Abstract for: Using Storytelling and Teaching Materials to Share Systemic Insights to the Public during the COVID-19 Pandemic

In March 2020, our team initiated a modeling effort with two purposes: (1) to create semantically rich stories about the pandemic aimed at the public and (2) to create teaching material for students of system dynamics. We have described the technical details of the models that have supported that work in Mashayekhi et al. (2023). The purpose of the present paper is to document the modeling process that we have undertake: the origins of the project and how the team was assembled, how the team set about developing and writing model-based stories, the iterative process through which a COVID-19 simulation model was developed and refined, and the development of sets of teaching and learning materials about epidemics. We conclude with a reflection on this process.