Part 1: Write a reflection about your experience in the class discussion during the synchronous meeting.

What did you learn?

Overall, I learned about systems that are interconnected with many interrelated elements. These individual elements cannot work separately. Each element is a separate entity that produces some output or a process with the desire to fulfill the entire system. All the individual elements are interdependent. When we take the education system, there are separate functions that build up the system. If these functions fail, the whole system fails. People do not like change; when changes to these systems are needed, the best way to proceed is to keep them informed through communication and training. Think of empathy and culture to build together more resilient people. When individual functions are more robust, the whole system becomes stronger. 

The milk system contains different systems in the entire dairy production. —the problems and issues faced by the farmers through the forceful traders. At the same time, the whole production system impacts the animals, the environment, and humans. Lessons learned from the Boeing crash due to communication failure. Noting that for systems to work together, communication is an important entity. Also, think beforehand about the failures that could happen to a system and how these failures could be avoided or develop backup plans. 

Lastly, the understanding of the program diagrams created for the Frisco Campus. The eight-step soft systems methodology model and the balanced scorecard included the goals, measures, targets, and initiatives on the Lucid chart created by Dr. Warren. 

What do you want to learn more about?

I was interested in learning more about system thinking and how the overall system joins the system development process, which also included the connection to the systems that I need to develop for teachers who are not instructional designers but join the role of instructional designers, how system thinking connects with the instructional design process.

Did you do anything about it and start to investigate on your own? If so, what resources did you locate?

I read the articles about system thinking (below) and downloaded the research articles that will be helpful in my work on system thinking for instructional designers

• Systems thinking: what, why, when where and how? By Michael Goodman https://thesystemsthinker.com/systems-thinking-what-why-when-where-and-how/ This indicted what system thinking involve, why we use system thinking, when should we use, where to start, and how should we use the tools

• System thinking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Miy9uQcwo3U Explained the methodology of system thinking, assumption and methods of these theories, analysis and synthesis of the system.

• Bond, M. A., Tamim, S. R., Blevins, S. J., & Sockman, B. R. SYSTEMS THINKING FOR INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNERS. This shows the real-world cases how designers continually improve and manage change across organizations using the system thinking approach.

• Rowland, G., & Adams, A. M. (1999). Systems thinking in instructional design. In Design approaches and tools in education and training (pp. 29-44). Springer, Dordrecht. This research discusses about the instructional system components and their inter-relationship.

• Banathy, B. H. (1999). Systems thinking in higher education: Learning comes to focus. Systems Research and Behavioral Science: The Official Journal of the International Federation for Systems Research, 16(2), 133-145. The paper discusses about the what the system thinking tells us about how we provide learning and human development.

• Li, M. (2002). Fostering design culture through cultivating the user-designers’ design thinking and systems thinking. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 15(5), 385-410. The essence of design thinking and systems thinking is reviewed

What might you do differently in the future to make your learning and understanding more effective and efficient. 

There is always a time when you do not clearly understand the big picture from the reading or the research articles. I constantly research through google to find articles or YouTube videos that better understand some of the essential terms discussed in the literature. For this week, my main aim was system thinking and a better understanding of this term. I used the above video. These videos motivate me to find more interesting topics through prior learning and experience and how I could connect these researches to my present work environment. I feel that connecting all pieces from past and present experience; knowledge drives me to be more curious to check for future improvement to what I am working on right now that becomes valuable knowledge for my graduate work.