Wicked Problems
If you work in an organisation that deals with social, commercial or financial planning - or any type of public policy planning - then you've got wicked problems. You may not call them by this name, but you know what they are. They are those complex, ever changing societal and organisational planning problems that you haven't been able to treat with much success, because they won't keep still. They're messy, devious, and they fight back when you try to deal with them. Keywords: Wicked problems, general morphological analysis, policy analysis, Horst Rittel Introduction In 1973, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, both urban planners at the University of Berkley in California, wrote an article for Policy Sciences with the astounding title "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning". At first glance, it is not self-evident what is actually meant by this term. Also, wicked problems are not actually "problems" in the sense of having well defined and stable problem statements. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Office of Technology Development
If you are interested in starting a company based on UNC technology and are currently working with an OTD project manager, please contact your project manager with any questions or concerns. If you are not working with a project manager, call 919-966-3929 or email us at otd@unc.edu and you will be directed to the appropriate person. A license to UNC technology can only be obtained through the Office of Technology Development. The Carolina Express License is available to UNC startups with the hope that its use will expedite the licensing process. Carolina Express License The Carolina Express License is a standard license agreement aimed exclusively at UNC startups and intended to increase the number of new companies started and technologies licensed rather than maximizing financial gain. Follow the links below to the standard license agreement, user's guide with terms sheet, and application. Other Resources Launch the Venture Carolina Kickstart Contact email: carolinakickstart@unc.edu
New England Complex Systems Institute
Office of Technology Development
Reflexive Pedagogy
Over the past few months, we at ProfHacker have written articles about class/course assessment and how important it is to get students’ input in class evaluations. Certainly, course evaluations contain important information for the instructor and the university, but they rarely measure what the students actually learned in that course. We can use traditional methods of evaluation to gauge what students have learned, and that helps us (giving tests, assigning grades). But do these traditional methods of assessment and evaluation of student work help students recognize what they have learned? Self-reflexivity can help students and educators identify the “what” and the “why” of student learning. Reflexivity, on the other hand, is to engage in the moment, to understand the thoughts and feelings of an experience while experiencing that experience. This dual understanding becomes key if we want students to retain what they have learned. What question do you have? [Image by Flickr user Envios.
The future of credentials
By Salman Khan, Special to CNN Editor’s note: Salman Khan is the founder of Khan Academy, a not-for-profit educational organization whose mission is “to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere.” Khan is the author of “The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined” (Twelve). (CNN) – When people talk about education, they are usually mixing together several ideas. Let’s try a simple thought experiment: What if we were to separate the teaching and credentialing roles of universities? With our hypothetical assessments - microcredentials, if you will - people could prove that they know just as much in a specific domain as those with an exclusive diploma. In short, it would make the credential that most students and parents need cheaper (since it is an assessment that is not predicated on seat time in lecture halls) and more powerful - it would tell employers who is best ready to contribute at their organizations based on metrics that they find important.
Reflexivity (social theory)
Reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect. A reflexive relationship is bidirectional with both the cause and the effect affecting one another in a situation that does not render both functions causes and effects. In sociology, reflexivity therefore comes to mean an act of self-reference where examination or action "bends back on", refers to, and affects the entity instigating the action or examination. In Economics reflexivity refers to the self-reinforcing effect of market sentiment, whereby rising prices attract buyers whose actions drive prices higher still until the process becomes unsustainable and the same process operates in reverse leading to a catastrophic collapse in prices. It is an instance of a feedback loop. Reflexivity is, therefore, a methodological issue in the social sciences analogous to the observer effect. Sociologist Robert K. Michel Foucault's The Order of Things can be said to touch on the issue of Reflexivity.
A Few Notes from ISSS San Jose 2012
This week, I was at ISSS San Jose 2012, the annual meeting for the International Society for the System Sciences. I would try to explain what System Science is, but I actually understand very little, and this conference was my shot at trying to understand what is going on. At a high level, it’s the interdisciplinary study of systems, from businesses to ecosystems, to get at some of the aspects that they share. A lot of it went over my head, but I wrote down a few things that I found particularly thought-provoking. I was inconsistent in taking notes, so this is not meant to be a summary. So, here they are, split up by the speaker David Ing resilience isn’t always goodprofit is a buffer against downturn, and it stops you from changingwhen you’re down and in crisis, change will happeninnovation is sometimes doing less of thingswith only so much time in the day, you need to figure out what you can cut Rafael Ramirez Jim Spohrer Garry Peterson Judith Rosen John Kineman
Dunning–Kruger effect
Cognitive bias about one's own skill The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. It was first described by the psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. Some researchers also include the opposite effect for high performers' tendency to underestimate their skills. In popular culture, the Dunning–Kruger effect is often misunderstood as a claim about general overconfidence of people with low intelligence instead of specific overconfidence of people unskilled at a particular task. Numerous similar studies have been done. There is disagreement about the causes of the Dunning–Kruger effect. There is also disagreement about where the effect applies and about how strong it is, as well as about its practical consequences. The Dunning–Kruger effect is defined as the tendency of people with low ability in a specific area to give overly positive assessments of this ability. [edit]
