Reopening Campuses: Visualizing the Structure of a System Problem

Abstract

AbstractThe process of reopening of college campuses in response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic sheds light on underlying features of the educational system. Understanding the various models of reopening gives us insight into how the education system is structured through the responses of the various college campuses—a unique opportunity to capturing issues of inertial momentum against change in the past, and projecting into the future. We propose visualizing the structure of a system problem as a way to allow the problem to become visible through mental models. We illustrate our approach through causal loops—the core tool for systems thinking. We discuss the construction of one visual model, based on publicly available resources, to be used as a starting point for a discussion. The model points to the importance of making informed, high-level early decisions, in the case of a crisis, as this shows to be a highly dependent variable in the model. This finding is shown to be supported by ongoing research on faculty adaptability in different contexts. Visualizing mental models in systems thinking does not seek to unnecessarily capture all the details of the complexity of the educational system; rather, it aims to externalize deep problems, which, in turn, demonstrate opportunities for transformation in the future.