Hi everybody
Here is a very small guidance on how to offer young people problem based learning, whether at school or at home by their parents.
Currently we are preparing some larger initiatives to spread systems thinking on schools throughout Germany. Here I provide just a very basic description of it in English that you might directly use or continue to develop and maybe share. Let me know what you need in order to start.
Within our concept we start with a simulation game on sustainability and continue with active qualitative modeling by the pupils. The simulation game shows in a clever way that things are interconnected and why they are difficult to understand. At the same time it shows the obstacles to sustainable behavior as we have explored them in a project for the federal environmental agency of Germany.
The main target, though, is problem based learning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem-based_learning). Usually pupils are forced to repetitive learning after lecture teaching. As most of us should remember from school repeating stuff without really being interested in it is not very effective nor efficient.
Well, according also to KNOW WHY Thinking (http://www.amazon.com/KNOW-WHY-Systems- ... ai+neumann) hormones and neurotransmitters play a decisive role in learning and thus it is only logical that discovering interconnections and learning how to ask for the crucial factors behind a challenge is most rewarding and most effective to pupils.
So, with or without playing a simulation game at the beginning pupils should get a chance to explore complex topic or challenge on their own, whether they are local phenomena like violence at schools or whether they are global challenges, like peace on earth, sustainable agriculture, the money flow to our pockets, the protection of our environment and so forth.
For a teaching person it means that she or he only needs to be familiar with the use of the tool (actually the pupils will find out by themselves), use the KNOW WHY Method implemented in the tool to systematically let them build a model, and choose a topic.
To learn how to use the iMODELER we recommend the tutorials you will get when you start the iMODELER (www.imodeler.info) and click on the question mark button on the bottom left.
Once you or you together with the pupils have selected a topic you should use the model description (Menu … Model Properties …) to define what the model should answer, e.g. ways to get peace on earth.
You may define the time scale you are going to model, e.g. within the next 20 years. Then you should agree for example that short term means within one year, mid term within 10 years and long term anything that takes longer.
Also you may define colors, e.g. green for measures, red for problems, yellow for targets and so forth.
Then it’s time to define the central factor, in this case “peace on earth” or “wars on earth”. This is the starting point for the use of the KNOW WHY Method and its KNOW WHY Questions.
You start with:
“What leads directly to more “wars on earth?”. You may alter this question to what does it take to, what is needed organizationally/technically/financially …. and so forth.
For each factor that is named it is important that they speak out loud the so called connection sentence: “… leads directly to more/less of …”. If all connection sentences are correct, the model is as well.
However, in order to get a useful model, you need to include the crucial factors. Thus, when you get no answer to your first question anymore you continue to ask what leads directly to less of the factor, what hinders it.
When done with that ask if there are possible influences leading to more or less of it in the future.
Do this for every factor until the influences seems to be too far fetched.
There is always the risk that you run out of time. Therefore you should ask them to try some aggregate factors at first, e.g. not speaking of different weapon systems in detail but just of weapons.
There is no one correct model. Many models could be correct and you should restrict your role to motivate them to use all four questions, to ask if a connection sentence is really correct (many times the influence isn’t direct but indirect. Then the direct needs to be deleted.), and to keep track of time to go to the next step of weighting followed by analyses of Insight Matrices and Loops.
Even if you don’t manage to finish the modeling and the analysis followed by a documentation of the results you will see how everybody is delighted by the kind of action learning and maybe they are willing to spend some extra time to finish their (!) project.
With collaborative modeling the students can use their devices (PC, tablet, Mac, maybe smartphone) to add to the model.
When the connections are defined you continue with the weighting and the color coding. Ask them to color a factor after all its incoming connections are weighted. Use the rough weighting of weak, middle and strong and if there are many incoming connections let them use values for a weaker than weak and a stronger than strong.
Finally you can start analyzing it. First select the Insight Matrix of the central factor. Then continue to look at the Insight Matrices of the most crucial factors (according the central factor’s matrix) to identify synergies and ambivalence.
Well, that’s it. You can start with 90 minutes and a very aggregated model or you may spend a whole project week for a really detailed model.
A good advice is to prepare yourself with your own small model on a possible topic. The pupil’s models will look different but you can help and you get a feeling for too much detailed to should better be put into an aggregated factor. In the following posts you find some possible topics and small models. Please post your own examples.
Happy modeling and enjoy the surprise of highly motivated pupils
Kai