A Computational Experiment to Describe Opinion Formation Using a Master Equation and Monte Carlo Simulations

  • Authors:

  • Sarantos Psycharis;Evi Makri-Botsari;Gregorios Mouladidis;Fotini Paraskeva;Vassilis Tatsis

  • Affiliations:

  • University of the Aegean-Department of Education and Advanced School of Pedagogy and Technology ASPETE-Athens,;School of Pedagogy and Technology ASPETE,;School of Pedagogy and Technology ASPETE,;University of Piraeus,;University of the Aegean,

  • Venue:
  • WSKS '08 Proceedings of the 1st world summit on The Knowledge Society: Emerging Technologies and Information Systems for the Knowledge Society
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

We propose a computer simulation model aiming to describe the interaction of students in a learning environment composed of the teacher, the students in a collaborative project and the educational material. Our aim is to investigate the change of the opinion of students when they interact with an agent with different opinion. This model can apply to all levels of education in order to explore the reconciliation or not of different opinions during the teaching and learning sequence as well as to examine the resistance of students to new challenges and concepts. The idea is based on the social impact theory and uses methods of Computational Physics, mainly the Monte Carlo techniques and the notion of master equation. Results from simulations indicate that opinion formation is established for different values of the populations when the temperature is below the critical temperature.