DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY

FACULTY OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS

UNIVERSITI PENDIDIKAN SULTAN IDRIS

SBI3013

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN BIOLOGY

SEMESTER 1 2016/2017

SIMULATION BY USING STELLA SOFTWARE

PREY-PREDATOR SAMPLE MODEL

By:

NAME MATRIC GROUP

NUMBER
AISYAH NAZURAH BINTI MOHAMMAD TAMIZI D20162075554
SUZICA JOHNNY JUSIM D20162075560 B
KAMILIA BINTI SALEHUDDIN D20162075561

Lecturer:

DR AZMI BIN IBRAHIM

1.0 Introduction
Simulation is defined as the process of creating a model of an existing or proposed system in

order to identify and understand those factors which control the system and to predict the

future behaviour of the system. A model is created from a mass of data, equations and

computations that mimic the actions of things represented. Models usually include a

graphical display that translates all the number crunching into an animation that will be

shown on the computer screen or some other visual device.

Types of model are divided into two, which are physical and mathematical. Physical

model is like scale models and prototype plants while mathematical model is like analytical

queuing models, linear programs, and simulation. The purpose of simulation is to predict the

future behaviour of a system, and determine the ways to influence that future behaviour. It is

also can be used to predict the way in which system will evolve and respond to its

surrounding, so that any necessary changes identified will help make the system perform the

way that wanted.

Simulation can be performed by anyone in many areas if they have the software or

tools to run it. It is a method to represent complex relations in an easier way and lesser time

and can be applied in educational purpose, commercial, financial, logistics, health or search

purpose. However, there are many advantages and disadvantages of using simulation

especially in teaching and learning process. Simulation can be used in many subjects in

school such as science subject which requires many experimentations. One example of the

simulation software suitable for learning science is the STELLA software which is user

friendly and also suitable for students age user.

2.0 STELLA software

STELLA is a new software program that has been developed to enable every broad, non-

technical audiences to conceptualize, construct and analyse system dynamic models. It is

developed by isee system and this software allow user to communicate with the simulation to

understand how a system works, what goes in, how the system is impacted, and what the

outcomes. A common characteristic in simulation is that user can control or manipulate the

parameter in the simulation and the result shows.

The development of STELLA is to enhance the learning process and offers practical

way to visualize and communicate how complex and ideas really work. As it is easy to use, it

has been used widely in education and really helpful for the visual learner because of the

animation, diagram, and charts in that software can help them discover the relationship

between variables in an equation. STELLA is being used to stimulate system over time and

enable students to creatively change the system by changing the value or variables and

demonstrate the outcomes.

3.0 Advantages of simulation and modelling

 There are many benefits that can gain from using this Simulation model. One of

primary advantage of simulation is tool in education system, this teaching and learning

method using simulation and modelling have potential to engage students in deep learning

that empower understanding. Deep learning can be defined as the contents studied by

students not only on the surface or theory but more than that. The purpose of educational

simulation is to motivate the learner to engage in problem solving such as testing,

experiential learning, schema construction, and development of models (Winn&

Snyder,1996; Duffy & Cunningham,1996).

Simulation can motivate students to take part actively in class. Since in this era

students need the environment of learning that required to explore which is can encourage

their curious of high-tech. Simulation allows student to interact with stimulations. Most of the

stimulations are design with flexible architecture that variable to be altered, so the students

can change any parameter in simulation and observe how the simulated outcomes changes.

Student also can relate it with the content knowledge and with the real life. By including the

graph plotting, charts, relations and diagram, the students can imagine better about the

process of learning. This stimulation also helps students to understand well the probability

and sampling theory. So it can be said that stimulation is one best method for helping teacher

to give students more understand about the abstract topic. In probability, simulation can be

use as tool to predict what is outcome in the future. No prediction is accurately but we can

still study the pattern for the highest probability that it will occur. Using stimulation, students

can study the trend of the outcome whenever they put any variable. For example, the outcome

in the form of the graph is usually observed over time. So when the simulation runs

repeatedly, students can see the trend change in outcome, so student able to predict for what

outcome for next simulation.

 Simulations also avoid students from misconception with what their teacher want to

teach. Simulation also importance in science educations because sometime students are hard

to understand with the science concepts that literally cannot be seen through their naked eyes.

Therefore, students need some visualization or graphic that helps them to see and understand

well towards processes of the concept.

In addition, using stimulation software like STELLA also considered low cost and

safe compare to real life stimulation. We know that there is nothing like free risk environment

in the real world life. For example in science education, they will carry out many

experiments, Student lazy and give up to undergo the experiment because they think if they

failure in the experiment then they need to repeat the experiment again and required money

for buying materials to redo it again. But using stimulation, students do not need fear failure

to undergo the experiment anymore because the stimulation provided them chances to redo

the experiment and improve their strategy until they satisfied.

Teacher has more time to interact with the students during teaching learning process

through the simulation. This is because teachers able to deliver more detailed knowledge and

information to students while at the same time the students also can experience and imagine

how the real world situation through the simulation. Besides that, this communication

between teacher and students will help to developing their social skills like social manners

and etiquettes. Moreover, problem solving skill is an important skill that everyone should

have in their life to face any challenges. Students can develop this skill through real life

experience, and practicing. In simulation, there often provide the scenario based problems

that reflect a situation the learner would encounter in the reality life. This simulation presents

the environment, authentic information sources and act as tool to help student to solve the

problem and test their thinking skill. Automatically, this simulation helps to develop students

higher level thinking.

4.0 Disadvantages of Simulation and modelling

There are also disadvantages of simulation and modelling occurs in the teaching-

learning processes when teachers lack of skills, which is teacher do not have enough

knowledge and skills on using the simulations software and they think by using this

simulation will burden them because they have to explore the simulation themselves which

costs a lot of time to find a good simulation that used in the learning process in order to

integrate them into the content and objectives of the course chosen. More than that, some of

schools are lack of facilities and equipment. In school, it is hard to apply this simulation in

learning process as the amount of computers provided is still not sufficient and the provided

computers are also in a poor quality and outdated. The school also do not afford to buy the

simulations software as some of them are very expensive.

Other limitation of simulation is causes students lack in manual science process skill

which is also important in the real life. If students are fully depends with the simulation in

their learning process, they will not able to handle the manual process experiment

successfully. There are basic scientific skills in experiment process, which are method of

measuring substances, how to handle the dangerous substances like chemical liquids, how to

use microscope and other apparatus in the lab and correct method to take readings. If students

lack with all these basic scientific skills, it will make them difficult to undergo the real

experiment or research later in real life.

5.0 Experiment using STELLA software

Tittle:

Prey-Predator

Objective:

1. To learn how to use STELLA software

2. To study the relationship between the prey ( mouse ) and predator ( owl ) across the

time using STELLA software.

3. To understand the effect of organisms towards the ecosystem.

Introduction:

Animals exhibit a wide diversity of social behaviour. Behavioural ecology assumes

that most behaviour is subject to natural selection. In order to gather food, animals often have

a particular home range where they can be found during the course of the day. A change in a

population may disturb the ecosystem. In this experiment, we were experimenting on number

of prey and predator may interfere with the number of oil palm seed produced throughout the

years. Predation occurs when one organism, called the predator feeds on another called the

prey. In the broadest sense, predators include not only animals such as lions that killed zebras,

but also filter-feeding blue whales that strain krill from oceans water. Mathematical formulas

predict that predator and prey populations tend to cycle instead of maintaining steady state.

Cycling can occur when the predator population overkills the prey, causing the predator

population to decline in number or the prey population overshoots the carrying capacity and

suffers a crash causing the predator population to crash due to insufficient food. In this

experiment, we were going to use STELLA in order to see the growth and decline of

populations affect the number of oil palm seed

Results:
1. Pattern of population when the number of
Mouse : 13,000
Owl : 10

2. Pattern of population when the number of

Mouse : 20,000
Owl : 20

3. Pattern of population when the number of

Mouse : 13,000
Owl : 5
Discussion:

In this experiment, we carried out 3 different pattern of population of owls and mouse.

From the graph, the red line represented the number of oil palm resources. The blue line

represents the number of owls while the pink line represents the number of mouse. The

ecosystem of oil palm plantation was 100 hectares. Every one hectare contain 138 oil palm

tree which have 10 bunches per plant.

The first experiment was the standard pattern of population of mouse and owls in an

ecosystem. We set the population of mouse to 13,000 while the population of owls to 10. In

the first year, the population of owl start with higher number but it decreased rapidly in the

second year. Meanwhile the population of mouse start with lower number yet it increased

efficiently within the ninth year. It started to decrease as the population of owl increase. This

process continued and repeated. Next, the oil palm resources, it increased slowly yet it never

decreased in whole 25 years. The reason of the increasing of oil palm resources were because

the population mouse and owl were controlled in natural way.

 In graph 2, we set the population of mouse to 20,000 while the population of owls to

20. In the first year, the population of owl is quite high but it decrease tremendously after

that. The population of owl remain zero throughout the years after the first year. Meanwhile

the population of mouse increase slowly yet when it reached 18 years, it increased rapidly.

Due to lower population of mouse in the beginning 12 years, the oil palm resources increased

in a very enlighten way. But, the oil palm resources started to decrease as the number of

mouse increased rapidly without control. Why is this happen maybe because at the first year,

the owls need to compete against each other for food and it became extinct. Because of that,

the population of mouse increase tremendously and oil palm resources decrease rapidly in the

whole 25 years.

In graph 3, we set the population of mouse to 13,000 while the population of owls to

5. Due to a very large population of mouse and smaller population of owl the number of oil

palm resources started with a very lower sum. Nevertheless, it still increases through a very

long time. Meanwhile, when the population of mouse start to decrease, the population of owls

start to increase. When the population of mouse start to increase, the population of owls start

to decrease. This process continued and repeated. As we can see, this simulation shows a

process that took many years to happen. To see the increasing and decreasing for both owls

and mouse population, it took about 12 years and above. By using simulation, we can make a

prediction many years ahead.

Conclusion:
 In conclusion, STELLA software helps us to predict and observed in an ecosystem.

STELLA software is suitable in teaching and learning. It provided us with great idea and

make us understanding more on prey-predator dynamics. We are able to see the pattern and

draw a conclusion in the end. Moreover, through STELLA, we can have an active and

passive learning. We have a lot of discussions when doing this experiment because of

differential understanding and knowledge. In nutshell, even though there are some

disadvantages of simulation yet it (simulation and modelling) still provide us more

advantages in teaching and learning process.

References

Ruth Thomas, What are Simulation?-The JeLSIM Perspective, retrieved on April 6, 2017

from http://www.jelsim.org/resources/whataresimulations.pdf

Simulations: Bringing the benefits of situated learning to the traditional classroom, Journal of

Applied Educational Technology, Vol 3(1), retrieved on April 6, 2017 from

citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.93.8969&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Umar Farooq, Advantages and Disadvantages of simulated technique, retrieved on April 7,

2017 from http://www.studylecturenotes.com/curriculum-instructions/advantages-and-

disadvantages-of-simulated-teaching-method