Chapters * Title * Contents * Introduction * Place * System * Design * Using * Future * Bibliography
Sections
* Place * Constructionist * Evocative * Crystallizing * MediaFusion * Organizing * Why * Glass * Multiplayer * Reflection * MUD
Why Modeling and Simulation?
What do modeling and simulation offer for the learner? For the purposes of MarketPlace, the most important benefits are the
following:
* Simulation models (microworlds) turn abstract descriptions of rules into concrete, manipulable manifestations of them
(Papert, 1980).
* They provide a compelling context for inquiry into a content domain (Confrey, 1995).
* They serve as conversation pieces to focus discussions (Senge, 1990).
One way of defining an expert is someone who can mentally turn a compact formal description of some dynamic into a fully
imagined experience of some phenomenon (with luck, the one implied by the formal description.) Simulations are concrete
embodiments of this process. They take a set of formal rules and turn them into experiences. The hope is that by seeing the
process, learners will come to be able to do it themselves or that the simulation will at least allow the learner to grasp some
of the implications of the formal rules previously only accessible to the expert.
The reverse process is also important. Finding compact explanatory mechanisms that underlie a range of phenomena makes the
world a more comprehensible place (diSessa,1988). Simulations can help users realize the diversity of the surface
manifestations that a small set of rules can generate. (StarLogo is a good example of a toolkit for generating richly
interesting behavior from small rule sets.)
Learners are more likely to go to the trouble of trying to make connections if they find the experience of working with the
simulation rewarding. Computer simulations can present information in many forms, allowing learners to bring to bear varied
learning styles to the problems presented. A well-designed simulation environment can exploit synergies between the various
forms allowing each to perform tasks they are well suited for. For example, rather than trying to present some phenomenon that
changes in time via static media, a computer simulation can show it directly as it changes and then in static and dynamic
retrospectives.
Finally, simulations can serve as focus points for communities of inquiry. They provide concrete instantiations of formal
explanations that may be easier to appeal to than the formal explanations themselves. Senge gives the example of corporate
decision makers who lack ways of representing their decision process and have to rely on telling others that their policy
preferences simply feel right. Giving them modeling tools with which to represent their reasoning enables more substantive
discussions of why they prefer what they do.
Greg Kimberly/gregkimb@gak.com