Achievements teaching Systems Thinking and Systems Dynamics to Graduate students through e-learning

Abstract

This paper shows a course design and its knowledge transfer process when teaching the changing paradigm of systems thinking, systems dynamics and simulation, through e-learning. The course uses the methodology for changing the analytical approach to the Systems dynamics thinking paradigm -in three months-; and was designed under the “thought on-line” approach. Action research method is used to observe the course evolution and to evaluate: new knowledge, skills developed by students and student’s improvements on the changing paradigm. This is an on-going research; we present preliminary results about the achievements up-to-date. Even that ST, SD and simulation are difficult topics, they can be successfully taught on the right e-learning environment. We can state that, teaching this kind of topics can result in a good learning experience for students. These results can contribute to broadcast the e-learning experience to other related topics.