• STELLA Helps Georgia Legislators Investigate Childhood Obesity
• Diana Fisher Shares Thoughts on Teaching Systems Modeling
• What's New from isee systems?
• Upcoming Modeling Workshop, April 11-13th

Rachel Ferencik
GA Health Policy Center
  

An abundance of data can often get people to agree that a problem exists. Driving consensus on policies that will successfully address the problem is more difficult. A STELLA model created by the Georgia Health Policy Center, part of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University, is working to do just that.

In 2008, a grant from the Robert Woodruff Foundation supported the GA Health Policy Center’s efforts to educate state legislators on health policy. That led to development of the Legislative Health Policy Certificate Program, a course of 8 educational sessions that use Systems Thinking to involve state senators, representatives and staff members in an exploration of health policy topics. To earn a certificate, participants must attend six of the eight sessions.

“We were cautioned that legislators wouldn’t attend,” says Rachel Ferencik, Research Associate at the Policy Center. “People did come. There is a real hunger for information. This program offers 24 hours of information, discussion, and collaborative work spread over eight months. We’re really proud that we awarded 15 certificates in 2008 and 19 in 2009 and that, while they didn’t earn a certificate, even more people attended one or more program sessions.”

Ferencik also reports that program attendees were very positive about the Systems Thinking approach followed in the sessions. They also wanted to learn more about childhood obesity and investigate policy-driven ways to reduce its impact on the state of Georgia. The natural next step was to initiate a collaborative Systems Thinking model that focused on childhood obesity.

A small grant from the Georgia Health Foundation supported a team of 12 people, mostly volunteers, who spent five months gathering research data and developing a childhood obesity model using STELLA. The group was led by Chris Soderquist of Pontifex Consulting who uses Systems Thinking and STELLA to help its clients understand and improve complex systems.

“The Childhood Obesity model focuses on policy solutions; levers that are available to the legislature,” says Ferencik. “We identified policy interventions that the state could actually implement.”

Those policy interventions were:

• Increase the proportion of school-aged children who walk to school
• Reimburse for Medical Nutrition Therapy by Georgia Medicaid Care Management Organizations
• Impose limitations on a la carte foods sold in public schools
• Increase the number of minutes of Physical Education in school every week and improve the quality of PE activities
• Increase the number of licensed preschool programs that incorporate a nutrition education and physical activity component into existing curriculum
• Increase the number of elementary and middle school children participating in after school programs that meet specified nutrition and activity standards

Using a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) model that explores the obesity issue for all age groups, Soderquist built a base model that includes children ages 2 – 18. The model follows children over 10 years of time, 2008 to 2018, showing how they move through four weight categories and how interventions improve their Body Mass Index (BMI). Besides looking for positive changes in BMI, participants were looking for energy imbalances – differences between calories that are taken in and calories burned.

“The STELLA model allowed legislators to change one or multiple policies using sliders,” says Ferencik. “For example, they might look at the impact of 15% of public schools eliminating a la carte foods from school grounds and then move the slider up to 100% to look for changes. The STELLA dashboard is very intuitive so it was accessible to all participants, even those that aren’t technical by training.”

The model has been used in learning labs that are part of the certificate program. Ferencik explains that participant workgroups are encouraged to discuss policy options before running the model. “One participant might say, ‘It’s ridiculous to put all kids in afterschool programs’ and their colleagues can ask, ‘What is realistic?’ Running the model together, they see, for example, that involving just 60% of kids in afterschool programs that incorporate nutrition education and appropriate activity makes a big difference. With the model as a tool, no one can just dismiss a policy option.”

While the childhood obesity model is backed by current, scientific data, it is also driven by educated assumptions. “At the Policy Center, we often translate scientific research for policy makers,” says Karen Minyard, Director of the Center. “With the model, we’re providing intense translation; a way to bring the best scientific evidence on childhood obesity to policymakers. The assumptions in the model are transparent. Legislators are comfortable with the assumptions and since the model is backed by data and constructed by people including legislative staffers, they really trust it.”

The model has already influenced legislation. There is now a Georgia law requiring fitness testing in school that Ferencik feels is in part attributable to legislative exposure to the certification program and the childhood obesity model in particular. And it has been enlightening to learn that by simply enforcing legislation that is in place, the state can make positive inroads towards decreasing childhood obesity rates in Georgia.

Without additional funding the model will stay focused on the 2008 – 2018 timeframe. Ferencik says that the model will be extended to measure the cost effectiveness of the policies in the model and the large costs of obesity which typically hit in adulthood. Meanwhile, she and her colleagues are eager to share the childhood obesity model through academic meetings and conferences.

“Systems Thinking and STELLA really make sense for investigating public policy issues like this,” says Ferencik. “It’s just the right way to work.”

Diana Fisher
Wilson High School
 

What inspired you to learn about systems modeling and use it in your high school math classes?

I decided to try population models with my second year algebra class. Those students also had a really positive reaction. I thought that STELLA would make the structure of a math problem, in this case population growth, clear for them and that’s exactly what happened.

Those experiences gave me the incentive to learn and do more. The software got me interested and then I started learning more about system dynamics.

How did you go about learning more?

Diana:  Nancy Roberts’ book Introduction to Computer Simulations: A System Dynamics Modeling Approach got me off the ground and I learned from several leaders in the fields of Systems Thinking and system dynamics. I saw Barry Richmond speak at a K-12 conference in Tuscon. He was very inspirational. I was lucky to be in one of the groups of K-12 teachers that George Richardson, a consummate system dynamics teacher, was working with. I started writing lessons for my classes. I really liked Nancy Roberts’ book but I couldn’t teach from it.

Is that why you decided to write a book, to provide a resource that instructors could “teach from"?

Diana:  At first I just wanted to write enough lessons to keep the students in both my algebra and modeling classes engaged in building small STELLA models to replicate the types of behavior over time scenarios we were already studying. The use of system dynamics modeling fits hand-in-glove with most of the mathematics we want students to learn at the high school level. As I started to learn more about system dynamics, my lessons started to include feedback analysis and other components of the system dynamics modeling method.

In 1993, I received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to train high school math, science, and social studies teachers in modeling. I directed the grant and training, kept teaching modeling in the Portland, Oregon inner city high school where I was co-director of the Systems Program, and wrote even more lessons. My classes grew and the lesson writing continued. That led to a second NSF grant that included more training and still more lesson writing. The core group of teachers involved in the NSF training shared lessons which helped accelerate everyone’s understanding of Systems Thinking and system dynamics.

Someone suggested that I write a book and it seemed like a good idea for a few reasons. Most teachers just don’t have the time to write their own lessons and that would get in the way of inspiring systems modeling education. We also wanted the lesson structure to promote Systems Thinking as well as teach modeling. The lessons for traditional equation-based math classes were different than for modeling classes. We wanted that to be clear. Without Steve Peterson, who critiqued the first edition of the book, I would not have felt confident releasing these lessons for publication.

Was the book immediately successful?

Diana:  Well, it was the first of its kind, there was no competitor! It was written for high school teachers but it caught the attention of business professionals and academics that want to teach themselves to use modeling in their classes or work. Since the book included a set of lessons and models, offered answers, and gave permission to re-use the lessons it was seen as a great investment.

What led you to the second and then third editions?

Diana:  I always send my book drafts to Jay Forrester to get his opinion. Debra Lyneis, who worked with K – 12 teachers to apply system dynamics to the classroom, really enhanced the books with her recommendations. Their suggestions, feedback from students, and my own classroom experience led to the second and third editions.

It’s been important to get beyond the software, which is what gets people excited, to lessons that help students understand a problem, how the problem’s system behaves, how we can change the system, and how to look for unintended consequences.

Again, equations are too abstract to do all those things. They force us to oversimplify and strip out the interesting parts of problems. Together, Systems Thinking and STELLA give students a way to visualize all parts of a problem. I had a student that was able to explore the problem of why there weren’t enough hybrid cars available in the market. That student couldn’t have thought about that problem with equations. With lessons on Systems Thinking and modeling and how to use STELLA, he could.

What does the third edition add?

Diana:  The third edition really completes the book. It includes most of the important concepts that are needed to teach a comprehensive high school course in systems modeling. Besides adding an "Introduction to Oscillations", it includes additional lessons on feedback loops like "Explaining a Feedback Loop" and "Transfer of Loop Dominance". There were concepts I kept re-explaining to students in class and decided they should be in the book!

Specifying units is another thing I always have to talk about with students. It can be hard to keep units consistent in a large model and so I added a lesson that shows them how to use the software to check for unit consistency.

I learned about starting a model in equilibrium from James Lyneis and now there’s a short lesson on that. Some of the system dynamics classes I took at Worcester Polytechnic Institute reinforced the importance of model testing, so the new "Pollution Model" lesson incorporates significant testing concepts. Barry Richmond always pushed to have students tell the story of their model and a new document helps them use STELLA’s storytelling feature to unfold their model for an audience.

Many of my students said that the lesson in how to prepare to build an original model was extremely helpful to them. A new chapter called "Class Demonstration of a News Article" uses a Newsweek story to guide them through the necessary prep work: identifying the systems involved, focusing on one, specifying variables, determining reference behaviors, and forming a hypothesis. This chapter is designed to help a new modeling teacher follow this process. It explains the process step by step, using an example I have used many times with my students.

With the book complete, what’s next for you?

Diana:  Systems modeling is the most exciting thing I’ve ever learned or taught. I really believe it is essential for the next generation if they are going to be able to tackle the problems they’ll face. As Jay Forrester says, we can’t change mental models or behavior just by providing a logical argument. We have to build models.

We’re not going to get anywhere in teaching systems modeling without K-12 teachers. I want to interest and teach them through workshops. I also want to write professional articles that would support their interest in modeling and provide leverage with administrators and other curriculum and professional development decision-makers involved with K-12 education. We, in K-12 Systems Thinking/system dynamics education, need to back up all our strong anecdotal evidence on the power of systems modeling with data that shows how it provides tools for enhancing the analytical skills we need kids to develop.

Right now I’m a student at Portland State University in the Systems Science department. I want to figure out how to collect the data we need to prove the power of teaching systems modeling to students. We have to present data so that adults will ask, “Why don’t my kids have access to this?”

I’m passionate about teaching systems modeling and I’m willing to devote the rest of my career to it.

New Products & Online Training

·  Custom Map Building ·  Building Systemic Understanding with Storytelling ·  Modeling Dynamic Systems: Lessons for a First Course Third Edition by Diana M. Fisher

Recorded Webinars

·  Introduction to Storytelling by Chris Soderquist ·  Exploring Options for Creating Online Simulations by Jeremy Merritt and Michael Bean

isee systems blog — Making Connections

·  Using PEST to Calibrate Models ·  Shifting the Burden ·  And more...

Upcoming Modeling Workshop, April 11-13th

Introduction to Dynamic Modeling with STELLA and iThink   Hosts: isee systems Lexidyne, LLC Dates: April 11-13, 2011 Location: Loews Hotel New Orleans New Orleans, LA Discounts: 20% Educational discount To learn more or to register, visit www.iseesystems.com/workshop