I used the "disease dynamics" tutorial to help me construct this ABM, in which the individual agents are students and the states in which they can find themselves (with regard to learning a new skill/concept) include "confusion," "familiarity," and "mastery." I modeled the transitions from one state to the next under the assumption that a student cannot transition from "mastery" of a particular concept back to "confusion." This model also operates under the assumption that the more students who become familiar with a skill, the more likely it is that other students will, too (presumably, students help each other).
The skill I imagined being taught to these students is something like Argumentative Writing, as most students can become "familiar" with this skill (or perform "satisfactorily" in it), while only some students are likely to "master" this skill in a given school year.
I labeled the transitions "exposure" and "practice" to signify that exposing students to a new skill/concept tends to lead to their becoming familiar with it, while students taking on the task of practicing is the only way for them to transition to mastery.
I complicated this model by adding a teacher to the mix. I also changed the number of states that students can exhibit in order to make it such that there is a 50/50 chance that once a student has learned a skill, he/she will enter a state of confusion as opposed to familiarity with the new skill/concept. The states that teachers can enter include "helpful" and "overwhelmed." The "overwhelmed" state depends on the number of students who are in a state of confusion (asking too many questions). As students transition to the states of familiarity or mastery, the teacher becomes less overwhelmed and moves back into the state of simply being "helpful."
