2019 Fall Cyberseminar Series

Citizen Science in Surface Hydrology; CrowdHydrology, FloodAware, and the Emerging Opportunity

Abstract forthcoming.

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What Engineering Instructors can do to Reduce Student Resistence to Active Learning

Research has shown that active learning promotes student learning anf increases retention rates of engineering undergraduates. Yet instructors are reluctant to change their teaching approaches for several reasons, including a fear of student resistence to active learning and low course evaluations. Recent research has investigates a cariety of factors that influence students' reactions to active learning. The food news is that strategies instructors  employ when explaining and facilitating active learning in ther classes are more influential that characteristics of the students, the course, or the instructor and are effective across a range of individual and group=based active learning approaches. 

This presentation will review the results of this research, which is based on a national study of 1, 051 students who completed the Student Response to INstructional Practices (StRIP) survey in 18 introductory engineering courses where active learning was implemented. Follow-up interviews with the instructors of those courses provide more detail about specific strategies for reducing student resistence to active learning, and the variety of ways that instructors implement them in difference engineering courses. These findings are further vailidated by a systematic literature review, which extends the findings to other STEM disciplines and identifies strategies that move outside the classroom to course planning and instructor persistence over several semesters. 

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Teaching and Learning about Socio-Hydrological Systems in an Introductory Undergraduate Water Course

Today's most pressing global challenges within the Food-Energy-Water-Nexus involve coupled human-natural systems, including water systems and their human dimensions (i.e.,'socio-hydrologic' systems). The undergraduate students currently in our classrooms will be tomorrow's global citizens, each of whom must be prepared to understand and reason about these challenges and, ultimately, make decisions about them in a variety of personal, professional, and civic contexts. In light of this need, and with support from the National Science Foundation over the past 3 years, we have developed, implemented, and studied the impact of an introductory, interdisciplinary undergraduate course - Water in Society - grounded in contemporary, real-world, water-related issues. The course, intended to serve both STEM majors and non-majors, was designed and offered by an interdisciplinary team of faculty with expertise in hydrology, social sciences, and science education. It is grounded in key design principles, including engagement with authentic data, scientific models and modeling, and multi-modal forms of scientific communication, and utilizes research-based best practices for effective undergraduate STEM instruction. Here, we describe the course, associated strategies for teaching and learning, and findings from course-based empirical research on student learning. 

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Collaborative development and sharing of learning resources in hydrology and water resources: experiences from the HydroLearn project

There have been increasing efforts by the hydrologic community to enhance hydrology education by using data and modeling-based learning approaches. However, these efforts remain largely at the scale of individual scales and the majority fall short of meeting scalability, sustainability and adoption beyond an individual project or few institutions. This can be attributed to several factors such as lack of experience in educational developments; lack of time to invest in developing or adopting innovative learning material; and lack of mechanisms to update the content. Another important but often-overlooked reason is the lack of adequate insight on the actual needs of end-users (professors and students) when such innovations are developed and disseminated for possible adoption and adaptation. This study reports on the development and implementation of the HydroLearn online platform that supports active learning in the field of hydrology and water resources engineering. The platform is designed to serve the following two main purposes: to enable instructors to collaboratively develop and share active-learning resources, and to enhance student learning in fundamental and emerging topics in the field. Using an open-source technology, the HydroLearn platform supports customization of pre-developed learning modules and allows instructors to share components of their learning resources with other interested users. HydroLearn utilizes research-based active learning methods (e.g., Problem-based Learning; Collaborative and Cooperative Learning) to create authentic online learning modules and engage students in real-world hydrologic problems. The platform includes tools that scaffold instructors’ implementation of sound pedagogical practices. The platform also includes guidance for instructors on how to develop assessment rubrics that aim to enhance student achievement through communicating the expected performance levels. The presentation shares early efforts on working with a pilot group of users to develop a network of educators who aspire to adopt active learning approaches and enhance hydrology education.

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CUAHSI Virtual University: An experiment in interinstitutional graduate education

CUAHSI Virtual University is an interinstitutional collaboration in graduate training that is in it’s third year of a pilot program.  It is structured such that students from participating institutions take three online modules from instructors across the nation offering very specialized topics in their subspecialty within hydrology while receiving credits from their home institution.  The modules are offered in a synchronous format to encourage networking and exchange of ideas among students from different institutions.  Participating students and faculty overwhelming agree their experience in CUAHSI Virtual University was valuable, but acknowledge challenges associated with engagement, workload, and technical issues.  An overview of the program and results of evaluations of CUAHSI Virtual University will be followed by a panel discussion during this cyberseminar.