Gary Boyd's Educational Cybernetics

EDU-VENTURE MODELLING GARY BOYD’S REFLECTIVE RESEARCH ON COLLABORATIVE MODELLING & SIMULATING EDUCATIVE VENTURES IN ORDER TO IMPROVE THEM & IT & US. 1

STARTING PLACE: THREE LEARNING conversations 

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#1 The WHY STUDY THIS? conversation #2 The WHAT IS THE CAUSAL PROCESS UNDERLYING ALL THIS? conversation #3 The HOW can WE BEST LEARN? conversation 2

WHY ?

EdTech INNOVENTURES ARE ACTUALLY SOCIOTECHNOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS DONE ON REAL PEOPLE, WHICH, alas, TOO OFTEN FAIL:

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They too often fail to produce real, and high-level learning benefits to learners.

Even when important learning is demonstrated, they are too often soon abandoned.

Or, when they fail to produce good learning, they are nonetheless institutionalized by those with vested interests in them.

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WHY NOT, START BY MODELLING AND ANALYSING WHATEVER VENTURES WE HAVE already WORKED IN TO LEARN TO DO BETTER?

MY philosophical ONTOLOGY:EVERYTHING, including us, IS DYNAMIC, COUPLED, COMPLEX INTER-SYSTEMIC PARTLY CO-CONTROLED PROCESSING going on and on & on TRANSFORMING ITSELVES more or less LAWFULLY.  SO, OBVIOUSLY (!) WE SHOULD TRY TO DO COLLABORATIVE CYBERSYSTEMIC MODELLING & SIMULATIONS OF OUR BEST FAILURES TO IMPROVE OUR ACTIONS. 

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WHY ? Let’s CONTINUE BY DOING SOME TOP – DOWN CONTEXTUALISING THINKING:

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? How to pleasantly survive together for a very long time on a small planet with unstable complex dynamic systems? ? What kinds of human improvement are most important to do this? ? Which science & which technics are most likely to help us improve?

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THE TOP VALUE: HOW TO SURVIVE PLEASANTLY TOGETHER FOREVER (almost). 

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Some of us probably have most of the physical and biological, and a lot of the psycho-social scientific knowledge needed.

But, we lack the scientechnological knowledge to design good enough collaborative educative ventures. & We lack World-wide political understanding of the Global ecolo-cocultural symbiosis imperative = SYMVIABILITY IMPERATIVE 6

SCIENCE-BASED POTENT UBIQUITOUS EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY IS AN ANSWER

Consequently, I have always been concerned to envision, and share &TEST conceptions of symviably useful high- leverage, wide-coverage, ed-tech ventures. (e.g. mirror-video, asynch CMC, the TRANSPARENT UNIVERSITY, PALS-PATHS & PLACES, VIRTUAL-VIRTUAL BARTER, sim-games, etc.

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SO, HOW BETTER TO MODEL, AND DIAGNOSE OUR VENTURES? Is MY ENDURING ED-TECH RESEARCH QUESTION 

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Collaborative Function–Value Levels Modelling is really necessary to make sure we are all talking the same game and to enable our sharing the richness of each others’ perceptions of it and one another.

Cybersystemic formal communicontrol loops & processes modelling and simulations are necessary to understand and improve the dynamics and outcomes of our ventures 8

SATISFACTIONS plus and minus WITH WHAT OTHER MODELLERS HAVE TRIED

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Zwicky – MORPHOLOGICAL MATRIX DESIGN Silvern – ANASYNTHESIS METHODOLOGY Bloom et al.and Maslow et al. LEARNING NEEDS LEVELS Beer - VIABLE SYSTEM METHODOLOGY Checkland - SOFT SYSTEMS METHODOLOGY Argyrus – DOUBLE-LOOP LEARNING Klir - RECONSTRUCTIBILITY THEORY Morgan – METAPHORICAL RE-DESCRIPTION Ens - VALUE – FUNCTION METHOD Jonassen, Narda? – ACTIVITY THEORY 9

WHAT KEY STUFF I HAVE BORROWED FROM WHOM: 

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EMERGENT CYBERSYSTEMIC LEVELS from Kenneth Boulding and Mario Bunge DISTURBANCE VARIETY vs. CONTROL VARIETY AUDITING from Ross Ashby & Stafford Beer.

Quasi-eternal IDENTITY SURVIVANCE GAME from John Von Neumann, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Ashley Montagu.

CARING, CURIOUS STRUCTURED LEARNING CONVERSATIONS from Socrates, Martin Buber, Gordon Pask - and my parents.

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Some 8 SETS OF sub-system bounding, articulating, and process analysing QUESTIONS are the best way I have found to structure our WHAT? LEARNING CONVERSATIONS       

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1 – FOCAL SYSTEM IDENTIFICATION 2 – CONTEXT SYSTEMS INTERACTIONS 3 – INTERNAL ACTORS AND RELATIONSHIPS 4 – FEEDBACK LOOPS’ BEHAVIOUR OVER TIME 5 – DISTURBANCE VARIETY v.s. CONTROL VARIETY AUDIT-at each and all ECS levels.

6 – IMAGINE PLAUSIBLEIMPROVEMENTS 7 – ASSESS THEM BY CONVERSATIONAL AND/OR COMPUTERCATIONS-BASED SIMULATION R-C-STATUS CONJECTURES & REFUTATIONS GAMES 8 – THEN - DO ACTION RESEARCH IN THE ’REALER’WORLD. 11

QUO VADIS ? ”WHAT IS TO BE DONE NEXT?” 

? SUGGESTIONS PLEASE ?

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RESOURCES     

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just Google:

Gary M Boyd.

American Society for Cybernetics International System Science Society ISA RC51 SOCIOCYBERNETICS Viable Systems Method Function – Value methodology 13