Teaching a modelling process: Reflections from an online course

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 posed unique challenges for academic and professional education, while at the same time offering opportunities related to the mass switching of the delivery of courses to the online mode. In this paper, we share the experience of organising and delivering an online doctoral-level course on Agent-Based Modelling for Social Research. The course’s aim was to teach interdisciplinary content on various elements of the modelling process in a coherent and practical way. In the paper, we offer a critical assessment of different aspects of the course, related to content as well as organisation and delivery. By looking at the course in the light of the current knowledge and literature on good teaching and learning practices from the educational and psychological literature, and reflecting on the lessons learned, we offer a blueprint for designing and running complex, multi-thread simulation
courses in an efficient way.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Jakub Bijak: orcid.org/0000-0002-2563-5040

ORCID for Philip Higham: orcid.org/0000-0001-6087-7224

ORCID for Jason Hilton: orcid.org/0000-0001-9473-757X

ORCID for Martin Hinsch: orcid.org/0000-0002-7059-7266

ORCID for Toby Prike: orcid.org/0000-0001-7602-4947

ORCID for Peter W.F. Smith: orcid.org/0000-0003-4423-5410

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