SimEd: Understanding Education Systems
Legacy Site
Overview
Many well-intentioned people want to improve education. So do we. We believe that education could be far more effective, efficient and satisfying than it is in our current educational systems—both K-12 and higher education.
We believe that the following questions have not been adequately addressed:
- “Change what?”
- “Change how?” and
- “How do you know the change is working?”
We must know what to change in order to know how. We must know whether the change accomplishes the goal and that the change does not have negative, unintended effects. Change for the sake of change is nonproductive. And, without knowing what to change, the “how” is irrelevant.
We believe that a systems view of education is important to help identify the "what" and "how".
SimEd Technologies consist of four parts:
- The ‘Get Ready, SET, Go!’ change model,
- The theory model options set called Axiomatic Theories of Intentional Systems (ATIS),
- Computer software: Analysis of Patterns in Time and Configuration (APT&C), and
- Computer software: Predicting Education System Outcomes (PESO).
The theory and software are currently under development. For overviews of this work, see:
- Predicting Education System Outcomes: A Scientific Approach (pdf)
- Analysis of Patterns in Time and Configuration: funded grant proposal (pdf)
- Publications: Scientific Inquiry Journal: Thompson (2006)
Further information about the principal investigators :