Lab for Cybernetics: Engaging Wicked Challenges

9 units · Undergraduate

Fall and Spring: 9 units The Laboratory for Cybernetics (Lab4C) supports students engaging with wicked challenges based on personal interests and/or current projects for their courses or thesis. Cybernetics uses information and purpose for guiding design and action?in complex systems. This course is an on-ramp to Lab4C and offers a cadence of techniques [a] for better understanding complex systems and [b] for developing effective interventions to improve outcomes in the entanglements of social, technical, and natural systems that make our 21st-century world so uncertain and unpredictable. The course offers powerful tools in an ethical framework for new design interventions. In addition, the course connects students to potential collaborators through its global network of in-world practitioners. The resulting conversations are scaffolded so that their focus remains on the student's domain and concerns, worldview, and values. The final deliverable of the course may be entered into a competition for a $5K prize. 3rd and 4th year undergrads by permission. Course Website: http://tinyurl.com/L4C-Course-Syllabus