Systems open study group
A painless way to learn about systems thinking
This series of discussions is associated with the 'Great Systems Thinking' project (a book which Magnus and Karen are working on). If you take part in all the discussions over the coming months you will work your way through a broad spectrum of key systems thinkers.
Every two weeks the name of a great systems thinker will be posted here, together with a reference to a piece of their work. Ten days later, following a face-to-face discussion in the OU Systems discipline, we will open a web discussion about the author and reading.
You are warmly invited to participate in this web study group, at whatever level you like:
- Participate in most sessions, or just a few.
- Study the readings and comment on them, ignore the readings and comment on the authors, or simply read the views of others.
- Join each session as it opens, or come in later and add to existing discussions.
- Join the mailing list and get notified when each new reading is announced, or simply look in when you want to.
- Contribute whatever you like - questions, opinions, insights, connections, anecdotes, gut reactions - all are welcome.
We are not able to publish the readings themselves here, only references to them. Announcing each reading 10 days before discussion begins, gives you time to find it in a library or bookshop (many pieces will be short enough for you to read as you browse).
Conditions
One of the aims of this project is to support a mutually beneficial peer learning process. Comments may be edited or removed, if they are considered unhelpful to the peer learning process.
You don’t (quite) get something for nothing: By posting messages here, you are assenting to the small possibility that brief comments may be quoted anonymously in the book associated with the project.
Comments
If you'd like to make comments or suggestions about this project, please use the ideas bank below. This is a largely self-organising project, so we cannot promise you will get a response.