Integration and Implementation Insights
A community blog providing research resources for understanding and acting on complex real-world problems
By Claude Garcia, Anne Dray and Patrick Waeber
A Spanish version and a French version of this post are available
Can we help the next generation of policy makers, business leaders and citizens to become creative, critical and independent thinkers? Can we make them aware of the nature of the problems they will be confronted with? Can we strengthen their capacity to foster and lead stakeholder processes to address these problems?
By Jack Park
How can you improve your thinking – alone or in a group? How can mapping ideas help you understand the relationships among them? How can mapping a conversation create a new reality for those involved?
In what follows, I draw on the work of Daniel Kahneman’s (2011) best-selling book Thinking, Fast and Slow, which explains how human thinking occurs at different speeds, from the very fast thinking associated with face-to-face conversation to the very slow thinking associated with assembling information resources into encyclopedias. I use those ideas in my descriptions of knowledge maps.
Three kinds of knowledge maps
By Kirsten Kainz
How can co-creation communities use models – simple visual representations and/or sophisticated computer simulations – in ways that promote learning and improvement? Modeling techniques can serve to generate insights and correct misunderstandings. Are they equally as useful for fostering new learning and adaptation? Sterman (2006) argues that if new learning is to occur in complex systems then models must be subjected to testing. Model testing must, in turn, yield evidence that not only guides decision-making within the current model, but also feeds back evidence to improve existing models so that subsequent decisions can be based on new learning.
By Hara W. Woltz and Eleanor J. Sterling
What can art contribute to participatory modelling? Over the past decade, participatory visual and narrative arts have been more frequently and effectively incorporated into scenario planning and visioning workshops.
We use arts-based techniques in three ways:
The arts based approaches we use include collage, drawing, visual note taking, map making, storyboarding, photo documentation through shared cameras, mobile story telling, performance in the landscape, drawing as a recording device, and collective mural creation.
By Nagesh Kolagani
Citizens are increasingly coming together to solve problems that affect their communities. Participatory modeling is a method that helps them to share their implicit and explicit knowledge of these problems with each other and to plan and implement mutually acceptable and sustainable solutions.
While using this method, stakeholders need to understand large amounts of information relating to these problems. Various interactive visualization tools are being developed for this purpose. One such tool is ‘serious gaming’ which combines technologies from the video game industry – mystery, appealing graphics, etc., – with a purpose other than pure entertainment, a serious, problem driven, educational purpose.
Read moreSerious gaming: Helping stakeholders address community problems