• You are to complete this assignment individually. You should not work with or consult with any of your fellow students, in any manner!
  • On Blackboard, in the Discussions, there will be a thread with an attached file for the first 51 pages of Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows.
  • Please download this file and read:
    • The Introduction
    • Chapter One

    Write a 4-page essay, based on this reading, which responds to the following quote and prompt:

    "A stock is the foundation of any system. Stocks are the elements of the system that you can see, feel, count, or measure at any given time. A system stock is just what it sounds like: a store, a quantity, an accumulation of material or information that has built up over time....Stocks change over time through the actions of a flow. Flows are filling and draining, births and deaths, purchases and sales, growth and decay, deposits and withdrawals, successes and failures. A stock, then, is the present memory of the history of changing flows within the system."
    Meadows, Donella H. 2008. Thinking in Systems: A Primer. pp. 17-18.
    The IT Lab LAN (local area network) is composed of a number of physical and virtual devices, for which it20 is the primary server. Moreover, the virtual machines will also function as both servers and clients to one another. How is the IT Lab LAN a system, and what are the stocks and flows that characterize its state and behavior over time?
    Your essay will need to make an actual argument or case -- about the IT Lab LAN's nature as a system, as conceptualized in the reading. This will entail two things:
    • Useful and relevant references to the reading
    • Facts and evidence regarding the setup and behavior of the IT Lab LAN: servers to clients, clients to clients, etc.
    You will need to know what is the case that you want to make, and your essay should have:
    • A strong opening that defines and introduces the reader to the topic.
    • A well-developed body, with points to support your argument and facts/evidence to back them up.
    • An effective closing, that ties everything together and makes a good conclusion.
    Also, your essay must contain at least one stock-and-flow diagram illustrating some aspect or sub-system of the IT Lab LAN.
  • In writing an essay like this, one that responds to a reading assignment by making it relevant to another topic, students often make either of two mistakes:
    1. Writing something that is mostly a summary of the reading, barely addressing its relation to anything outside of it.
    2. Writing something that mostly or entirely neglects the reading.
    Neither of these will be sufficient to do well -- or even just "okay" -- on this assignment. Instead, you are doing the reading in order to understand ideas and concepts for the sake of applying them to new material. In this case, that material is our IT Lab LAN.
  • Since you are being given over a month to complete this assignment, you are advised to use that time wisely. This is time in which you can come up with:
    • A thesis statement or main argument.
    • A basic understanding of the reading's ideas and concepts
    • Different points you want to make
    • Different facts and evidence you might wish to use
    • An outline to guide your writing
    • A rough draft, along with subsequent drafts, if needed
    This will allow time for you to plan, develop, proofread, and advise -- as well as consulting with the instructor, UMass Boston Academic Support Programs, or other approved sources.
  • TURNING IN: As a PDF file, entitled assign2.pdf, inside your it341 directory on users.cs.umb.edu.  Probably the easiest way to do this is to create your essay in a word processor like Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer (which also will allow you to embed images like your stock-and-flow diagram) and export to PDF.
  • Your essay should meet the following formatting specifications:
    • Double-spaced
    • 12-point font
    • 1-inch margins
    • In paragraph form
  • There is no need to consume several lines at the beginning with information like class, date, etc. Your name will be sufficient.