Program

Before the Rendezvous

Fill out a survey about your feedback loop (FL) background and interests.
Watch Kastens' video How to Make Causal Loop Diagrams, accessible in the Participants' Workspace.
Either:
- Watch the video about Ch. 6 Leverage Points in Systems based on Chapter 6 from Donella Meadows' book Thinking in Systems, OR
- read Dana Meadow's paper, Leverage Points: Places to intervene in a system.
Optional: If you have any instructional materials that you are already using to teach about feedback loops, and you would be willing to share them with other workshop participants, prepare some copies to bring along, or a handout with a brief description, or send a link to the workshop leaders.

Monday: Thinking about Feedback Loops

8:30 Introductions and overview [Kim]

What do you teach and what feedback loops (FLs) are important in the systems you teach about? (Or what feedback loops are important in your research? Or what FLs do you want to be teaching about?)

9:00 Feedback loops are everywhere [expansive thinking] [Alix]

Small groups
- cast widely for FL instances
- categorize instances into matrix on the wall of positive/negative structure; desirable/undesirable outcomes
Full group debrief

10:00 Break

10:15 How the human mind thinks about feedback loops [Tim]

Presentation interspersed with small group activities.
- challenge of anticipating growth and stability
- thinking about humans in loops (the role of emotion)
- forming loop concepts (aka mental models)
Optional reading: Kastens & Shipley (2023). How does the human mind think and learn about feedback loops? Proceedings of the International Systems Dynamics Conference.

11:20 Roadcheck

11:30 Adjourn for the day

Overnight assignment: If you have not already watched the video on how to make casual loop diagrams (accessible in the Participants' Workspace) do so now.

Tuesday: Finding Feedback Loops

8:30 Good morning and Questions from yesterday,

Overview and goal for today: Students are fairly good at understanding and re-explaining a FL when it is presented to them by a teacher or textbook. Today's challenge is equipping students to find and explicate FLs without a teacher or other authority to point them out.

8:45 Discovering feedback loops and discerning the causal chain [Kim]

Short presentation on clues to the presence of a feedback loop (linguistic, analogical, emotional).
Each table reads a short reading from the popular media, finds the FL contained therein, collectively creates a causal loop diagram (CLD) and a narrative for the discovered FL.
Volunteer tables explicate their loop to the full group, with emphasis on what clues or evidence in the reading supports each link and the full loop.
Full group debrief: Power of the CLD. Power of the narrative.
Optional reading: Kastens & Shipley (2021). Linguistic clues for spotting feedback loops in the wild. Creative Learning Exchange Newsletter 30(2).

9:45 Break

10:00 How to evaluate students' understanding of a feedback loop using their causal loop diagrams and accompanying narratives [Kim]

Small groups: Use simplified rubric to evaluate quality of students' links and loops
Optional reading: Kastens & Shipley (2024) (Acrobat (PDF) PRIVATE FILE 1.2MB Jul10 24). Developing and field-testing a rubric for evaluating students' causal loop diagrams. International Systems Dynamics Conference, Proceedings.

10:30 Finding feedback loops in the field [Logan & Alix]

Example from Barnard Urban Ecology class
Brainstorm suitable field examples relevant to your own class

11:20 Roadcheck

11:30 Adjourn

Overnight assignment: If you haven't watched the Leverage Point video, do so now (or read Dana Meadow's paper.)

Wednesday: Using Feedback Loops

8:30 Good morning and Questions from yesterday

Overview: Today is about using feedback loop thinking to tackle problems and make the world a better place

8:45 Using leverage points to intervene in a system [Alix]

Brief review of leverage points concept with example from a GenEd class
Using feedback loop thinking, leverage points, and CLDs:
- Evaluate alternative interventions that have been proposed to tackle a problem (use leader-provided materials or materials from a workshop participant's course)
- Propose and justify an intervention to tackle a problem (use leader-provided materials or materials from a workshop participant's course)

9:45 Break

10:00 Make a plan to strengthen or infuse FL thinking into your course [Tim]