HydroViz: design and evaluation of a Web-based tool for improving hydrology education (original) (raw)
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HydroViz: evaluation of a web-based tool for improving hydrology education
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions, 2012
HydroViz is a web-based, student-centered, highly visual educational tool designed to support active learning in the field of Engineering Hydrology. The development of Hy-droViz is informed by recent advances in hydrologic data, numerical simulations, visualization and web-based technologies. An evaluation study was conducted to determine 5 the effectiveness of HydroViz, to examine the buy-in of the program, and to identify project components that need to be improved. A total of 182 students from seven freshmen and junior-/senior-level undergraduate classes in three universities participated in the study over the course of two semesters (spring 2010 and fall 2010). Data sources included homework assignments, online surveys, and informal interviews with 10 20 Future adaptation and expansion studies are under planning to scale-up the application and utility of HydroViz into various hydrology and water-resource engineering curriculum settings.
Development of Student-centered Modules to Support Active Learning in Hydrology
2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
He received his Sc.D. and M.S. in Civil Engineering (Water Resources and Hydrology) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his B.Sc Eng in Civil Engineering from the University of Natal in South Africa. His research and teaching are in the area of surface water hydrology. His research focuses on advancing the capability for hydrologic prediction by developing models that take advantage of new information and process understanding enabled by new technology. He has developed a number of models and software packages including the TauDEM hydrologic terrain analysis and channel network extraction package that has been implemented in parallel, and a snowmelt model. He is lead on the National Science Foundation HydroShare project to expand the data sharing capability of Hydrologic Information Systems to additional data types and models and to include social interaction and collaboration functionality. He teaches Hydrology and Geographic Information Systems in Water Resources.
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 2012
In this opinion paper, we review recent literature related to data and modeling driven instruction in hydrology, and present our findings from surveying the hydrology education community in the United States. This paper presents an argument that that Data and Modeling Driven Geoscience Cybereducation (DMDGC) approaches are valuable for teaching the conceptual and applied aspects of hydrology, as a part of the broader effort to improve Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education at the university level. The authors have undertaken a series of surveys and a workshop involving the community of university hydrology educators to determine the state of the practice of DMDGC approaches to hydrology. We identify the most common tools HESSD
D.: Using available resources to enhance the teaching of hydrogeology
2020
Teaching the concepts and fundamentals of hydrology and hydrogeology, particularly to undergraduates who have limited field experience, presents a challenge. Many innovations from working models to computer simulations have been used to improve visualization of the subject and to add a practical applied component to training. Recently, as a result of a partnership with private firms, two monitoring wells were completed on the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay campus to augment several previously installed porous-cup lysimeters. These enabled a graduate student to sample vadose and ground and surface water from a variety of streams, ponds, and seeps and to characterize the surface and subsurface water resources of the 700-acre campus. The investigation revealed a number of relationships such as the high sulfate concentrations in one of the monitoring wells, elevated concentrations of chloride in several surface water bodies, and an unexpectedly low concentration of ions in a pond on ...
Experiences from online and classroom education in hydroinformatics
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 2012
Universities and other higher education institutions involved in water-related engineering education are facing new challenges in offering life long learning services and online educational support. Both the curricula and the form of delivery are changing, as contemporary water problems require interdisciplinary approaches involving diverse and 5 up to date expertise maintained via continuous professional development. Hydroinformatics education faces similar challenges in developing relevant curricula and finding appropriate combinations of course delivery to its target group. This article presents experiences from delivering two hydroinformatics courses in the fields of Flood Modelling for Management (FMM) and Decision Support Systems (DSS) in River basin 10 Management that in recent years have been delivered both online and in classroom settings. Comparisons between the two modes of delivery are provided, with the conclusion that online education in this field although still faced with many challenges has a promising potential for meeting future educational needs.
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions, 2015
Previous research has suggested that the use of more authentic learning activities can produce more robust and durable knowledge gains. This is consistent with calls within civil engineering education, specifically hydrology, that suggest that curricula should more often include professional perspective and data analysis skills to better develop the "T-shaped" knowledge profile of a professional hydrologist (i.e., professional breadth combined with technical depth). It was expected that the inclusion of a data driven simulation lab exercise that was contextualized within a real-world situation and more consistent with the job duties of a professional in the field, would provide enhanced learning and appreciation of job duties beyond more conventional paper-and-pencil exercises in a lower division undergraduate course. Results indicate that while students learned in both conditions, learning was enhanced for the data-driven simulation group in nearly every content area. Thi...
2021
The era of ”big data” promises to provide new hydrologic insights, and open web-based platforms are being developed and adopted by the hydrologic science community to harness these datasets and data services. This shift accompanies advances in hydrology education and the growth of web-based hydrology learning modules, but their capacity to utilize emerging open platforms and data services to enhance student learning through data-driven activities remains largely untapped. Given that generic equations may not easily translate into local or regional solutions, teaching students to explore how well models or equations work in particular settings or to answer specific problems using real data is essential. This paper introduces an open web-based learning module developed to advance data-driven hydrologic process learning, targeting upper level undergraduate and early graduate students in hydrology and engineering. The module was developed and deployed on the HydroLearn open educational ...