I apologize for the length of this document, but we are involved in an
exciting venture, and I would like to obtain comments and advice. (As you
will see, I might not be able to answer replies in the next 2-3 weeks,
please bear with me.)
* * Please see three action items at the bottom of the post.
Many of you are aware of the CC-STADUS grant in Portland OR. This grant
was obtained from NSF by Diana Fisher and Ron Zaraza of Portland Public
Schools, and was designed to train high school teachers to use System
Dynamics in their curriculum, including teaching students how to develop
models.
I am a medical school faculty member and biomedical researcher
(pharmacology and behavioral neuroscience) with an intense interest in the
application of SD modeling to biology and medicine. I participated in the
writing of the CC-STADUS grant, and have worked closely on its execution
over the past three years, including attending the K-12 conferences in
Concord (94) and Tucson (95).
Even before the preparation of this grant about 4 years ago, I speculated
about the possibility of a "modeling and simulation fair", analogous to a
science fair. Students would develop and test a model of interest to them,
and would present the results to an open house audience.
By last summer it appeared that we were approaching a critical mass of
students who were actively building models, and we decided to conduct a
trial run. Tim Joy, high school English (!) teacher and CC-STADUS core
team member agreed to work on this with me. I had an opportunity to
discuss this briefly with Jay Forrester, Nan Lux, and Lees Stuntz during a
visit to MIT in Dec 95.
We are up to our ears in work, but it is going to happen (!) April 26, this
year. It is called SyM Bowl (Systems Modeling Bowl; we did not want a
"modeling fai"r to be perceived as a fashion show(!)).
Wayne Wakeland, Assoc Prof System Science at Portland State University
volunteered to organize and supervise the judges (greatly appreciated!).
We developed a set of criteria which developed as follows: (A) Ed Gallaher
(1994) developed "Instant Manual", a set of MS Word templates to facilitate
copying and pasting diagrams, graphs, etc. into a Word document. (B)
Instant Manual has been widely used by the CC-STADUS team, and has played a
significant role in the development of finished reports that have been
archived by the Creative Learning Exchange (1994-1996). (C) Diana Fisher
developed a template for her modeling class, to provide an outline for her
students final reports. These have been developed in 1994 and 1995 and
are very impressive efforts for high school students. (D) Wayne reviewed
this document and added additional materials regarding (i) executive
summary, (ii) reference behavior, (iii) validation and verification. (E)
EJG reviewed *this* document and added material re documenting the
structure and "exercising" the model. (F) Ron, Tim, and Diana reviewed
this document. Diana eliminated lenghthy explanations to provide a more
concise document that would be less daunting to the high school student.
(i.e. she brought Wayne, and particularly me, back to earth! (You might
recognize this as a classical feedback loop....)). The document (E)
remains as a teachers guide, and is available to students for additional
information.
We have five very competent judges; Wayne will oversee this effort rather
than judging directly, to make sure that we have an arms length view of
the process. Two of the judges are high school teachers from the CC-STADUS
project.
We expect between 12 and 18 teams for this first effort. Models are
developed by teams of 2-4 students, who are developing a substantial
document which describes a statement of the problem, the perceived
audience, the purpose of the model, reference behavior, the structure of
the model (including a description of each individual element), the
behavior of the model, conclusions, and future directions. This document
will be judged in the week preceding April 26.
Tentative titles include:
How is Melanoma Growing in the U.S.?
Will Polar Bears Become Extinct?
How Long as the Body Been Dead? (estimates of time of death via heat loss)
How Does Energy Flow in a Heat Engine?
Outside consultants:
I am committed to a requirement that students identify two outside
consultants for their projects. These should be experts in the focus area,
not necessarily modeling experts (yet....). Two (rather than one) will
provide the students with different perspectives, to avoid taking anyones
opinion as "gospel".
Given our time constraints, this has been quite difficult, but is a goal
for the future. We need to ease this pathway for our students by
identifying possible sources. Also, we need to provide introductory SD
materials for the consultants so the students do not have the
responsibility for teaching it all to them.
Note that this will provide additional ties between the community and the
school, and will spread the SD "infection." We would ultimately hope to
attract these consultants to the SyM Bowl presentations.
On April 26 (9-11:30) there will be a poster presentation and demo, with
computers set up on each table. Students will attend the tables and be
available to discuss the model and answer questions. During lunch the
judges will choose the top five teams, based on their written report and
open house demo. Following lunch, these top five teams will each make a
15-min presentation with overhead transparencies, again covering the
materials described above.
Three winning teams will be selected. Each member of the first place team
will receive $250, 2nd place $150, and third place $75. Every member of
the 5 finalist teams will receive an authoring copy of STELLA II.
Additional financial support was also provided by High Performance Systems,
for which we are very appreciative.
We have received support from the medical school and university at the
President and VP levels. They have contributed copying expenses, space for
the event, and will pick up lunch for all the student teams and their
advisors. I purposefully chose the med school location because I have been
diligently trying to "infect" the biomedical teaching and research
community with SD, and this should provide a good vector.
I presented this information to the Cascade Systems Society in Portland of
Fri April 5. It was met with a great deal of interest, with offers for PR
and other support for next year.
We hope that this will be an ongoing event, and we are very interested in
providing written materials, organizational advice, and moral support to
anyone who wishes to follow in our footsteps. Id like to see this expand
into a national event, with significant publicity and scholarship prizes.
In particular, as the outline for the reports gets tuned up we feel that
this will constitute a valuable document regarding the conceptual
development of any new model. This should be useful for teachers and
practioners at many levels.
(Vision: Wouldnt it be nice to find students and/or parents pro-actively
asking their school boards why their school does not provide System
Dynamics training?????)
THREE (3) ACTION ITEMS:
* * 1. SEND COMMENTS by April 15.
It would be very useful for the afternoon presentations if I could include
some brief comments from among the world-wide SD community re this event.
Neither the high school students, nor my medical school colleagues, have
any perspective on the development, uses, difficulties, etc. of System
Dynamics. Comments from noted national and international SD practioners
would add a great deal to this event.
Comments can be long or short; I will extract some concise vignettes for
the presentation.
I would appreciate any comments by April 15. They can be sent by e-mail to:
gallaher@teleport.com
* * 2. SEND MONEY! optional
$$ We have incurred expenses in this project, and if anyone would care to
donate $25 or $50 or $100 it would be appreciated (...so I dont personally
provide all the prizes....) We will note all donations in the program if
received in time. Larger donations of course will be accepted as well,
particularly from corporate sponsors.
Excess funds (if any) will be applied toward future efforts, publication
costs, etc.
Send tax deductible checks to:
Center for Biological System Dynamics or "CBSD". Please denote "SyM Bowl"
on the check.
and mail to:
CBSD
c/o Ed Gallaher
Research Service (151W)
VA Medical Center
Portland OR 97223
* * 3. PLEASE FORWARD THIS POST to SD friends and colleagues.
IN CONCLUSION:
I will keep you posted as this unfolds.
I will attend the K-12 meeting at Wheaton, and the International SD meeting
in Boston in July. Id love to talk to any of you about this initial
event, and about plans for the future.
Thanks,
Ed Gallaher, Ph.D.
Research Pharmacologist
Assoc. Prof. of Physiology/Pharmacology and Behavioral Neuroscience
Director, Center for Biological System Dynamics
Oregon Health Sciences University
Portland OR 97201