Thinking and Teaching about Feedback Loops

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

12:00 pm PT | 1:00 pm MT | 2:00 pm CT | 3:00 pm ET

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Presenters

Kim Kastens, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University
Thomas F. (Tim) Shipley, Department of Psychology, Temple University

Webinar Description

Positive feedback loops are familiar to most Earth and environmental scientists as amplifiers of global climate change--but did you realize that this same causal structure drives hostility between nations, pandemic spread, and viral marketing? Negative feedback loops may be familiar as regulators of predator/prey systems, but did you realize that the same causal structure also controls body temperature, composition of blood, and water level in your toilet? Help your students learn about feedback systems in the geosciences and then go beyond your course content to use their feedback loop thinking to solve problems and understand the world.

Webinar goals

In this webinar, we will:

• Review what positive and negative feedback loops are, and why they are important to teach and learn about
• Encourage the teaching of feedback loops as a generalizable habit of mind, applicable across many domains of personal and professional life, rather than as an explanation for one specific Earth phenomenon
• Share two teaching strategies, along with their cognitive underpinnings, that can be used stand-alone or adapted to augment your current feedback loop teaching: (1) Extract the schema, and (2) causal loop diagrams.

Resources

Presentation:

• Webinar Presentation Slides (PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) 12.6MB Apr26 22)

Posts from Earth & Mind about feedback loops:

• What do Covid-19, climate change, feuds and explosions have in common? by Kim Kastens & Tim Shipley
• Why are feedback loops difficult to teach and learn? by Kim Kastens

Activity sheet for the Mutual Alignment student activity, from the On Cutting Edge Reviewed Collection

• Feedback Loops by Alexandra Davatzes

Posts from :Systems Thinker on causal loop diagrams

• Causal Loop Construction: The Basics
• Fine-tuning your Causal Loop Diagrams by John Sterman

Logistics

Duration: 1 hour
Format: Presentations will take place through a Zoom Meeting screen-sharing session. The webinar will be recorded.
Accessing the Webinar: Instructions for joining the webinar will be emailed to participants the day before the event. Learn more about accessing the webinar.
Questions? Please contact Bradlee Cotton (bcotton@carleton.edu) if you have any questions about this event.