Ben Compton wrote
>Excellent point! Recently I've been thinking about concepts. It takes a
>lot of words to describe a concept. If we could represent concepts as some
>type of object -- pictoral ? -- that can be combined or manipulated to
>describe a much bigger picture that would be great!
>Math is symbolic of much deeper things; systems archetypes allow us to
>pictorally describe cause and affect over time and space; how could we
>better represent concepts?
>Could we increase the rate at which we learned if we could find a
>different way to deal with concepts?
Ben,
I'd hate to spin us off into another of our recent semantical whirlwinds,
but I thought concepts were representations. As such, I use them in my
work (scenario development in complex wargaming) AS objects that can be
combined or manipulated to describe a MUCH bigger picture. I can answer
emphatically that the rate of learning does increase through this use of
concepts. In many instances, the whole of what we are trying to create,
in my case, a conceptual "battlespace," can only ever be inferred. The
tools we have developed, based on affinity diagrams, allow subject matter
experts to manipulate volumes of activity in relation to other large scale
"core" activities simply through concepts. This, in turn, allows the rest
of us involved in exercise design to understand the necessary
interrelationships being represented and provide the appropriate level of
synthetic (simulation/scripting) activity that saves us from having to
actually place large forces in the field in order to train effectively.
I must add however, that before we can actually execute a training event,
a very significant amount of "filling out" of these initial concepts must
occur. The training (learning?) audience's expectations of concept
fidelity demand it. We are constantly challenged to improve in this area.
FWIW
William
William O. Welsh III
Systems Integration Synergist
Cubic Applications, Inc
wilycat@infi.net
welshw@jwfc.army.mil
--"William Welsh" <wilycat@infi.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>