The essence of systems thinking and practice is in 'seeing' the world in a particular way, because how you 'see' things affects the way you approach situations or undertake specific tasks. This free course will help you to learn about the problems of defining a system and meet some of the key concepts used in systems theory: boundary, environment, positive and negative feedback, etc.

Course learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• display confidence in using systems concepts and language
• describe accurately the set of key systems concepts
• understand what is distinctive about systems thinking as opposed to other forms of thinking
• understand how systems thinking is useful in analysing and improving situations
• understand the notion of a system as a creation of the observer, i.e. as an intellectual construct, as opposed to using the term system in other ways, i.e. as entities that exist 'out there'.