REPLY Who wants to share models (SD6870)

[SDMAIL martin]

Posted by  martin at utalca.cl

Dear Bill,

I tried to explain what I meant in a reply to Magne's questions - I reproduce
the answers below, because they will show you what I meant with "collaborative".

Beyond these explanations, I find what you write extremely relevant: being able
to compare different versions of a model would make it easier to "see" traces of
learning that has been going on.

Here come the answers, I hope you'll find them helpful:

In recent years, "collaborative" learning has become more and more
important/mentioned.  It refers to when students/pupils work together in order
to learn something.  A typical example of software are shared sketchpads, but
I've also seen an application that would allow several tudents to jointly
develop system diagrams (over the Internet).

The purpose is allowing students to learn "better", drawing upon their
individually different knowledge resources and to benefit from interaction. 
"Better" means that they reach a learning outcome more easily or that they
achieve depper learning.  

The immedtiate product would be a simulation model that has been jointly
developed by several individuals. 

The participants would be the students or pupils and one or several lecturers. 
I have only one example for "how it is done".  With one of my courses, we are
currently starting to adapt David Wheat's "MacroLab" model (which deals with the
US economy) to the Chilean economy.  There are 10 sectors or submodels, and
there is a group of (2-3) students assigned to each sector.  Each group has to
understand the current form of "their" sector and build a nev version that is
addapted to Chile.  They cannot to this without interacting with the other
groups (sectors).  Since we work with the "iThink" software, how can they
organize their interactions?  If each group was able to maintain and share
"their" sector, but their part of the whoe model can be shared and interact with
he other sector models, they could easily do this.  However, in the current
situation they will need to look at two separated files, which doubtlessly rises
the cognitive load.  (I hope this description is understandable.) 

The end-result (at least in the case I described) is not so much the resulting
model as the resulting mental models (understanding) of the students.  This may
look like a rather volatile end-result, and its benefits would still have to be
assessed (but I believe this can be done). 

I admit that in this case, I woud not think so much in a repository for finished
models.  Quite the contrary, future groups of students whould have to re-do
their own effort in order to construct their mental models.  However, once you
have sharable models that can interact (let's say over the Internet), one can
also think of a diferent situation.

John Morecroft's textbook starts with a fishery example where readers can use
the model on the CD to play and dig in.  If I could, I'd make my students
organize into several groups, each representing one fishery firm.  They'd hve to
develop their analysis of the situation and their policies in the form of a
model, and then the "game" or "simulation" would be the reiterated interaction
of their models with a separate model (that implements the "physics" of the fish
resources).  We would then have a very clear statement of policies (the models)
and a simulation that shows the dynamics consequences.  In such a scenario, a
set of models may exist in a repository, available to be used or customized.

Still, all I'm talking about takes place in educational settings.

Best greetings,
Martin
Posted by  martin at utalca.cl
posting date  Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:35:13 -0400