Poster #1 - Bringing Powerful Ideas to Middle School Students' Lives Through Agent-Based Modeling

• In Event: 15.062 - MTCC Poster Session One
  In Poster Session: 15.062-1 - Computer-Based Experts and Models

Abstract

Informed citizens in today’s world need to be able to engage with pressing global and local issues that affect them. Many such phenomena are emergent; they are macro level patterns emerging from micro level interactions between numerous individual and independent entities. We argue that concepts and methodologies used by policy makers and scientists to make sense of emergent phenomena can be introduced to students at younger ages to help them make sense of the world around them. We present case studies from a pilot implementation of a middle-school unit on developing agent-based models of real world issues. We find that students collectively discovered powerful ideas about emergent phenomena through hypothesizing, creating models, conducting experiments, and discussing their findings with peers.

Authors

• Umit Aslan, Northwestern University

• Gabriella Anton, Northwestern University

• Uri J. Wilensky, Northwestern University