The Systems Thinking Project at the Design & Intelligence Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology broadly focuses on teaching users at various levels to engage in thinking about complex, and especially, ecological systems. The project specifically addresses multiple specific tasks and abilities:

• Helping users understand complex systems through the construction of conceptual models using the Structure-Behavior-Function (SBF) modeling notation models (Goel et al. 2010; Goel et al. 2013).
• Providing feedback on model construction through dynamically-generated invokable simulations based on conceptual models (Vattam, Goel, & Rugaber 2010; Joyner, Goel, & Papin 2014).
• Facilitating the broader process of scientific inquiry, grounded in model construction (Joyner, Majerich, & Goel 2013).
• Providing personalized feedback on modeling and inquiry through context-aware tutoring agents (Joyner & Goel 2014).

The Systems Thinking project has been under active development for over ten years. Over one thousand users have used the tools constructed within the project. The latest tool release in the System Thinking Project is the Virtual Ecological Research Assistant (Vera) which integrates reference research tools such as the Smithsonian’s Encyclopedia of Life and IBM Watson to assist researchers with processing both structured and unstructured information for their model construction. The goal of Vera is to provide citizen scientists and students with the ability to build and simulate conceptual scientific models.

• Download the software
• Read the user guide

We would like to thank the National Science Foundation for funding this research under grant #1636848.