A complex systems approach to education in Switzerland

The insights gained from the study of complex systems in biological, social, and engineered systems enables us not only to observe and understand, but also to actively design systems which will be capable of successfully coping with complex and dynamically changing situations. The methods and mindset required for this approach have been applied to educational systems with their diverse levels of scale and complexity. Based on the general case made by Yaneer Bar-Yam, this paper applies the complex systems approach to the educational system in Switzerland. It confirms that the complex systems approach is valid. Indeed, many recommendations made for the general case have already been implemented in the Swiss education system. To address existing problems and difficulties, further steps are recommended. This paper contributes to the further establishment complex systems approach by shedding light on an area which concerns us all, which is a frequent topic of discussion and dispute among politicians and the public, where billions of dollars have been spent without achieving the desired results, and where it is difficult to directly derive consequences from actions taken. The analysis of the education system's different levels, their complexity and scale will clarify how such a dynamic system should be approached, and how it can be guided towards the desired performance

Urdar - an artificial ecology platform

Cross-feeding interactions are a common feature of many microbial systems, such as colonies of E. coli grown on a single limiting resource. We have studied this phenomenon in Gerlee and Lundh (2010) from an abstract point of view by considering artificial organisms which metabolise binary strings from a shared environment. The organisms are represented as simple cellular automaton rules and the analog of energy in the system is an approximation of the Shannon entropy of the binary strings. Only organisms which increase the entropy of the transformed strings are allowed to replicate. This system exhibits a large degree of species diversity, which increases when the flow of binary strings into the system is reduced