Essay Instructions

We ask each participant in this workshop to write a short essay about their experience/expertise related to teaching and learning about complex systems. The purpose of this essay is to provide an introduction to the other workshop participants to your work and thinking on the topic of complex systems. The essays will be posted on the workshop website and become part of the On the Cutting Edge resource collections. We hope that your essay will be a strong piece of writing sharing a few important ideas, points, or results that you think will be of high interest to the other participants, rather than a comprehensive list of all of your work. Your essay might address:

• one or two challenges in teaching or learning about complex systems, and the strategies you use to meet those challenges,
• strategies you use to assess students' understanding of complex systems, or
• research you have been engaged with that bears on the teaching, learning or understanding of complex systems.

Essays should be no longer than two pages. If there are references (either your own or the work of others) that are important to your thinking, please list them at the end of the essay. Please save your essay as a Microsoft Word or PDF file to upload with your workshop registration.

Examples

Here are a couple of example essays to give you some ideas about how you might approach writing yours. Additional examples can be found on the workshop participants page.

• Dave Mogk's essay, "Work Done On, By, and To the Earth: Complex Physical, Chemical, Biological and Anthropogenic Interactions in the Earth System"
• Deborah Gross' essay, "Teaching Students to Work Within the Environmental Analysis Literature"