Intervening in a Feedback Loop

This has been taught in a General Education-level course, but may be used in upper level undergraduate or graduate courses. This is a difficult assignment at the general education level for students, because it requires significant critical thinking, but scaffolding it with simple resources helps the student be successful.

Prior to completing this assignment, students must be familiar with the basics of feedback loops and understand causal loop diagrams. In my class, they have had three assignments about feedback loops prior to completing this assignment. They must also have contextual knowledge about the feedback loop that is at the center of your assignment.

This is given mid-way through the semester, after they have completed the following assignments: (1) Mutual alignment of feedback loops (2) Causal Loop Diagramming, and (3) Feedback Loop Sorting (All available on Teach the Earth).

The content goals may vary depending on the feedback loop that you choose to be the center of this assignment. However, this assignment is intended to reinforce feedback loop thinking skills and encourage students to apply this to a system they have learned about in class.

Higher order thinking goals focus on analysis of the system and critical thinking and include the following:
-Identifying components by breaking down the system into parts.
-Determining how elements of the system interact and influence each other.
-Detecting inefficiencies, gaps, or unintended consequences within the system.
-Determining which problems are most urgent or impactful to address.
-Identifying underlying assumptions in how the system is designed or functions.
-Recognizing potential bias in the system or in one's own interpretation.
-Considering the ethical implications of how the system operates and any proposed changes.

Student learning goals focused on improvement of writing skills:
-Apply a framework (ways to intervene in a system) to analyze and interpret a system (feedback loop).
-Structure and organize written arguments effectively, using logical reasoning and transitions.
-Analyze and critique arguments, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses.
-Gather and synthesize relevant information from sources.
-Clearly communicate ideas and arguments.

In addition, this assignment empowers students to identify ways to enact positive change.

Step 1: Identify a key positive feedback loop with an unfavorable outcome. Examples may include the ice-albedo feedback or desertification. In my class we were looking at the Matthew Effect ("the rich get richer and the poor get poorer") to understand the feedback resulting in gender and racial bias in awards.

Step 2: Draw the causal loop diagram for the feedback loop that is the focus of this assignment (see example in supporting materials).

Step 3: Have students read Meadows (1999) paper on Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System. In my online class, I also provide a excellent YouTube video that goes over these points; video link is available in Resources below.

Step 4: Student writes Essay. Have students identify one way that they can intervene in that positive feedback loop, write a compelling argument for why this intervention will have a beneficial effect, and identify which leverage point it corresponds to from Meadows' paper. In my General Education course, I provide additional articles that give examples of potential interventions.

Example (my prompt): The positive feedback loop of awards, citations, and systemic bias greatly favors the advancement of some groups over others. The Nobel Prizes in science are a great example of this positive feedback loop. These prizes have historically been so heavily skewed toward white men that some have called for the various Nobel committees to instill quotas ensuring a certain percentage of women receive the prizes. Are there other ways to nudge the system that might be more effective? For this essay, I would like you to write a 2-page (1.5 spaced, 10-12pt font) essay that advocates for a way to change the Nobel system to make it more equitable. You will need to refer to the leverage points in Donella Meadows 1999 paper on Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System. Please note that this essay requires referencing external sources. You should have internal citations as well as a reference list at the end.

Essay Rubric (Acrobat (PDF) 39kB Jun23 25)

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A causal loop diagram of the positive feedback loop of awards.

Provenance: Alexandra Davatzes, Temple University
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.

The biggest issue that I run into is that students want to address multiple leverage points, instead of focusing on just one. This generally leads to a more "list-like" essay that lacks in depth. When I have the opportunity to meet with students before this assignment, I prefer to have them identify what leverage point they will focus their essay on prior to writing.

For this assessment, I use a slightly modified version of my standard writing rubric, included in the supporting materials.
If you would like to grade the CLD as well as the essay, a ten-point scoring checklist is provided in the supporting materials.

Video on Leverage Points: https://youtu.be/9qL4KxqbrFM. This video efficiently summarizes the different leverage points.

Meadows (1999): https://donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Leverage_Points.pdf. This is a PDF that I give to my students to understand different ways to nudge a system.