Teaching systems thinking to general education11‘General education’ is a term applied to curricula that may be required of first-year college students in which they are required to take courses in liberal arts and a variety of sciences and math to ensure that the students enter a major field of study with more broadly applicable thinking and communication skills. See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum#United_States_2 for background. Accessed 12/18/2017. students

George E. Mobus

Ecological Modelling, 2018, vol. 373, issue C, 13-21

Abstract: Under the proposition that all college students are able to learn to think in more systemic ways, and understand the value of systems modeling for assisting their thinking, I designed a course for freshmen with no more than basic algebra. In this course the students were exposed to basic systems concepts with a focus on system dynamics modeling (using Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems) of a permaculture-based food production system. They were given a basic problem: How much land area would be needed to collect enough solar energy in food plant photosynthesis per year to feed a community of fifty vegetarians? They were told that the farm would be in the Seattle WA, USA area so they could find the average monthly insolation values. Several additional rate constants and conversion factors were provided so they could build a spreadsheet-based model to generate the number of calories needed.

Keywords: Systems thinking; Naïve learners; System dynamics; Food production model; Problem and project-based learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:373:y:2018:i:c:p:13-21

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2018.01.013

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