Design to Learn about Complex Systems

Hmelo, C.E., Holton, D.L., & Kolodner, J.L. (2000). Designing to learn about complex systems. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 9(3), 247-298

The paper is about how to enhance the learning of the complex systems, such as car engine, human respiratory system, etc. Complex systems are the ones that are not actually being fully understood by the children. The paper suggests design activities in order to help children acquire a deeper understanding of such complex systems. In the paper, an experiment is reported. In the design experiment, 6th grade children are asked to design artificial lungs in order to let them learn human respiration in a better way.
The paper builds on Perkins’ “knowledge as design“approach, in which Perkins suggested helping students view systems as designs instead of defining the parts, and memorizing the definitions as in the traditional approach. Perkins’ approach addresses the functional roles; the mechanisms by which the roles are carried out; and the way the functions are interact with each other. However it doesn’t encourage the students to be engaged in such learning. Learning by Design, LBD, approach helps the students to be involved actively with the design and modeling activities to learn. Goals of the LBD approach:
1)      The extent which a design approach could be used to help children learn.
2)      Examine Structure-Behavior-Function(SBF) relations
3)      Investigate ways of implementing a design approach, answering the questions: What design challenges? How help students remain focused? How to endure the content is covered? How to organize the activity to promote deep understanding?
Why are complex systems difficult to be covered?
Systems are dynamic entities, their organizational levels are difficult to visualize. Also, one reason could be the way the individuals are introduced to these systems in the traditional way.
Structure-Behavior-Function (SBF):
Structure refers to the physical structure, e.g. lungs in a respiratory system
Function refers to the purpose of the system. E.g. respiratory system transports oxygen throughout the body to the organs that require it.
Behavior refers to the dynamic mechanism and workings that allow the structures to carry out their function. Problem of understanding the behavior of a system is because it is most of the time invisible (e.g electrical impulses traveling through nerves) and it is time-delayed causality.
So through design challenges and modeling activities that focus on behavior and function rather than just structure would help the students move form novice to more expert understanding of systems.
Designing affords such understanding
(Lehrer, Perkins)By designing students are constructing rather than receiving knowledge.
(Kolodner et al)During the process of designing, the students construct, apply, and evaluate models. They test and discuss their design with each other.
Linn suggests the need for multiple iterations during modeling to help them construct progressively. In this way, they can seek answers to their problems during the modeling. They test and seek out better models.
Implementing LBD
When children conduct experiments they usually care about creating the outcome rather than the understanding, since the outcome is a concrete product whereas understanding is more abstract.
To be able to promote LBD, one has to:
1)      Find a balance between having students work on design activities and reflecting.
2)      Give real world knowledge without overwhelming the students with irrelevant aspects of the world.
3)      Maintain the understanding the concept more important than completing the task.
Authors’ initial approach was problem-based learning (PBL), an implementation that focuses on learning by complex problem solving activity.
How does PBL session work?
FACTS: While working on understanding the problem students stop to reflect on the data they collect
IDEAS: potential solutions to the problem they are working on
LEARNING ISSUES: concepts they need to learn more about to solve the problem
ACTION PLAN: they develop a plan for proceeding
Since PBL was not enough to manage construction and testing activities, authors added case-based reasoning (CBR) to the PBL implementation, to keep students focus on the design challenge. CBR focuses on storing problem solving experiences (cases), indexing them so they could be found by ways of searching and adapting the solutions to old cases to solve new problems. This shows that learning is an iterative process: for deep understanding one has to fail, and then need to explain why failed, because he is motivated to explain the failure once he fails.
CBR also keeps pointers such that one can transfer what he has learned in a situation to a new situation.
In the class, students need to actually build and test based on their understanding, and get feedback from testing, then explain what happened, and revise the understanding and try again. This leads to multiple cycles of designing, constructing, testing, explaining, and revising to the PBL framework.

Authors’ original conception of LBD (by using PBL together with CBR):
Groups of 3 or 4, for construction, testing, redesign activities;
Planning, monitoring done as a whole class activity facilitated by the teacher;
A whiteboard as the device for recording shared experiences, ideas, sights, questions.

The Design Experiment
There were 42 students, 6th grade, heterogeneous group, who spent 2 weeks for the experiment, in two classrooms, one is LBD setup and other is comparison classroom.

The students were asked to solve a design problem, which asked them to design an artificial lung and build a model of some piece of the design.

The kids are given resources online/books about human respiratory system. For the PBL process, the teacher wrote Fact, Idea, Learning Issue, and Active Plan on the whiteboard. They reviewed whiteboard at the beginning of each class period, and updated the PBL columns as they discussed. They ended each day by reviewing, updating, or recreating.

Hands-on Investigation: they used the devices used in hospitals and examined, who had the greatest lung, whether size or different activities change the air moving in and out. Then the teacher wanted them to make connections between their design challenge and the hands on investigation.
On day 6, they began designing. There were materials such as balloons, clay, etc. Some experimented with these materials, some copied designs from books.

Analysis: Intended vs. enacted curriculum
Students did important iterations that improved their models to come to a good understanding of the concept. However, they stopped when each had a partial working model. They had discussions after that point, but they didn’t apply the new ideas to their models.
Design and modeling: They were motivated by the design challenge but since it was very complex they couldn’t apply what they learned. Problem here was the poor connection between their research, which focused on the big issues and modeling, which needed more details.
Since they couldn’t have lots of iterations of their models, they didn’t discuss behavior and function.
What students learned:
Post-tests were done to compare with the control group. Pre and post test results couldn’t inform how the mental model of the kids had changed, but the results showed that LBD students had a better understanding of the lungs and respiratory system than the control group.

Affordances of Design:
Lung design challenge was able to: Generate questions, coming up with ideas, making connections between science and its usefulness in the world
Not able to: Coming up with solutions to be tested, focus and guide an investigation
If the authors redo this experiment:
They would choose the right construction materials
Include a discussion of what a model is, what we can use them for
Motivate students move iteratively design of better and better models


Even though it was a long paper, the design experiment itself was the long part, but that is actually fun to read. I like the approach the authors used for the experiment which is Learning Based Design (LBD), that is a mix of Problem Based Learning (PBL) and Case Based Reasoning(CBR).