Subject: Introducing System Dynamics to grade 8 students

Posted by Niall Palfreyman on 1/16/2009
In Reply To:Introducing System Dynamics to grade 8 students Posted by Anthony Vassallo on 1/16/2009

Message:

Anthony Vassallo schrieb:
> I plan to use some of the LET time with my students this year to
> introduce them to SD and will use the approach you describe at 1) i.e.
> "providing generic instruction, skills, insights in SD as a tool- and
> skill-set that can be applied across a wide range of problems."
>
> My overall plan is to start with BOTGs, move on to CLDs, then stocks
> and flows and finally computer simulation (if I can raise the money for the software ;).
> However, I don't expect it will be a purely linear progression.
>
An impressive plan. It's approximately what I do with my first-year undergraduate students. From that experience I can recommend the following activities:

1. (Intro) Strew the pupils around a largish room and ask them to each think of two other people in the room (without mentioning their names).
Then have them move around, all the while seeking to maintain a distance of about 2m (or 3 or 4, depending on room size) from the two chosen people. I use this as a demonstration of protein-folding, but it is more generally an illustration of the rippling of effects through a system - the pupils will never come to a standstill.

2. (ST) Read the story "The Lorax" by Dr. Seuss, and build up a map of stocks and flows in the story on the board.

3. (SD) The leaky bathtub problem. This really goes into the nitty-gritty of numbers, while keeping the system fairly simple.

I wish you much fun - please let us know how it goes on.

Niall Palfreyman.