Suksawang, Orasa, "A System Dynamics Approach to Teaching of Settlement Geography", 1991
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This paper explains an effort to approach system dynamics as a tool for designing a curriculum and integrating experimental learning in a course titled Geography of Settlements. The course is offered for undergraduate students in the field of Social Sciences at Kasetsart University . Its contents deal with change over time and space and integration of physical and social contexts of change. The lectures incorporate experimentation in computer-based learning for understanding theories and information relationships existing in the spatial organization, settlement problems and developments. After students have learned system dynamics concepts and feedback system, they are asked to formulate the causal loops and simple models of settlement growth and urbanization with policies for environmental control, before coming up physical planning and designing a town or a city. The responses of students in class and groups discussion as well as exercise outputs are examined and compared to the control group of students who have no experience with this approach.