Using Simulations of NetLogo as a Tool for Introducing Greek High-School Students to Eco-Systemic Thinking

Abstract

In this paper, the effectiveness of the NetLogo programming environment is investigated, as regards assisting students (of various levels of achievement) of the Greek Higher Secondary Education, to understand how some simple ecosystems are structured and to model the systemic behaviour of such ecosystems by conceptualising their Complexity features. This paper is part of a wider research on teaching Ecosystem Complexity to high-school students, with the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT’s). Specific models from the NetLogo Models’ Library were used and students of the 2nd class of the Greek Lyceum (aged between 16 and 17) participated in the investigation. Apart from oral instruction, the students were asked to run the NetLogo simulations and do specific things with the models, answering simultaneously questions on worksheets provided to them. The studying and the evaluation of the worksheets by the researchers, as well as the post- instructional evaluation of the students, both oral (by means of cassettes) and written, through the use of an evaluation sheet, gave research findings that proved to be encouraging in that: a) students developed a greater understanding of the complex/systemic behaviour of ecosystems and b) they were capable, to a certain extent, of analyzing the systemic relations within simple ecosystems and built analogous relations in other, also simple, ecosystems.