what so you know what we're talking about we've got the privilege of hearing from John doco today up in your upper left there if your screen is laid out the way mine is John has taught a variety of biology courses at the high school and college level from the past 18 years at Seneca East High School and in and through Bowling Green State University currently John teaches uh advanced placement biology anatomy and physiology biology and physics John is a diverse academic training with the ba in sociology from Ohio State University in 2000. he has a post Bachelor's in Life Science Education and a master's of education and curriculum and instruction for Ashland University additionally John has been completing graduate courses at the department of biological science at Bowling Green John has developed a robust under underscore that robust set of online System Dynamics models for students and Learners other Learners to explore biology and ecology at johndarko.com j-o-n-d-a-r-k-o-w.com okay johndarko.com take a look at that you're gonna be amazed at what is on that website John it's really great to see you again and to have you make time in your day to come and join us and share with us what we thought we would do is uh about a 30 35 minute presentation um and then we can discuss afterwards since the group is so small I would imagine that if there are some questions for clarification you would have no problem with someone wants to raise their hand and get something clarified but let's leave the discussion until after John has had a chance to tell the story really great to see everybody thanks nice to see everybody uh yeah my name is John uh John Darko and let's see uh if I can share my screen I'll be just walking you through uh kind of the activities that I do with my students so uh give you an idea of how I I'm approaching uh teaching with System Dynamics models with my students uh I do really uh I think of System Dynamics with my students in in three ways and one is just let me see here uh can everyone see my screen okay yeah you could put it in presentation mode and then we would just see the main slide instead of all the others okay I'm not going to put in presentation mode just because I'm going to be going to several other documents and okay no problem if that's okay yeah uh okay yeah so uh one is just having students use my System Dynamics model and that is the main way my students are using uh System Dynamics in my room is they just have uh access to my simulations and I'll be going through uh that that's the main way also I'll have students kind of modify models uh and draw out stock and flow models is a is a big part of my classroom in the over the past few years and then my students will also build System Dynamics models to a lesser degree uh so it kind of goes in that order uh let me see here so what is the goal of the this kind of presentation I have is I I want to have students carry out investigations and I think System Dynamics uh specifically the the simulations that students can play with offer a nice opportunity for students to just explore models and rather than just reading diagrams or reading text they can actually manipulate and see Behavior over time graphs and run experiments so they're investigating uh secondly I want them to look at models as representations of systems as a model is not just one thing they often think of a model as being some kind of diagram in a textbook rather than an equation or a computer model and I want them to kind of transition and re-represent between different types of models to kind of activate different visions and viewpoints of what is actually happening in any given system uh thirdly uh just how we can teach these behaviors of dynamic systems because in biology uh you know biological systems are Dynamic systems and they aren't just linear relationships and having students understand how those Dynamic non-linear relationships emerge I think is uh really important to really understanding what biology is is uh these you know self-regulating systems uh and so forth and then lastly um I want them to to understand science in its uh kind of idealized way as a way to design critical experiments and I'll go through that so uh to start off I'm going to go through my teaching strategies and the first one is I just like having students uh explore models through uh incrementally perturbing parameters so they have sliders they have buttons and then they can run simulations so they're by manipulating sliders and looking at graphs they are you know changing some cause and watching some effect and while they're doing that they're going to start uh inducing some kind of uh model or what is the reason that this cause has this effect so let me I have this is kind of a link of all the different stuff and if you want I could uh I could share this presentation also uh so you have these links but let me just show you this is probably my this is definitely my most popular uh simulation so students at all levels are working with enzymes in the biology classroom and I give some background information and just looking at what is this kind of relationship I do have the stock and flow model here and I Love How Stella now you can uh by manipulating different variables uh you can kind of see how the accumulations and the stocks are changing uh with live functions and uh animating those stock and flows diagrams but this is generally what my students are seeing so they have an interface and they have independent variables and then some kind of dependent variable and students are just running simulations like this I like including visual things uh that they might see in the actual classroom but then uh most of my simulations I do include a bit of randomness so that students can do calculate the mean of different variables they can do standard deviation standard error and so they can do statistics on it uh and so they see that kind of natural variation but then you can manipulate different variables and as they do that they can see oh what well what's happening there and so they can start seeing these different uh relationships uh they can run I try to do stuff so they can have like positive and negative controls in the experiments I think that's important so here uh you know let's just take the enzyme out all together versus adding the enzyme how does that change uh the experiment all right and let me show you some of the kind of documents I would have my students work through with the simulation so here's just pre-lab questions uh so what I do often is it's amazing let me let's see if I can move this uh you know when you think about just this is in terms of a simulation this has just four factors right uh and then I'm just measuring glucose concentration over here but in doing so just the number of different experiments that could actually be done is huge right they could students could vary this by a number of different elements now here I just have one output but there's really many many different experiments they could do they could just manipulate one of these at a time or two at a time but this gives me a great opportunity to interject all kinds of what are good scientific practices so uh students at first will want to just manipulate as much as possible and I back them up to let them know that remember in good science you only manipulate one variable at a time and see the effects that way you know what is or you have a better idea of what might be the cause of any effect you might see so using simulations I see with this kind of experimental approach where students are running virtual experiments as a great way for just practicing the skill of science designing experiments it allows me to intervene so when we actually do experiments uh they've had lots of practice with you know using pipettes and uh measuring different solutions and microscopes and so forth but they also have the practice with simulations of uh running good experimental designs which like an airplane Pi pilot is running uh simulations and flight simulators okay uh so what I often do then is because they can manipulate different things I'll have like one group test temperature another group test pH and another group test uh no I don't have this one on here uh there's another one another document like this I have where they'll test uh the substrate concentration and they'll run experiments they'll calculate the mean standard error and then they'll graph the results uh a big thing I like students to do is create bar graphs from uh these Behavior or time graphs so that they're transforming the data to make it more meaningful to their particular experiment and let's see so that's one way another way they could use this simulation is let me scroll through here uh so I give them this kind of hypothetical data here and can they make sense of this data can they create a data model like so for example this data here this best fit line This best fit line and this best fit line all have the same r squared value and so students will when they get a scatter plot of data often we'll just kind of Click through uh Excel or Google Sheets and see well whatever uh best fit line has the biggest r squared value that must be right uh and that's just a poor way to think about how the model is the model should make sense in terms of like what's physically happening uh and they'll use the the simulations to kind of create understanding but then try to justify uh why the model makes sense okay and another way they will re-represent data is I have a Dole often do this with white boards in the classroom in groups or on paper but during covid we did a lot with like Google Sheets on online so I have an example of that so with this uh you have I made a key for the model so let's say we have this visual model so this is the chemical reaction this is the shape of the enzyme you have lactose galactose and glucose and then I say all right well these are the initial conditions of the simulation so if I go back to the simulation and reset those are the initial conditions we have and when we run it we get these results foreign this would be a picture of what is happening or a diagram of what's actually happening at those initial conditions so then what I had students do and this is an example of students work is they didn't have these pictures here I said uh change the drawings by deleting so I just had kind of this these shapes here and uh by drawing and adding and deleting shapes so then well what happens if we reduce the initial lactose from 500 to 100 and so this is what a student did they just put less lactose in which is right which then showed that there would be less glucose and so uh and then they would graph that or sorry they would run simulations of that and see if that's the case so they're kind of going back and forth between these diagrams and then re-representing the data that they're getting from the simulation uh I'll just go through a couple so here's adding more lactose uh here they raise the temperature to 55 degrees Celsius and this was great uh what the student did is show that the Y let me just run a simulation to show you I saw reset it back to initial conditions here's that's I think that was 25 I'll go up to 55. and run and so there's and I'll do this several times and so students will then say okay well why was it less uh and they made the assumption that the enzyme was changing shape or denaturing uh that at that time so it's another way of looking at the experiments and then re-representing that data all right uh let's see here so uh another way I like to do so so that first way is just kids playing around and re-representing uh models another thing is behavior over time graphs which is fantastic and and really uh gets at the heart of kind of interpreting graphs uh students I'm always surprised on that how they don't read graphs or uh misunderstand what's being graphed so it's a great way to con uh to reintroduce uh what's what how do you how to read graphs and how to interpret graphs and just predict the effects so what actually is happening let me show you so okay so here is just a diagram where I'll have kids this is a document I have for this but also just have kids on whiteboards uh say okay what's gonna happen if I do this and graph it and there's two two things I'm really looking for uh are they are they making just an error so is there scientific understanding wrong uh which I'm actually uh comfortable with that if they make a scientific reasoning error in their graph that's okay because we can correct that uh but then another kind of error I see is students will also explain their graph and that's where it gets really uh interesting but also uh a harder conversation is when they said okay I think glucose will go up and so then they draw glucose going down uh which doesn't make any you know it doesn't make sense so it's not even coherence uh what they're doing and so I'm looking for both uh does it match uh with current scientific understanding and is it coherent let me give you an example of that um so I have this cellular respiration accounting model so just to give you some idea we have the uh mitochondria and let's see Target system so basically what I'm looking at is the metabolism of one mole of glucose what's going to happen and there's so let's see uh glucose so initial glucose is at one mole and then it's graphing several things that I'm interested in my students tracking over the metabolism of that glucose at uh what's happening with ATP nadh oxygen and carbon dioxide I leave out fadh2 uh even though I put that into the model I never showed it to the students because it's just one more thing uh to add cognitive load that I want to reduce and so I run the model and uh ATP goes up during glycolysis it goes up again during the citric acid cycle and then it goes up a lot during oxidative phosphorylation and so students can see that uh then I'll say all right well what's going to happen if we put oxygen at zero so we'll run or sorry they'll do Behavior over time graphs try to predict here's draw oxygen what's happening now uh sorry draw what is happening with ATP now now what's going to happen with ATP when there's no Oxygen a lot of students will just draw a flat line and then we run this and I have in my model uh ATP going up to a net of two uh because of uh it's still going through glycolysis uh and fermentation and then one of the best things uh one of the things I find very interesting as a biology teacher is ATP synthase and the proton motive Force so at initial conditions we have this and all right well let's turn glucose off and students will make predictions right uh and then I'll say all right well what happens if we uh change the ph and most students will say it's not going to have any effect it shouldn't have any effect and then we see uh ATP going up enormously uh that's because this uh pH of the inner membrane space is let's see if I can uh so that's the inner membrane space so if we have a lot of protons there from a lower pH there's uh more opportunity for those protons to diffuse through ATB synthase uh and we're going to get more production of ATP from that rotation of the ATP synthase so uh this is uh using those Behavior over time graphs I think is just one of the the main ways I love using models like this in the classroom it really forces them to stake a claim that I think is important versus if they are just doing multiple choice or you know a yes or no answer or something like that uh they can kind of have some dialogue I feel like that can justify well I didn't really think that but when their lines are categorically different than what they see in the model uh then we can have some nice conversations about the difference between their initial predictions and what actually happened in the simulation uh and always uh I try to reiterate that this is just a my own model that I made so this is not the real world okay and let's see here could I ask a question at this point please do yes you showed us a really simple little model but this what you just described to us must require a bit more of a model than what you showed us earlier yes so the cellular respiration model is definitely more complex than the enzyme model for sure the enzyme model has just two stocks uh with one flow going in it and that's it uh you know there's some variables for pH and temperature and substrate concentration but that's a super simple model the cellular respiration model is uh very much more complex I would have guessed that's why I asked about yeah yeah yeah what you're describing is pretty interesting but it's not a trivial process a processes at play no it is not nope okay thank you yeah you're welcome any other questions at this point okay lots of comments but I'll hold it to the end okay great uh and let's see so Behavior or time graphs designing controlled experiments I kind of uh hinted at I do want to show one other thing let's see uh so when I am teaching students I have this kind of teaching Target what I want well students at any system whether it's cellular respiration or evolution by natural selection they have a bunch of questions about it and then I made a model beforehand that's answered certain questions or I tried to answer certain questions but oftentimes the student questions and don't always can't be answered by the simulation so I try to show students this uh particular Venn diagram that yeah my simulation sometimes uh answers a lot of questions but it's not going to answer all your questions so what when students are designing experiments I want them to understand that I want their questions to try to be answerable by the simulation so they have to kind of limit their questions to things that can actually be answered by the simulation and and that takes uh that takes some time and development uh of the student also okay and one of the more interesting things I've been exploring recently is this idea of a critical experiment let me here's just different Dynamic behaviors that I show students um and uh by having students make predictions and help students confront and visualize their misconceptions so they actually see uh what they predicted right next to uh what is happening in the model which I think is uh valuable so on to crucial experiments now I understand not all science can be done like this with these kind of uh crucial experiments or critical experiments but students will have or we will have some initial observation from a simulation and then I'll show them a couple models two or three models and say well with the simulation you can actually design experiments that can reject one model and support another model so you have like an initial observation and then if it's this model model one will it will have a larger these kinds of behaviors but it won't have these behaviors and if it's model two it'll have these behaviors but it won't have these behaviors and let me show you so uh we just did this one let me just ground you in the oh wait I had it right there so this one I'm teaching about uh how different molecules get transported across the cell membrane and I use the beta cells of the pancreas to help understand how different molecules get transported so uh just generally uh from my understanding I'm showing them kind of the a signal transduction system of how glucose then leads to insulin secretion and so what they do is kind of look at each of these transports so how is glucose getting in the cell how are potassium ions going in and out of the cell how are calcium ions going in and out of the cell and how our how is insulin being secreted and what I did with this one is I broke it down I have like this complete model which is way overwhelming for students too many controls so I try to reduce cognitive load to just to let them answer some questions a little bit at a time and there we go so uh I just took a screenshot of a document I used so I give students like these three models model one two and three and the first thing they do is try to see okay which one of these models matches up with these diagrams and then I say look then I say Circle the model that's most supported by the simulation so what they do then is all right these are three models for how glucose is getting in the cell so let's go back to that so if I run a simulation here uh glucose in the blood is the red line the blue line is glucose in the beta cell and that's where we're interested in so if I bump up glucose here well glucose does go into the cell and then it goes back down again and the the main part I tell students to be interested in is is glucose going to cell yes it is so they see that here in all cases glucose is going into the cell so that is this kind of common observation and then they try to design experiment to say all right well uh why is it one model versus another model what experiments can I do and it's amazing what students how quickly some students uh foreign can catch on and design experiments and then the what I think is the uh I do this with ap biology so these are Juniors and seniors like 17 and 18 year olds for the most part but what's nice is I have four of these so I have simulation one two three and four at first they're all struggling and how do I design an experiment that's going to adjudicate and by the end though they're they're doing it very quickly so it's nice seeing this uh skill of uh designing experiments controlled experiments and they get better at it over time so for example just uh kind of show you what I one thing you could do is well if we put glucose at a little amount no glucose goes in and you would assume that as you start incrementally adding glucose at least a little bit should get in uh but as we add this uh no glucose no glucose and then there seems to be and I have it at 10 but uh there seems to be some kind of maybe not where is it some kind of Tipping Point right and what I'm trying to show is uh it glucose has to bind to a receptor so you have to have enough glucose around to at least have it bind to a receptor site on the glucose Channel and there's some evidence that this is how glucose is being transported through glut2 from my understanding uh real quick I'm gonna wrap up here here's potassium I also have this uh so in this one they can actually do a positive control they can add an electrode uh so positive controls here's another scientific practice where uh really this model here and this model here are identical except this one has a g protein and there's no evidence that there's a g protein in my simulation so I introduce Occam's razor that there's no reason to introduce uh Factor complicated factors if you can explain it by something more simply and then this one has a negative control but uh I want to wrap up by showing you so uh for the endocrine system uh I'll have students actually design models using and and the main thing I have here is I it just has to be a model that can self-regulate uh that has negative feedback loops and I have some students models so this is their document uh they did this with the Stella online I use insightmaker also but here they had blood volume and uh renin and here's the model that they made and I get I have different things in the rubric uh but this is a nice student model that does that and where's uh I think it was ah let's try that hmm uh oh yeah so this girl made this model uh of what is this glucose and insulin and we can run the model in it the model Works which is uh nice and she included a bunch of stuff that was not required but she kind of showed how glucose gets stored in the liver and then gets uh back released so really interesting things and see students not just uh start you can go I go around the classroom and kind of intervene with is this good structure or is this uh poor structure what can you do but in addition to that you see students creativity come out in with computational models which to me just blows my mind a little bit uh but let's see I think uh I will stop there I'll make a comment before I turn it over to the intelligent questions I'm sitting here thinking John teaches advanced placement right what I need is severely delayed placement in about a semester worth of a biology course to make up for what I missed in 1963 when I was a sophomore that's fantastic stuff John great thank you okay you guys can talk about foreign has lots to say but I'll sneak something in before he takes over which is how much of these students learned about things like co-flows and stocks versus auxiliaries so they gotta in other words how many more how much material do they have to work with to create their models are they I'll stop there uh yeah so for for example when students are doing the endocrine system models I'll do uh one activity I'll put tape on the floor uh as a stock and then I'll put tape for flows going in and out and then I'll I'll draw on I'll either have on the Whiteboard or uh on their presentation different stock and flow models with numbers and very very simple ones so they they start seeing uh different equations and how try to make sense at it so students will actually so if the flow inflow is two two students will go in and then another two students will go in and then another two students will go in so kind of it's kind of meta modeling so we're modeling modeling and that is that activity is the main way I do with the endocrine uh system I just am just kind of wrapped up going through a natural selection model that I do with my sophomores and for that we do I think it's uh William Carson uh wrote a book called Watershed Dynamics and he did kind of something with the oh wait I think I have them right here so I'll have like can you see this okay okay so I have a bottle that's cut off here and then I have a hole here and so students will have these bottles set up or funnels and I actually use bigger ones than this because it's more exaggerated uh but the first exposure to stock and flow is with water and so then they will have this stock and this stock and they're just kind of measuring every uh what is it every 10 milliliters how much time passed so then they start uh then I'll show them the stock and flow diagram for this and showing them what our stocks what is the flow and then what kind of things would actually modify the rate of the flow so the the the rates of going from this stock to this stock uh so several different ways overall though um I will draw throughout my classes stock and flow diagrams without any numbers attached to them as just a way to teach about biology so it's not the only time they're seeing stock and flows I and then I don't use the name auxiliary uh I think I use variable uh but just okay yeah I have to intervene quite a bit when they're what I was the reason I was going after co-flows is it seems so important in biology and it's one of the hardest things for me to get across to people that if you put dye in the water the as the water goes the dye is going so you need to that has to be a connected relationship things like that I just wonder okay maybe that's just me and I'm wondering if you experienced that same requirement or the design of your models kind of avoid that or not make a big deal out of it well enough to know how important it is in biology I just know it's important in some other classes of models and I was curious about that yeah I don't spend too much time on it I I'm just amazed when students can design any model that resembles something that's uh is trying to you know try to get it close to a valid model since since Wayne yeah I'd like to kind of follow up and or kind of expand on Wayne's question a little bit um how much so these are you seeing the same kids coming through several of your different classes so that they've had some experience with this uh that's kind of one question and the other related is when when their newcomer how do you when you described how you get them started but how much time does it take for them to you know you're not t you're not this is not a modeling class it's a biology class or physics class whatever it is but you're getting a hell of a lot done here as far I mean as far as the modeling is concerned also I'm kind of curious how you make that happen yeah I honestly much time it takes yeah so I will spend uh time throughout the year going just what our stocks and flows as uh without any quantities so that I think lays a nice foundation and they see it you know every unit you can describe some physiological thing in terms of stocks and flows so that part they they kind of get uh the actual like prep work with using a program like Insight maker I usually will spend I'll have some introductory activities where I'm showing them how to model something so it's just kind of Step through step uh follow me as we go along and build this or add connectors to make this model work and I honestly I try not to take up too much class time with that I'll I will devote about two class periods uh two 50-minute class periods to that and then we'll start getting into the modeling and just uh try to intervene the kids that because some kids will catch on real quick other kids will take longer and so I can spend more time with the kids that are struggling I think uh so to answer your first question yes and no some of the students I see multiple times and some I don't so I assume every time I do something like designing uh System Dynamics models I'm assuming that they have not seen me before or that they forgot everything uh so hi I forgot what else I was going to say but I think one thing that kind of sticks out we're all thinking about like Wayne's but co-flows and kind of the technical things and we're going to System Dynamics meetings and talking you know kind of higher level we might be so we might be underestimating what these kids can do by orders of magnitude because I mean this it's this is amazing what they're what they're doing and it may be that they we have to unlearn so much and our colleagues have to unlearn so much uh from you know being uh be beat over the head and neck maybe by the educational system that we've got that you know maybe doesn't quite work right that well and these kids don't have to do that they're coming in and you know you you start drawing stocks and flows well I you know that makes sense why would you know how can that not make sense I mean it's just I'm just amazed at how much how much you're getting done here they so there's like the adoption uh so like the one of it things I see is why System Dynamics is less adopted by other teachers is it really helps that I know a a little bit about System Dynamics modeling so I can intervene in a in a kind of pseudo expert way uh or at least help them along in a way uh also though I I have no formal training in System Dynamics so you know what you all might see as some kind of like particular error I don't I kind of brush off um because uh I'm just glad students are trying to make these kind of uh computational models and and when I see like uh insulin is having a positive impact on glucose absorption if they are making that kind of like it's it it makes scientific reasonable sense that it would go in that direction have a positive in Impact whether it's additive or multiple multiplicative or whatever uh I'm okay with I I'm more interested in them understanding the science versus understanding if they're practicing good System Dynamics modeling skills which I I don't I think we do we on the other side of this we need to be careful that there are real science system Dynamic skills and you know right ways of doing things the wrong thing uh and I and I don't want to overestimate you know these these kids are not becoming expert system dynamicist that's right but they're learning a hell of a lot of underlying uh content yeah and and the beauty here is you know you make a negative feedback loop of insulin regulation it's a very similar model with Predator prey relationships uh and so you know the the scale of the models you make a model of one thing it can be applied to other things so they have this kind of availability heuristic now that they can apply to lots of uh areas yeah there aren't that many Core Concepts actually there's just a whole bunch of interactions among them I mean when we were working on the anemia project it I mean it probably I don't know Jim maybe can correct me but it it took quite a while when we were we're doing the work it's kind you know it's coming together so and it's like down the road somewhere it's like this is just a supply chain model I mean this is the beer game with EPO and red blood cells you know I mean literally you know and actually the the James mentioned this before the doc the the doctor that we were working with uh or that was kind of supervising you know the clinic uh he he ended up giving a talk to the other docs and he talked about what was it putting coin flakes on you know getting Corn Flakes delivered to Walmart to put on the Shelf I mean we didn't we never even talked to him about Supply chains and he just came up with that on his own and he's amazing but um you know you when the the generic that the overlap or that you see a structure here and it net you know then you get to some other project it's like well the structure looks pretty similar well that's because it's the same friggin model you know it is the same underlying concept yeah and that's uh something I like to stress is you know we have uh genes have diversity and there's species diversity but there's also like just uh how things are interacting have some diversity but with that diversity there's also like commonality uh that we see too and so uh trying to show that this model is like that model uh I think is is great for for kids and can be applied throughout uh all kinds of fields not just pure science fields I've got a whole bunch of questions but I think I'll shut up for a couple of minutes and let let the other people uh okay and I'll get back to you if I you know I will definitely get back to you but great anybody else if nobody else has questions I've got more but uh I want to give them a second maybe they might conjure something up Wayne me to comment about learning from each other students learning from each other yeah so I will have definitely have students work in groups I generally have kids work in groups of three to especially when at that beginning stage when students so when we're talking about students actually creating models or modifying uh System Dynamics models it becomes super important in groups to see uh oh how did you do that because I mine looks like Mr darko's but when I run it I see an error and they can kind of help each other through just kind of the technical part of how to use the software and help each other out in in that respect uh when we're doing like just working with simulations also I generally have students work in groups of two or three and I will have just one student have their computer out the other two kids do not have their computers out and so uh the purse so I assign roles also so I have the person that has the computer uh is the the driver but they are not the Navigator so someone else is the Navigator and so the person using their computer can't just click and run simulations adjust sliders they can only do that if the Navigator tells them what to do so it kind of make it forces them to follow along with each other that's good that's good so I ran an Executive Education session not in biology but in business management where I had IBM Executives three of them sitting in a laptop laughing and giggling as they split the navigated the sliders on a customer relationship model customer religion management models unbelievable that the energy that that one computer in a group of three can create is this phenomenal yeah it works I I find it works pretty well uh it keeps everybody engaged uh if you have groups groups of four I think don't work at all but yeah yeah like I could see with a group of three also having um uh not that I I don't even know what the name to put on The Navigators the one saying you know turn right turn left speed up slow down whatever somebody who sets the goal of where we're trying to get to and then the Navigator has to think of how do we get there yeah and then tell the person who's driving the boat you know the computer what you know what to do so I mean there's a lot of room for interactions obviously yeah that's a that's a great suggestion and I I also like you know everyone can have a a voice of what to do next and how to how to drive it but ultimately we want the the Navigator making that the decision also uh because we're collecting data uh one person has to be yes yeah they constantly have to be writing uh they'll be asking lots of questions did I hear you right so that's another important voice in a in a conversation I I can see why the three is the right way to do it that you get people piling up or something that's you know you need someone who says well wait a second yeah hold on hold on and you know when they're doing that it it uncovers a lot of things they never even thought about like how do I all right so we did this and we were collecting data this way but now it doesn't make sense how we're collecting data uh so they may have to go back and do everything over again in a more thoughtful way that's absolutely a real world uh that you know that's not just a classroom exercise right again going back to the anemia project when Jim and I first started talking about it I I was asking like well how often are they connecting or collecting data um and I uh and I and as I mentioned to him I don't know how often we need to collect it the modeling process will tell us that as we're going along because if you're getting the data to infrequently you can't follow the trajectory and if and on the other hand you don't need to get it four or five times more frequently because it costs money to get data so this there is a sweet spot in there yeah and in a high school science classroom you know you can run with these simulations you can run lots of experiments over and over again not worry about the cost of uh supplies or time as much yeah but you know actually another I don't know if you'd ever have time for this but another interesting exercise is to charge them for every data point that they collect like it yeah so so that so that there's a there's an advantage to them coming up with the right amount of data to get the answer you're trying to get to that I have tried that before yeah kind of Beyond you know beyond the biology I guess but I have tried that before where uh I I forget the scenario I I made but it was like you have a thought a thousand dollar Grant and uh you know each Supply costs this amount of money yeah I I did try that before it it was hard for me to control though because um you know they can just hit the reset button and I wouldn't notice but yeah and and I've got it and that I got a question of you your boundary conditions that you you brought up the Venn diagram um yeah I'm not sure how kind of exactly how you how you go about that but um you you do want to restrict you want to focus on questions that are within the scope of the model or or within the ability of the model to you know in in that classroom with you know the information you've got on the other hand you don't want to ignore the question you know that if the students are coming up with questions that aren't within the model but they're very relevant to the biology that's pretty important also absolutely so two things I I often try to do as we debrief over the simulation is one what is how is the model that I made invalid which is hard for them to kind of pick out those things of how is my model wrong because I know more about the science than they do so they often won't find too many of those uh but they they have and then the other is what is this model not answering uh about you know uh enzymes or about uh glucose uh glucose and insulin and that's that's a great example we just did that one and so like the model doesn't even talk about the negative feedback loop that's the insulin secretion is actually reducing glucose and in the blood and so uh and that's super important right uh in terms of the class that I'm teaching it in so I think that's what you're getting at is trying not to kill the Wonder right uh yeah and so John did you see uh Wayne's comment that's a wonderful work I need to have to see a student and Advising what an excellent presentation great so he had to scoot no worries yeah like I just I ran across a quote uh just recently in school we rewarded for having the answer not for asking a good question and that is something that this approach is so different from that yeah and you know if uh like with that cellular respiration model is a is a good example I have I don't know five or six sliders a button and then they're graphing four there's four things being graphed well the number of questions just within the model that they can ask is enormous uh so it does actually give them a good opportunity to ask uh not an infinite number but the actual number of questions uh by you know compounding the different variables is there's tens of thousands of different questions they could potentially ask just with with that well let's see it's near the top of the hour but I'm wondering Gary uh Osgood anything on your mind you wanted to add to the meeting or anything good to see you yeah um I I really enjoyed the uh enjoy the presentation the only biological modeling I've done is kind of at the population Health level which I've done done quite a bit of but years ago I was working with a group uh that was looking at the acceptance of a physics curriculum called active physics uh at the I guess the high school level which um focused on using things kids were interested in like driving uh and music and so on as as ways of teaching physics and I worked with them to develop a set of simulators that um you know around things like driving you know how fast can you drive around a curve uh what happens you know when when their occlusions uh things like that and uh you know just being able to use simulation again around something kids were interested in uh but you didn't want them actually trying that stuff out in real cars were uh you know it was uh you know exciting to the the kids and and really uh engage their attention and the diagrams I used were you know more like conceptual systems diagrams you know I didn't get into stock and flow at all especially for you know teachers that didn't have the System Dynamics background but wanted to be able to illustrate the dynamic phenomena and then there was another simulation around home energy uh conservation and so uh there are a lot of different variables in terms of even you know what part of the country uh you were in uh and uh uh you know different environmental conditions but then also a lot of uh design sliders around insulation and efficiency of heating systems and things like that so again a lot of different variables kids could play with and get a a sense especially I think you know it's of course a good idea to have them experiment with one thing at a time to understand the effect of each variable on on the system but then to also in a dynamic system look at how things interact with each other and try a couple of things at once that's typically the the important lesson you know I find with with adults uh you know they tend to you know focus on one strategy what's due to this to the system and it's going to solve the whole problem when in fact they're typically you know creating new problems if they they take that view and in fact understanding combinations of things you do to get a system to perform and in the best way best way possible yeah absolutely I uh I have a photosynthesis model where you have to uh I I give them a challenge of seeing can they make uh can they make glucose in the dark and with that they need to if they have CO2 and ATP and then also a molecule called nadph then then it can happen uh but they have to manipulate several Sliders in order to do that so I think that's hitting right on what you're saying is you know sometimes while you do want to manipulate one variable at a time oftentimes things are multi-factoral so you have to you have to manipulate more than one but it's that idea of uh how do you know that that's the the right effect so you you have to play you have to encourage play also yeah that's good it's good to see you again and uh thank you for your your encouragement to get this meeting up and running off the ground I appreciate it good to see you very good seeing you too all of you actually thank you very much for your presentation yeah I don't know maybe I mean I had a few things in mind but they all came up during the conversation uh so you were mentioning uh about your while you were talking about your interaction with the students that that this models they help students to confront visualize their misconceptions about how the system works Etc can you give some I don't know a bit some some concrete examples to that so um yesterday we were I have I stepped through students making natural natural selection model so they'll start by making a exponential growth model then it's tied to resources so it's like a negative feedback loop then I add I take away the resources and they make a model of just two sub populations like variation one variation two and then that adds to the total population and then I add the resources back and so then it's uh two variations in the population so two stocks there and then a stock of resources and what happens is if the death rate of one is greater or less than the death rate of the other the popular the one pocket they evolved by natural selection right uh so one population just ends up growing faster and using the resources faster uh than the other population and students uh as they're working through the model don't always understand that uh they just think if the population if the one variation is changing then natural selection or evolution is taking place whereas it has to be a change in the frequency of One Versus the other that is actually an example of evolution and so uh some students got it real quickly were able to to pick out that subtle difference uh but other students uh I had to coach through several examples so I would ask I would run a simulation and say is this an example of natural selection uh or uh and sorry and also then I had them graph so when is natural selection happening uh and some students would were able to get it and and some students had had more trouble so that's that's why I had to intervene because they're actually drawing it out and I I could see no that's that's still not that just because it's changing it's not does that clarify it yeah yeah sure I mean it was a great example thank you yeah you know what actually it's a few minutes past the top of the hour I know there are many more questions and things we could talk about but in the interest of everybody's time and I know John you're busy today as well I think we should wrap and uh I guess if there are any kind of follow-up questions you can email me yeah and uh my other eight questions is that what you're yeah the other eight questions any other 45 minutes that that you have in mind yeah absolutely got it please I would love them great let me let me very short comment I I thought your your your comment about asking your students what's wrong with your model how many teachers get up in the front of the classroom can you ask your students to tell tell me what I'm doing wrong here yeah that I mean it and to create it to create an environment that's comfortable enough where they can even consider that and feel safe you know I mean that's amazing yeah I I think when uh when you have been modeling like I have for years and you realize every model that you've ever made has it all wrong they're all wrong and like oh my gosh I never realized that I can make this one better and then oh you know just uh in in any of the models I showed you I probably have made at least dozens if not hundreds of iterations of those models so it's like yeah they're uh you know uh imperf imperfection is just a part of the process join the club exactly well thank you