Volume 30 | Number 1 | May 2021
COVID-19 Localization Modelling Group
COVID seems to be an on-going and persistent issue that has a lifecycle far longer than anyone expected when it emerged on the scene. An interesting initiative was started by Maurice Glucksman and Kim Warren in the UK. They created a contest for students to look at the spread of COVID within their localized areas. In order to do this, they built a system dynamics model and on-line courses for students to learn and utilize the model without needing to learn sophisticated modeling skills. 

K-12 School Collaboration
Recently the teachers and former students of the High School Affiliated with Nanjing Normal University (NSFZ) connected with the CLE and the System Dynamics Society about their on-going program for learning system dynamics in their high school program.

This program has a history with SD starting before 2007 when a group of K-12 educators from the US traveled to the System Dynamics China Conference in Shanghai and then on to Nanjing to visit the school.

After attending a number of conferences sponsored by the System Dynamics Society and the Creative Learning Exchange, the teachers from the school are reaching out internationally to find collaboration partners.

Some possible areas of collaboration:
  • Working with other schools to create international SD competitions or games at the high school level.
  • Hosting SD competitions or games for high schools, maybe digitally, due to the pandemic.
  • Exploring how other schools apply SD in lectures and classrooms.

If you are interested collaboration, contact Min Xiang. Min is a current Masters student in system dynamics at the University of Bergen.

For a more extensive look at the program click here.
Systems Thinking Assessment Questions
Help us create a database of
systems thinking questions

Have you created questions for your classes to assess their systems thinking conceptual abilities? What do you use to see if you are getting relevant ST concepts across to your students?

We would like to invite you all to join us in helping create a database for systems thinking assessment questions. The System Dynamics Society Precollege Special Interest Group is gathering systems thinking assessment questions from those who have constructed these questions for their own work. We expect the questions could be used by K-12 teachers and instructors of undergraduate courses. They also would provide an excellent resource for researchers.

This effort began when Jon Darkow, a biology teacher from Ohio, posted a question on the CLE listserv asking whether anyone had ST questions that teachers could use to assess systems thinking concepts in their classes. Chris Browne, professor from Australia, responded that he was also interested in these types of assessment questions. So the SDS Precollege SIG is moving this effort forward by asking their members and others to submit one or more questions to the Google form below.

We have found the paper “Assessing the Effectiveness of Systems Thinking Interventions in the Classroom” by Hopper and Stave (2008) a useful tool in framing questions. Table 9 from the paper lays out the conceptual framework clearly.

We encourage you to read it before you submit your question(s). A sample of the questions on the Google form and one example of a submission question is available for you.

Those who submit a question will be able to get a copy of all the questions submitted at regular intervals before the questions are eventually made available through The Creative Learning Exchange.

Thank you in advance!

Diana Fisher, Lees Stuntz, Jon Darkow, Chris Browne, Anne LaVigne
The Creative Learning Exchange
 978-635-9797 | www.clexchange.org