First a general question:
1) I am still working on last week's readings; while I continue to "train myself" to read 100 pages in 1 hour (I've been reading for about 9 hours total and have 2 articles left from last week), should I just leave the old readings behind or keep trying to catch up and fall farther behind?
Sterman 2002 thoughts: Complex systems are harder to understand (even with multiple mistakes on the same system in decision-making processes), and therefore harder to learn from. Well...yeah! This seemed to be the point of more than the first half of the paper. The strength of this paper definitely seems to be in Figure 8 (and surrounding text), where the "virtual world" is used as a "stepping stone" in understanding real world complex systems. Still though, the learner must experience real-world complexity to try out any new decision-making (mental models). I'd like to see/hear more examples about this (to see how it apply it to teaching of complex biological concepts).
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You have until next Tuesday to finish all assigned readings, and I am sure you can do it. The speed with which you all read right now may be much slower than 100pages/hour since it is the first time you are learning about these topics- so some of you do not have an established schema that will help you make sense of the readings. However, as you start learning more and making conceptual connections, your reading speed will increase (see mental model theory in model based learning articles). Also, pay attention to what the weekly goal of the articles are. If you engage in intentional reading, that should also help increase the speed. However, I understand that some theory-based articles will take more time to read/digest and that is normal. Those are the important ones. The other articles help you understand how the theory base is applied (e.g. research or application articles)---these will go faster but pay attention to how it is applied or researched.
Sterman article, for instance, that could have been skimmed through faster since there are a few main ideas, which could have been explained in a much shorter paper. That is one interesting paper- every year a few hates it a few loves it. I like it because when it was written it was one of the first of its kind but I guess I will have to find a replacement paper that provides similar ideas in a more succinct fashion.
Another note Deniz gave during lecture: When she has lots of reading, she reads the abstract/intro, then skims paper for figures/main sections. This helps her build a mental map before she decides what to delve into more deeply (and in what order).
Right, Deniz? :)
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