Assessing Students' Understanding of Complex Systems Assessing
student understanding of complex thinking is quite challenging.
As with assessing student learning on any topic, the first step
is to identify your learning goals for your students. Once you
have identified learning goals, it becomes easier to choose one
or more assessment tools appropriate to the task. Here is a list
of possible learning objectives related to students' thinking
about complex systems (i.e., skills expected from students who
exhibit complex systems thinking). While this is in no way
intended to be a comprehensive list of possible learning goals,
it may help you to articulate your own list. A student who
demonstrates complex systems thinking can: - Identify and
explain the characteristics of a complex system - Describe
and/or model a process where there is a feedback mechanism at
work - Build a model that mimics the expected behavior of the
target system - Identify stocks/reservoirs and flows - Correctly
identify positive/negative f