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What Can Systems Thinkers Learn from Educational Game Studies | Scott DeJong + Geoff Evamy-Hill | Systems Thinking Ontario 2024-01-15

January 22, 2024
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For the January 2024 Systems Thinking Ontario session, educational game designer Scott DeJong and innovation designer Geoff Evamy Hill joined a conversation moderated by Zaid Khan.  Mutual interests in the new field of educational design and games were at the core of the discussion.  This was an opportunity for systems thinkers to expand their knowledge on developments that were not in present in the 20th century.

After the usual round of self-introduction by web conference participants, Scott and Geoff described their experiences in the field, and ongoing research questions.  The conversation was segmented into three parts, so that participants had the opportunity to inject questions and comments.

This recording of the session is available on Youtube, as well as on the Internet Archive .

Video H.264 MP4
January 15
(1h48m)		 [20240115_ST-ON_EducationalGameStudies ScottDeJong_GeoffEvamyHill.m4v
(1920×1080 921kbps 814MB)
[on the Internet Archive]

A standalone audio was also created during the meeting.

Audio
January 14
(1h48m)		 [20240115_ST-ON_EducationalGameStudies ScottDeJong_GeoffEvamyHill.m4a]
(126kbps, 99 MB)
[on the Internet Archive]

Here is the core of original abstract sent in advance.

— begin excerpt —

‘Learning’ is a central focus for systems thinkers. Whether it’s an attitude, a feature of a system, or an outcome. ‘Learning’ runs through systems thinking. So what might systems thinkers learn from games that are designed for, well, learning?

Enter “Educational Game Studies”, an emerging field that focuses on how games and their systems can inform the public about various issues.… Read more (in a new tab)

What Systems Thinkers Can Learn From Historical Synthesis | Dr. Michael Bonner | Systems Thinking Ontario 2023-11-13

November 23, 2023
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For the November 2023 Systems Thinking Ontario session, historian and policy advisor Dr. Michael Bonner was invited for an interview by Zaid Khan.  In organizing the sessions, we’re trying to avoid the trap of systems thinking becoming a discipline, through learning with a sweeping-in process.

The session opened on a map of The Sassanid Empire c. 620 CE, also known as Second Persian Empire, a high point for the Iranian civilizations before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th–8th centuries.

As the web conference participants introduced themselves, the number of responses with a strong background in history was low.  Zaid led the interview of Michael with some probing questions:

  • How did you come to the study of history and its overlap with your work?
  • Can you draw on the methods that help historians to ask the right questions when historians are dealing with multiple worldviews?
  • How do you relate between the two modes of analytical and synthetic thinking?
  • How do historians grapple with drawing boundaries around the areas/topics of study that they look at?
  • In historical synthesis, at what point does the author may form a narrative that captures their analysis and synthesis?
  • How did you approach the narratives – clarity, beauty, order – that you form in your latest book In Defense of Civilization?

Further into the meeting, others were invited to join in with their questions and comments.

This recording of the session is available on Youtube, as well as on the Internet Archive .… Read more (in a new tab)

The Sweep-In Process of Systems Science (Churchman)

November 23, 2023
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It the systems sciences are an open system, then learning more and more about systems of interest are foundational.  This was called a sweep-in process by C. West Churchman, in the heritage of Edgar A. Singer. Jr.  A concise definition is found in the entry on “Experimentalism” in the International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics:

EXPERIMENTALISM

A methodology of inquiry that assumes the indissoluble interconnection between facts and scientific laws.

Experimentalism has been proposed by E.A. SINGER Jr. and developed by C.W. CHURCHMAN and R.L. ACKOFF. [….]

According to C.W. CHURCHMAN, the “original question becomes more and more complicated, not simpler and simpler. This learning “more and more” is what, following SINGER, I call the “sweep-in process” of systems science” (1981, p.1-2).

  • CHURCHMAN, C. West.  “An Appreciation of E.A. Singer Jr: the first Singer lecture”. Soc. Syst. Science. Dpt, Univ. Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1981.

There’s a more detailed exposition on sweeping-in from the last chapter in the 1982 book, Thought and Wisdom.  This hard-to-find source is fortunately available on the Internet Archive.  An excerpt is provided here, for convenience.

CHAPTER 10: AN APPRECIATION OF EDGAR ARTHUR SINGER, JR.

* Given 12 September 1981 as the First Edgar Arthur Singer, Jr., Lecture of the Busch Center at Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. This paper was completed in April 1982.

I have selected the title of this chapter rather carefully. An appreciation of someone’s lifetime work is not just an evaluation; it is also a process of adding to and adjusting the results of that lifetime of creation of ideas and a system of philosophy.… Read more (in a new tab)

Explaining Systems Changes Learning | RSD12 | 2023-10-14

November 20, 2023
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For the Relating Systems and Design RSD12 symposium on October 14, 2023, members of the Explainers subgroup of the Systems Changes Learning Circle conducted an in-person workshop on “Explaining Systems Changes Learning: Metaphors and translations” at OCADU in Toronto.

RSD12 included both in-person sessions and online sessions. In the planning phase for the symposium, our group outlined the approach we would take.

In the abstract, we opened up the challenge of explaining systems thinking as a general topic, with Systems Changes Learning as one (of many) approaches to systems thinking.

Abstract

Have you ever found difficulty in explaining systems or design concepts to possible collaborators? While the general public has arguably picked up on the idea of ‘a system’, moving that understanding to a working dialogue is often harder than it sounds.

In this workshop, we’ll explore how to engage with difficult systems concepts with a variety of audiences, using ‘Systems Changes Learning’ as a backdrop.

This workshop topic is informed by the Systems Changes Learning Circle, which originated in 2019 on a 10-year year discovery journey to investigate the idea of system(s) and their associated change(s). In particular, the workshop will focus on the current ‘hub and spoke’ process of systems changes, and will dive into the idea of rhythmic shifts within systems (Ing, 2022b). This topic provides an introduction to Systems Changes in general, as well as a compelling element of systems changes that truly requires better ‘explanation’.

In this workshop, participants will engage with the subtlety and difficulty of sharing systems and design concepts when faced with a wide variation in ‘systems literacy’.

… Read more (in a new tab)

Anticipatory Systems, Evolution, and Extinction Cascades | Judith Rosen | ST-ON 2023-10-16

November 10, 2023
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Judith Rosen agreed to give an online presentation for the Systems Thinking Ontario meeting in October 2023, after we converted her in-person meeting at OCADU in August into a discussion circle.  Channelling the anticipatory systems approach of her father, mathematical biologist Robert Rosen, Judith has been extended those ideas in her own continuing observation of living systems.

This recording of the session is available on Youtube, as well as on the Internet Archive .

Video H.264 MP4
October 16
(1h53m)		 [20231016_ST-ON_Rosen AnticipatorySystems 925kbps_1760x900.m4v]
(1760×900 925kbps 883MB)
[on the Internet Archive]

An audio has been extracted from the video.

Audio
October 16
(1h53m)		 [20231016_ST-ON Rosen_AnticipatorySystems.mp3]
(110 MB)
[on the Internet Archive]

A copy of the research article is posted on the wiki.st-on.org .  Here’s the original abstract.

When we think about evolution — specifically the entailment underlying the process of change in species of living organisms, over eons of time, which we call “evolution” — and as we seek to increase our scientific understanding of it, one glaring omission is that there is no mention of the fact that living organisms manifest patterns of behavior that are radically different from non-living systems. Life does not just react, the way all non-living systems do; life also Anticipates. Therefore, we need to factor in the Anticipatory nature of all life into our models (both our mental models and scientific models) and see where that leads us in our understanding.… Read more (in a new tab)

Appreciating systems changes via multiparadigm inquiry (SRBS)

November 6, 2023
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An article related to the ISSS plenary talk of July 2022 has now passed the peer review process, and is published in early view for Systems Research and Behavioral Science.  It should shortly be printed in the November issue of SRBS that serves as the General Systems Yearbook.

Update on Nov. 22, 2023: A full-text, read-only version is available via the author on Article Share https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/YEVWGPGURZ5IVE7AWQRM?target=10.1002/sres.2973

Those without institutional access to journals can contact me, and I’ll send you a copy.  The article is otherwise embargoed until September 2025, at which point it can be self-archived with open access on the Coevolving Commons publications website.

The process of review, with a helpful editor, sharpens and shortens the content.  This formally published version is about 5,000 words.  The original manuscript that appears in the 2022 proceedings is about 15,000 words.  Since I cite a lot of published works of others, I prefer to embed long quotations from the original sources, so that I can keep the original meanings clear.  The extra details enable a diligent reader to not have to cross-reference and look up extended research sources, at the risk of being tedious for researchers who are familiar with that territory.

The article concludes with the following acknowledgement;

This research has been guided since 2019 by the core members of the Systems Changes Learning Circle: Zaid Khan, Dan Eng and Kelly Okamura. We have benefitted by the largess offered on the Open Learning Commons and Digital Life Collective by Robert Best.

… Read more (in a new tab)

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