Reflection - What I Learned!

What I learned from analyzing educational and learning systems from the in-class activities is to ensure you are investigating from a meso, macro, and micro level. When you are analyzing systems, you have to think critically about how you will approach your method of investigation. System analysis is the process of gathering and evaluating facts, detecting problems, and breaking down a system into the components that make up it. It is carried out to investigate a plan or any of its parts to determine what it is designed for. One of the methods we discussed is the soft systems methodology (SSM) (John Boardman & Sauser, 2008). It consists of around seven or eight steps that can be used to assess complicated organizational or systematic problems that require remediation solutions.

In our collaboration sessions, we analyzed the Meso purposes of the 2023 annual distributed meeting and discussed some recommendations for improvement. I believe there is a level of complexity in understanding the components of the system within the micro, macro, or meso-system analysis. The three aspects of the system analysis's Macro, Meso, and Micro components determine each part of a system's overall hierarchy. The macro level, which includes the Meso and Micro component elements, provides a comprehensive, in-depth overview of the system and its systems. The Meso component demonstrates a refinement of the entire into sub-components and, at the Micro level, the refinement and extension of the Meso components. Decomposing the elements improves understanding of the challenges and the various layers of connections or dependencies. While maintaining the integrity of the whole, one may preserve the individuality of the components and encourage appropriate interdependence of those parts. It relates to the principles of togetherness (John Boardman & Sauser, 2008, p. 132).

After going through the collaboration exercise with the group and analyzing the meso purposes of the 2023 annual distributed meeting, my view of small systems would be the same process. One should not see any inherent challenges in analyzing small systems. System thinking has five characteristics to ensure that togetherness has value in the analysis. They are autonomy, belonging, connectivity, diversity, and emergence (John Boardman & Sauser, 2008, p. 154). The differentiating factors of the components are how they work together to achieve a goal.

References

John Boardman, & Sauser, B. (2008). Systems thinking: Coping with 21st century problems. CRC Press.