An Action Research on System Dynamics Course Through Cooperative Learning

We explore instructional design of system dynamics by action research in the recent years, improve the situation of teaching, learning, and practice constantly, and accumulate some knowledge and experience. This paper describes some teaching innovations by action research with three fundamental principles: (1) structure influences behavior, (2) set up the goal and feedback learning, (3) from easy to difficult. We want to design the curriculum from three dimensions: learning environment, process, and content. We acquired five conclusions with the impact of action research which intervened the activities of teaching by questionnaires in this paper: (1) the scope of system dynamics is quite broad, thus, teaching needs to be adjusted in accordance with various conditions. (2) cooperative learning can enhance learning results and learning enforcing. (3) action research will be a good guidance for teaching system dynamics through cooperative learning. (4) systems thinking and system dynamics are complementary. (5) instructional design must have systematic characteristics and be implemented step-by-step