Schedule

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Assigned readings and media should be completed by the end of the week in which they appear in the schedule below.


Schedule Activity
Week Date Topic Reading Media Exercise Discussion Assessment
1 Aug 31 Introduction to Course
Climate Change 		Emanuel (1-4) 35p Inconvenient Truth (97 mins) Discussion Questions for Week 1 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun
2 Sep 7 Climate change (continued)
Intro to modeling 		Emanuel (5-8) 30p
Ford (1) 14p
  1. Stella Intro (8:21 mins)
  2. Feedbacks (5:14 mins)
  3. Model components (6:49 mins)
  4. Causal loop diagrams (6:43 mins)
  5. System behavior (8:12 mins)
 Discussion Questions for Week 2 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun
3 Sep 14 Framework for societal collapse Intro to System Dynamics modeling
Diamond (Prologue) 25p

Ford (2, 3) 14p, 8p
  1. First population model (12:18 mins)
  2. Second population model (8:25 mins)
  3. Sensitivity analysis (10:09 mins)
  4. Optimization (5:18 mins)
  5. Calibration (10:02 mins)
 Discussion Questions for Week 3 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun
4 Sep 21 Case study: Easter Island
SD Basics
Diamond (2) Easter Island 42p
Ford (4,6) 8p,12p 		A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (83 mins) Discussion Questions for Week 4 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun
5 Sep 28 Case study: The Anasazi
SD Basics
Diamond (4) Anasazi 21p
Ford (7, 9) 10p,18p 		Discussion Questions for Week 5 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun
6 Oct 5 Case study: Maya
SD Intermediate modeling
Diamond (5) Maya (25p)
Ford (20,21) 12p, 22p
Seaspiriacy (89 mins) Discussion Questions for Week 6 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun
7 Oct 12 Case study: Vikings part 1
Homeostasis 		Diamond (6) Viking Prelude 33p
Ford (10,11,23) 		Discussion Questions for Week 7 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun
8 Oct 19 Case study: Vikings part 2
Introduction to Systems Thinking 		Diamond (7) Greenland's Flowering 37p
Meadows (Introduction, 1) 10p, 24p
Don't look up (138 mins) Discussion Questions for Week 8 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun
9 Oct 26 Case study: Vikings part 3
Systems examples 		Diamond (8) Greenland's End 29p
Meadows (2) 40p 		Reading: Smithsonian
Reading: Science 		Discussion Questions for Week 9 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun
10 Nov 2 Governance
Why systems work 		Diamond (9) Opposite Paths 32p
Meadows (3) 12p 		Planet of the Humans (100 mins) Discussion Questions for Week 10 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun
11 Nov 9 Case study: Rwanda
Systems and surprises 		Diamond (10) Rwanda 18p
Meadows (4) 24p 		Reading: C3 Collapse Model Discussion Questions for Week 11 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun
12 Nov 16 Case study: Hispanola
System traps 		Diamond (11) One Island, Two Peoples (Hispaniola) 29p
Meadows (5) System traps 33p 		Discussion Questions for Week 12 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun
Nov 23 Thanksgiving Break Mitchell (Preface, Prologue, 1, 2, 14, 16)
Due by end of Week 13
13 Nov 30 Human behavior
Leverage Points 		Diamond (14) Decisions 22p
Meadows (6) Leverage Points 21p 		The Thinking Game (83 mins) Discussion Questions for Week 13 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun
14 Dec 7 Environmental challenges A World of Systems Diamond (16) The World 40p
Meadows (7) World of Systems 21p 		Podcast: Putting people into climate models: A new frontier (41 mins) Discussion Questions for Week 14 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun