Interactive Higher Education Instruction to Advance STEM Instruction in the Environmental Sciences – the Brownfield Action Model

Abstract:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that presently there are over half a million brownfields in the United States, but this number only includes sites for which an Environmental Site Assessment has been conducted. The actual number of brownfields is certainly in the millions and constitutes one of the major environmental issues confronting all communities today. Taught in part or entirely online for more than 15 years in environmental science, engineering, and hydrology courses at over a dozen colleges, universities, and high schools in the United States, Brownfield Action (BA) is an interactive, web-based simulation that combines scientific expertise, constructivist education philosophy, and multimedia to advance the teaching of environmental science (Bower et al., 2011, 2014; Liddicoat and Bower, 2015). In the online simulation and classroom, students form geotechnical consulting companies with a peer chosen at random to solve a problem in environmental forensics. The BA model contains interdisciplinary scientific and social information that are integrated within a digital learning environment that encourages students to construct their knowledge as they learn by doing. As such, the approach improves the depth and coherence of students understanding of the course material. Like real-world environmental consultants and professionals, students are required to develop and apply expertise from a wide range of fields, including environmental science and engineering as well as journalism, medicine, public health, law, civics, economics, and business management. The overall objective is for students to gain an unprecedented appreciation of the complexity, ambiguity, and risk involved in any environmental issue, and to acquire STEM knowledge that can be used constructively when confronted with such an issue.