SD for Community Planning

[Chris Schroeder]

I have recently been granted an opportunity to pursue something that I have
dreamed of for years. This involves working with a leadership group within
our community to help them develop a clear vision to guide future
initiatives-using SD. What is exciting is that they are willing, as a
group, to invest time in learning more about this "SD thing" and using this
as the basis for developing and maintaining the vision. Apparently, my
persistent references to feedback loops, time lags, and occasional influence
diagrams over the years have finally taken hold.

I have a fair amount of experience in applying SD methodologies to help
organizations, but mostly in the private sector (understanding value chain
dynamics, institutional and market behavior, etc.). However, I have not had
the opportunity to attempt to do this with an audience that is this broad
and diverse to address the issues of the community that are this broad and
diverse.

I would appreciate any suggestions or experiences anyone might have in
regard to working with diverse community groups in this manner.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Chris

______________________________________________
R. Christopher Schroeder
AEC / Centrec
rcs@centrec.com

[paulnewton@attglobal.net]

Chris,

In my opinion the problem for SD in a community is not working on one or
two community issues using SD, but rather the sustainability of system
dynamics capacity and utilizatoin within the community. To address this
issue in Door County and Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, we combined a
community SD initiative with introducing system dynamics in the local
high school.

The idea is that high school students use community and sponsoring
business problems as the problem sources for their learning of system
dynamics. Of course, they must engage their community and the
sponsoring businesses in order to build useful models. Also, the high
school teachers who initially learn SD continue to introduce more and
more teachers to SD, hopefully at lower and lower grade levels, with the
intent that eventually students will be entering high school with
systems thinking and modeling skills, and there will be less need for a
specific course in "system dynamics."

Also, our opinion is that one must pique interest in SD by those people
who facilitate community groups who are working on community problems.
These facilitators must learn how to use qualitative SD tools in their
facilitation of groups, and they must also appreciate the value that is
offered by quantitative SD. They must know when, and when it is the
right time, on a specific problem, to begin to use modeling. Initially,
they could use some high school students for the modeling work, perhaps
with support from outside modelers such as yourself.

Specifically, we taught an introductory SD course in one of the local
high schools. The students consisted of 5 sophomores, 4 high school
teachers from two high schools, and 4 community activists. The class
met twice per week for almost one academic year, on one weeknight and on
Saturday mornings. We used curriculum from Diana Fisher, Jeff Potash and
John Heinbokel, and from the book entitled, "Introduction to Urban
Dynamics" by Louis Alfeld and Alan Graham.

Since the course, much has happened. One of the teachers has created
and taught two or three years of introductory and intermediate courses
in SD in one of the high schools. Two of the other teachers use SD
extensively in their social studies classes. There has been more
education of additional teachers. One of the community activists is a
professor at a local university and is using SD in his social science
classes. He is also developing an extension course for K-12 teachers to
be offered by the universitys education extension.

Unfortunately I hear that budget restrictions are creating cutbacks in
the numbers of teachers in the local high school, and that the system
dynamics courses may therefore be withdrawn to focus on more "core"
courses. We are thinking of what to do about this. One suggestion that
has been made is for the teachers who have been using SD increase the
amount of SD education they do for their fellow teachers, with the hope
that, more teachers will use systems in their classrooms.

Id be delighted to speak with you more about this.

Paul Newton

StewardshipModeling.com
607-255-5230
pcn4@cornell.edu

["Anastassios Perdicoulis"]

At the moment we are doing a similar project in Portugal - please, see the
"Vila Real modelling project" at the EDAWs R&D section
(www.utad.pt/~tasso/edaw).

What we have been doing in terms of information inputs is the following: a
nucleus of four people (three from the municipality and one "modeller" from
the university) are modelling the system in question with their existing
knowledge. In the near future, various specialists/ experts shall be
formally invited to participate and interact with the nucleus. At a later
stage, the wider public shall be also invited to participate in discussions.

To prepare these diverse interaction groups, a series of seminars has been
planned (the first seminar is starting next Monday) to explain what we are
doing, how we are doing it, what instruments we are using, the language we
are using, etc. The seminars are held at the university, are free of
charge, and open to the whole community. Even if the attendance is low for
the wide public, at least the nucleus is obliged to participate. Some
specialists/ experts are expected to attend, too.

So far we have been working fine, and it has been a rewarding experience.
More on the project shall be posted at the EDAW site, and possibly in other
media, as well.

Regards
AP

---
Anastassios Perdicoulis
www.utad.pt/~tasso
From: "Anastassios Perdicoulis" <tasso@utad.pt>