848655)
https://www.netcreate.org.Text Based Publications
2023
Kalani Craig and Joshua A. Danish. "Designing Our Digital Past: Anchoring Digital-History Tool Development in the Historical Method Through Design-Based History Research", Journal of Digital History (forthcoming, Nov 2022; draft link below)
https://journalofdigitalhistory.org/en/notebook-viewer/JTJGcHJveHktZ2l0aHVidXNlcmNvbnRlbnQlMkZrYWxhbmljcmFpZyUyRmRiaHJfamRoMjAyMyUyRm1hc3RlciUyRndvcmslMkZhdXRob3JfZ3VpZGVsaW5lX3RlbXBsYXRlLmlweW5i.Kalani Craig, Colin Elliot, Maliha Zafar. "Networking Female Power in the Early Roman Empire" (manuscript in prep)
2021
Kalani Craig, Joshua A. Danish, *Megan Humburg, Cindy Hmelo-Silver, *Maksymilian Szostalo, Ann McCranie, "Net.Create: Network Visualization to Support Collaborative Historical Knowledge Building" in International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 16 (2021), pp. 185–223.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-021-09343-9 .2020
Kalani Craig, *Megan Alyse Humburg, Joshua A. Danish, *Maksymilian Szostalo, Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver, Ann McCranie, "Increasing students’ social engagement during COVID-19 with Net.Create: collaborative social network analysis to map historical pandemics during a pandemic", Information and Learning Sciences, Vol. 121 No. 7/8 (July 2020), pp. 533-547.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-04-2020-0105 .Presentations
Peer-reviewed Conference Proceedings
2023
*Mengxi Zhou, *Selena Steinberg, *Christina Stiso, Joshua A. Danish, and Kalani Craig. "Exploring Network Visualization of Data in Elementary Classrooms." In Proceedings of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) (forthcoming, June 2023).
http://joshuadanish.com/assets/pdfs/Zhou_ISLS2023_WebReady.pdf.*Christina Stiso, *Mengxi Zhou, *Selena Steinberg, Joshua A. Danish, and Kalani Craig. "Visualizing Funds of Identity: Using Network Software to Model Collective Identity in a Classroom." In Proceedings of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) (forthcoming, June 2023).
http://joshuadanish.com/assets/pdfs/Stiso_ISLS2023_WebReady.pdf.2021
*Megan Alyse Humburg, Kalani Craig, Joshua A. Danish, *Maksymilian Szostalo. "Fostering Historical Empathy through Network Analysis: Personal Experience as a Lens for Understanding the Past" at the 2021 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April 8-12, 2021. Virtual due to COVID-19.
2020
Kalani Craig, Joshua A. Danish, *Haesol Bae, *Maksymilian Szostalo, *Megan Alyse Humburg, Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver, Ann McCranie, "Net.Create: Network Analysis in Collaborative Co-Construction of Historical Context in a Large Undergraduate Classroom", in Gresalfi, M. and Horn, I. S. (Eds.), The Interdisciplinarity of the Learning Sciences, 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2020, Volume 2 (pp. 1055-1062). Nashville, Tennessee: International Society of the Learning Sciences. Presentation cancelled due to COVID-19, but published conference proceedings included final paper submission.
DOI: https://doi.dx.org/10.22318/icls2020.1055.2019
*Haesol Bae, Kalani Craig, Joshua A. Danish, Cindy Hmelo-Silver, *Suraj Uttamchandani, *Maksymilian Szostalo, "Mediating Collaboration in History with Network Analysis", in Lund, K., Niccolai, G. P., Lavoué, E., Hmelo-Silver, C., Gweon, G., & Baker, M. (Eds.), A Wide Lens: Combining Embodied, Enactive, Extended, and Embedded Learning in Collaborative Settings, 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) 2019, pp. 949-950 (June 2019).
DOI: https://doi.dx.org/10.22318/cscl2019.949.Invited Talks & Workshops
2021
"Negotiating Network Analysis: Balancing Historical Thinking and Data Science Learning in Digital Humanities with Net.Create" for the Center for Research on Learning and Technology, Indiana University–Bloomington, Dec 15, 2021. (As the only IU speaker in the annual invited-talk series.)
"Granting the Future" grant-identification and grant-writing workshop series for COPLAC Digital, a Mellon-funded grant initiative, with the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges, October 26, 2020, and January 14, 2021.
2019
"Student-Driven Digital Humanities: Net.Create and the Role of Pedagogy Research in Digital Humanities Tool-Building", Digital Scholarship Lab, Ball State University (Muncie, Indiana), September 18, 2019.
*Haesol Bae, Kalani Craig, Joshua A. Danish, Cindy Hmelo-Silver, *Suraj Uttamchandani, *Maksymilian Szostalo, Ann McCranie, "The Power of Network Analysis Tool for Collaborative Learning.". Interactive Demo presented in Lund, K., Niccolai, G. P., Lavoué, E., Hmelo-Silver, C., Gweon, G., & Baker, M. (Eds.), A Wide Lens: Combining Embodied, Enactive, Extended, and Embedded Learning in Collaborative Settings, 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) 2019, pp. 1025-1028 (June 2019).
DOI: https://doi.dx.org/10.22318/cscl2019.1025."Subject, Object, Centrality: Network Analysis in History Research and Teaching", Workshop on Quantitative Analysis and the Digital Turn in Historical Studies, The Fields Institute, (Toronto, Canada), February 27, 2019.
Conference Presentations
2021
Kalani Craig, *Matthew Landini "Two Views, One Network: Net.Create To Support Network Analysis in Undergraduate Humanities Research" at the North American Social Networks Conference, Virtual conference, January 25-27, 2021.
2019
Kalani Craig, Joshua A. Danish, Ann McCranie, Meghan Alyse Humburg, *Maksymillian Szostalo, Cindy Hmelo-Silver "On Feedback Loops: Digital-Pedagogy Research and Digital-Humanities Research in DH Tool Building" at the ACH2019 Conference, Association for Computing and the Humanities (Pittsburgh, PA), July 24, 2019.
Kalani Craig, *Haesol Bae, Joshua A. Danish, Ann McCranie, *Suraj Uttamchandani, *Maksymillian Szostalo, Cindy Hmelo-Silver, "Building Temporality and Textuality: Scaffolding History Reading Comprehension with Net.Create, an Interactive Open-Source Network Analysis Tool" at the XXXIX Sunbelt Social Networks Conference of the International Network for Social Network Analysis (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), June 20, 2019. Ajudicated award for conference’s best poster.
"Building a Bishop’s Network: Reshaping Network Analysis to Understand Episcopal Agency in Serial Biography" at the 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI), May 9-12, 2019.
