From Classrooms to Geosciences Careers: Developing and Testing a Curriculum Module and Web Application for Modeling Water in Urban Environments

Abstract:

A curriculum module created to teach basic principles of hydrology and promote geoscience careers at the high school level will be shared. The module, consisting of five exercises of increasing complexity, focuses on investigating local problems in hydrology using tangible models, readily available online tools, and a custom-built web application. The module culminates in students examining changing land use patterns over time and looking at subsequent impacts on runoff. Materials were field tested during two summer workshops for educators and support was provided during the subsequent school years. Participants reported that the materials filled existing voids in their instructional materials, that they preferred to select individual exercises for use in their classrooms rather than the module as a whole, and that they found online tools in geosciences and connections to local field sites and geoscience professionals to be particularly valuable. Furthermore, while the five exercises where developed for use together in high school classrooms, individual exercises were found to be applicable in classrooms from the elementary through graduate levels. The module addresses NGSS Disciplinary Core Idea - The Role of Water in Earth’s Surface Processes in addition to Cross Cutting Concepts - Systems and System Models and Influence of Engineering, Technology, and Science on Society and the Natural World and multiple NGSS Practices.