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
Complex Systems: Difficulty of Prediction 		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)
 Stella Exercise 1: Population Growth
SOLUTION 		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 		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 		A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (83 mins) Stella Exercise 2: Logistic Growth
SOLUTION: Q1
SOLUTION: Q2 		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
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) 		Seaspiriacy (89 mins) Stella Exercise 3: Predator Prey model
SOLUTION 		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
Stella Exercise 4: Simple Collapse Model
SOLUTION 		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 		Don't look up (138 mins) Stella Exercise 5: Modified collapse model
SOLUTION 		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 		Reading: Smithsonian
Reading: Science 		Stella Exercise 6: Climate
Data file
SOLUTION 		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 		Planet of the Humans (100 mins) 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 		Reading: C3 Collapse Model Final Project: Easter Island
Reading: Easter Island: Bologna & Flores
Reading: Easter Island: Brander & Taylor 		Discussion Questions for Week 12 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun
Nov 23 Thanksgiving Break
13 Nov 30 Human behavior
Leverage Points 		Diamond (14) Decisions 22p
Meadows (6) Leverage Points 21p 		Podcast: Putting people into climate models: A new frontier (41 mins) Stella project time 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 		Reading: Limits to economic growth Stella project time Discussion Questions for Week 14 Quiz in Brightspace
Open Mon-Sun

A final exam will be online and available from 12 Dec to 18 Dec 2026. A final project and video presentation are due at the end of day on 18 Dec 2026.