Creating Systems Sensibility in at-Risk Middle Schools: An Oregon State University Science & Math Investigative Learning Experiences Project

 

Purpose

The project was conducted in collaboration with the Oregon State University’s Science and Math Investigative Learning Experiences (SMILE) Program. SMILE is a pre-college program at Oregon State University that helps lower-income, ethnic-minority, and educationally-underrepresented middle and high school students in rural Oregon pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math fields. The project was introduced to increase systems thinking sensibility for SMILE students.

 

Goal

The goal of this project was to increase systems thinking sensibility through an educational module. The module is composed of four lessons, each considering different aspects on how humans influence, and are influenced by, systems every day. The modules were developed as part of the requirements to complete a two-term course at Oregon State University: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Capstone Senior Design. 

Rural Oregon teachers teach SMILE lessons to select middle and high school students in after-school clubs. Given the unique objectives and customers of SMILE, the module developed had to be:

  1. comprehensive enough so students could achieve systemic sensibility,
  2. simple enough for teachers to learn and prepare for each lesson in 30 minutes, or less,
  3. simple enough for students ages 12 - 17 to understand, and
  4. engaging enough that students would retain and utilize systems thinking skills as they progress through their education.

 

Methodology

The final educational module contains the following four lessons:

  1. Defining a System,
  2. System Hierarchies,
  3. Emergent Properties, and
  4. Feedback Loops.

The effectiveness and efficacy of the module was partially validated following three validation methods: 1) SMILE program provided an approval of completion to validate module and lesson-based requirements, 2) Educator and student-based requirements were validated through a combination of lesson demonstrations, a systems thinking expert panel, and a teacher questionnaire, 3) fulfillment of the Capstone Senior Design Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering course.

The systems thinking educational module has been delivered to SMILE at the end of this project for distribution at Oregon’s middle and high-schools. The sponsor finalized and published the module for SMILE clubs to use. The SMILE program has been tasked with tracking module use and feedback over time to ensure continued project success. As future work, a revision of the current four lessons is required, in addition to the development of a fifth lesson focused on the systems thinking concept of perspectives, which could further achieve systems sensibility for SMILE teachers and students.

 

Research Paper

      1. Taylor, S., Calvo-Amodio, J., & Well, J. (2020). “A Method for Measuring Systems Thinking Learning”. Systems, 8(2), 11.


 Photo by Kendra Rosencrans © 2017