Systems Thinking Framework Teaching Materials

Systems Thinking Framework Templates

These templates include just the Systems Thinking Framework process and questions. For complete course modules (with lesson plans and/or provided references) see below.

Course Modules

Integration into a Course Project: Chemical and Thermal Processes

Systems Thinking Modules: Students evaluate engineering solutions by critically analyzing them through technical, societal, environmental, and ethical lenses in a semester-long project. Students use a Systems Thinking Framework to develop skills to conduct their analysis. Deliverables include an annotated bibliography, a preliminary System Map conducted in-class, a technical analysis, a video presentation, and a revised System Map. 

Course Description: Students in this course are formally introduced to energy conversion, inherent in the chemical and thermal processes all around us. Leveraging the four fundamental laws of thermodynamics, students will connect work and heat transfer to changes in state variables, like internal energy, temperature, and entropy. Students will apply closed control mass and open control volume analyses to reactive and non-reactive engineering systems, providing real-world context for using thermodynamics. Because this is a fundamental science course, students emphasize building sound problem-solving habits that they can leverage in other courses, and their careers.

Creating a Systems Map about a Course Topic: Introduction to Environmental Engineering

Systems Thinking Module: During a class period at the end of the semester, students select a class topic of their choice and create a system map connecting that topic to social, environmental, and ethical components. 

Course Description: Students in this course will build technical skills central to the field of environmental engineering to model and design solutions for contaminated water, air, and land systems that could pose a threat to human health or the environment. To design the best solutions to complex problems, students will also build a conceptual framework of how the stakeholders and scientific fields are interconnected in environmental challenges through discussing real environmental crises and solutions in California. The technical skills that students will gain include: (1) modeling the transport of water, air, and contaminants by applying mass and energy balance principles to environmental systems, including surface water, groundwater, and atmospheric systems; (2) calculating important metrics of water/air/soil quality (e.g. dissolved oxygen, concentration of contaminants) to determine how they change over time and location; (3) evaluating the risk of contaminants to human health and the environment; and (4) designing engineered solutions to treat these systems, including water and wastewater treatment systems. 

Other Systems Thinking Resources

• System Mapping Academy