From discussion to action

[Rajesh Kasturirangan]

OK, I think we have a lot of really good ideas on how to start addressing the education problem. At this stage, we don't even need to create models that are "valid." More important to get our feet wet. In Sowmyan's terms we need to come up with a solution architecture. The discussion has to move off the group list for a while and into the wiki so that it doesn't come across as brainstorming without teeth. Can we work on a pre-model, i.e., cleaning up whatever we have on the wiki into a reasonable, coherent statement of the problem space and our assumptions going forward. Then we can start thinking about addressing the other seven steps of the eight fold path. 

Rajesh

[MG Subramanian]

@sowmyan

My touch with doing direcetd graphs with multiple arrows is a bit rusty but yours must be pretty fresh. I think we can do with your help here Sowmyan, in getting a directed relationship graphs with an ultimate node -either called drop-out rate or its conceptual inverse "still_in_the_school_system".

If you know of a good freeware tool that is in improvement on mindmaps I can do that over weekend the too. The graphical model will help us to defer commitment to a mathematical model till we are ready to plunge into coding!

@everyone

Anyone used Dia? 

-ganu

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[Sowmyan Tirumurti]

Rajesh,

I seem to be a bit lost. We seem to be storming into action. I am wondering what are we acting on? 

I understand we took improvement in education system as the objective. This would fall under design of an institution from the Model thinking course. Mount Rider model for mechanism design. But this was just talked of as an example of how model thinking is used for institutional design. Not much of the details have been covered. I presume one of the lectures will deal with it adequately. 

At this stage we just know there is supposed to be a Theta - resources and people available to deliver. We need to collectively decide on the X the social objectives the mechanism has to deliver. Then the mechanism m is to be designed. This is one idea. Going by this we should discuss what is the desirable outcome that we want, collectively. My suggestion here was to identify stake holders or beneficiaries and identify what they want. We can brain storm and do a survey. 

Stake holders (agents in MT lingo) - the students themselves, teachers, parents, future employers, government

Outcomes: What do they expect out of a school, what is it giving them, and what is it it is not giving them. 

You can request members to define this. If this has already been done and I have not been aware of this, we can have this posted in a place. 

Another thought:

The course is supposed to last 10 weeks. We have gone through 2 weeks of material. It looks like we will be exposed a 2 models a session, 4 per week and hence 38 total. (Leaving the introductory lecture that merely said why model). We don't know when we will get exposed to Mount Rider model. Not even if we will cover that at all. One way we can keep working is, to keep the problem as well defined and understood. Every time we learn a new model we can see how the fertility of the model can help us to explore some part of the problem we are talking of. We can do a exercise this way for every model. At the end of the course, we would have used all models to explore a common theme to the extent possible and then hopefully find about 4 or 5 of them giving us a good handle on the application. 

We covered the following in the course. 

Segregation: Are there issues of segregation in schools today? Is this causing a problem. How do we understand of whatever segregation that is there. Can this be accommodated without disruption to the system? How do students hangout with peers. What sort of segregation happens. What group characteristics are getting defined. Are there disruptive groups? How are these groups forming? Can we promote formation of positive groups and discourage formation of negative groups? 

Peer effect: Is there a way peer effect is helping or harming education outcome identified by us? Is there a continuum? Will the peer influence break down? How do we get some thing of a standing ovation for the way the school works? How do we avoid a disruptive riotous situation if they are seen in any manner? How do we multiply the beneficial effect and how do we attenuate the negative effect. What factors could play a role. can we model this. 

Aggregation: When we look at the aggregate level what is the performance. How much is this varying? What is the possible application of six sigma? Are there simple rule based things that can make a significant change? (single cell automaton) How can a lively atmosphere be maintained in a school? How do we prevent 'death' (of enthusiasm) in the school? 

We can go on like this. ( I haven't gone through the last set of lessons). By the end of the course we would have explored the problem at hand from many interesting perspectives. 

I am sorry to be disrupting the proceedings by revisiting the basics again. In a early life management training program, I experienced the sequence of storming, norming, and performing when a group gets together. I felt we were storming. I wanted to bring up norming. One other aspect I recollect from that management training was groups should take stock of the resources they have and build their discussion around that of subject matter experts related to the topic. People from the education sector should take centre-stage and others can pitch in with their area of experience when called for. I can not say I come from the education sector. So I would stand aside and await a role. There must be people from education sector.  

Regards,

Sowmyan

On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 7:47 PM, Rajesh Kasturirangan <rkas...@gmail.com> wrote:

OK, I think we have a lot of really good ideas on how to start addressing the education problem. At this stage, we don't even need to create models that are "valid." More important to get our feet wet. In Sowmyan's terms we need to come up with a solution architecture. The discussion has to move off the group list for a while and into the wiki so that it doesn't come across as brainstorming without teeth. Can we work on a pre-model, i.e., cleaning up whatever we have on the wiki into a reasonable, coherent statement of the problem space and our assumptions going forward. Then we can start thinking about addressing the other seven steps of the eight fold path. 

Rajesh

--
T Sowmyan
+91 80 25242236
http://sites.google.com/site/tsowmyan

[MG Subramanian]

We have defined a much simpler problem around children remaining in the school system. and are at the very early stage of grappling with definitions etc that can help us measure the key outcomes.  It is not as broad as improving all or the major  deliverables to the stakeholders.Just understand what keeps them in the system and what makes them dropout over the normal school year span. The idea is to use the resources and resourcefulness of the group to source any data broadly connected with it.

The group will work asynchronously along several paths, typically climb in a spiral, before we have crisper definitions and forms of models.That is my understanding how a sizeable group like this can work. What it lacks in crisp definitions in early stages will be compensated by richer perspectives, even divergent perspectives that may be evident for some more time. We may even break the model that we initially build and restart when beneficial.

Group, please correct/calibrate me on the above!

-ganu

 

"Fact : School enrollment decreases with age

Question : what are the parameters (unweighted to begin with)?

Exercise/ Answer: Maybe we can all start responding with what we think are the factors (backed up by references (articles/wikipedia links/ literary sources etc.)  & data (numbers, numbers, numbers)) 

Maybe we can try and do a quick-n-dirty crowdsourcing of knowledge for this specific question?"

 

[Sowmyan Tirumurti]

Hah... I did suspect I was not in sync. Thanks for clarifying.

We wish to identify factors that influence decrease of school enrollment with age.

That is a good one. 
/realigns thoughts/