Special session - using Rich Pictures to improve systemic thinking

Rich Pictures, as defined by Peter Checkland, pictorially and informally capture the structures, viewpoints, responsibilities, and processes of a situation and its inherent relationships. Thus, these pictures aid users to think systemically about a situation. This session will introduce systemic thinking to participants through the use of the modeling technique of Rich Pictures. Vanasupaa, Rogers, and Chen, at the 38^th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference discussed the findings of a pilot study on the outcome of the use of Rich Pictures by materials engineering students. Initial findings indicate that using Rich Pictures can broaden students´ ability to participate in systemic thinking. The session proposed here builds on the Vanasupaa et al study to introduce the potential of Rich Pictures to engineering educators. Of specific interest is the building of Rich Pictures by individuals as well as teams of individuals. The goals of this session are: (1) to introduce participants to Rich Pictures as an information modeling technique, (2) to illustrate uses of Rich Pictures for classroom settings (individual and team applications), and (3) to introduce and discuss systems thinking and its applications.