Fostering Systems Thinking Through Digital Storytelling in Scratch

• In Event: Seeing the Bigger Picture: Supporting Systems Thinking Through Designing Digital Systems

Abstract

In this presentation, we share a second effort to design curriculum aimed at engaging youth in systems thinking through the writing of digital stories. This work builds on the prior work of Linda Booth Sweeney and others that have argued that stories can offer an important avenue into systems thinking for young people (Sweeney, 2001). Sweeney states that while many western children’s stories exhibit linear causal thinking, there are notable stories that exhibit systemic ideas (e.g., Dr. Seuss’s Butter Battle Book) and can be leveraged to help young people develop systemic outlooks. Building on Sweeney’s work, we extend this perspective to include the creation and telling of stories, particularly digital stories.

As part of an effort to promote systems thinking through engaging in design with digital media, we created a curriculum centered around digital storytelling using the Scratch programming environment. Scratch is a media-rich visual programming environment designed to be an accessible space for young people to engage in the creation of interactive stories, video games, simulations and even how-to guides through the use of command blocks and drawn or imported “sprites” (Resnick et al., 2009).The resulting Scratch curriculum addressed major systems thinking concepts, including interconnection, system components, feedback loops and leverage points. The curriculum first explored each systems concept either through an analog text (such as those found in Sweeney’s work [2001], including Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax) or a digital one (such as popular online videos, The Story of Stuff and The Meatrix, which use storytelling techniques to address systemic social issues). After analysis of the text, participants identify the major systems concept, create causal loop diagrams of the system dynamic at play, identify similar dynamics occurring in their own communities, and finally create digital stories that illustrated these dynamics. Scratch’s particular affordances - remixing existing media, creating interactivity, non-linearity and multimodality - made it an amenable environment for the creation of digital stories about systems.

This presentation will share results of the implementation of this curriculum within the context of a summer camp (20 hours of activity over 5 days) that took place in a major Midwestern city and included 75 urban youth, largely of African-American descent. Findings from the study show that engagement in digital storytelling can result in significant gains in a number of areas central to systems thinking. Pre- and Post-assessments reveal significant changes in youths’ ability to diagram existing systems in a way that represent the relationships between components, that explain the dynamics at play in reinforcing and balancing feedback loops, that differentiate between balancing and reinforcing feedback loops and that identify leverage points within a system. The presentation will include results from these assessments as well as four case studies that illustrate how young people applied systems thinking in the context of creating digital stories about systemic issues occurring in their local community.

Authors

• Rafi Santo, Indiana University - Bloomington

• Kylie A. Peppler, Indiana University - Bloomington