REPLY How to promote good work (SD6582)

[SDMAIL Schuette, Wade]

Posted by  "Schuette, Wade" <wschuett at jhsph.edu>

Two comments:
 
1) In terms of progress (slow, but progress):
 
  "Systems Thinking" made it in 2006 to being an explicit section of 
  the Master of Public Health Core Competency list of the American 
  Schools of Public Health. (see link at
  http://www.asph.org/document.cfm?page=898 )
 
2) I do think that we might be able to figure out a way to use newer 
web-based collaborative technologies to improve our interactions and 
the resulting products.  It's so "last century" to be deciding whether 
to use a list-server OR a web-based list, let alone a WIKI,  when there 
are technologies that give us the advantage of both and more.
(See examples of "technology-mediated collaboration" at 
http://www.si.umich.edu/research/area.htm?AreaID=3 ).
 
It is slightly embarrassing to me that in 2007 we are arguing on a list-
server over what possible causal factors are for some outcome without 
having candidate shared models posted on an interactive site vith e-mail, 
text-chat, and voice-chat where we can all push and pull on it and slowly 
improve them over time, along the lines of the best open-source development, 
such as Linux.    Maybe that's more a "collaboration" issue than a "modeling" 
issue, but the two overlap strongly. In my book, better collaboration 
bandwidth leads to more growth.   Most likely the issue is "just" this one: 
"Great ... but who has time to set that up for us?" and "Surely it's too 
complicated for us to ever learn."   Again, some new collaboration tools 
address those issues and could be found.  
 
Being set up to collaborate on models with high-bandwidth from a distance 
has a lot of advantages as a tool in anyone's toolkit.   Successful 
modeling is an intrinsically social activity, yes?  Maybe the "socio" part 
of our "sociotechnical" toolkit is the part that needs upgrading. 
 
If a member thinks that X is a reason for a lack of growth in System Dynamics, 
fine, put that forward as one hypothesis and let's all look at the pros and 
cons of it in a model context.  Sell me on it, using the rules we accept for 
good design and model testing.   That seems a reasonable expectation, and maybe 
less emotional than arguing over it.  We need to be "mindful" of outlier 
opinions that challenge our own mental models of how things are, right?
 
Or am I missing some crucial factor?
 
Wade Schuette
Ann Arbor, MI
Posted by  "Schuette, Wade" <wschuett at jhsph.edu>
posting date  Wed, 5 Sep 2007 15:49:44 -0400