Brownfield Action: Digital Worlds and Inquiry-based Learning ¡ A New Teaching Model

Barnard College, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Earth System Science (40) The Brownfield Action project is creating, testing, and evaluating a hydrology module based on a highly successful pedagogical model for teaching introductory environmental science called Brownfield Action (BA). BA is an interactive web-based learning simulation, in which students explore and solve real-world environmental problems in a three-dimensional digital space. Used as the laboratory component of Barnard College's environmental-science course for four years, BA challenges students to investigate fictional groundwater contamination by reconstructing a detailed narrative from diverse forms of evidence, including sociohistorical and scientific data. As a Proof-of-Concept test of the modularization of the BA curriculum, the PIs are creating and testing this module in a hydrology course at Connecticut College. The new module is being constructed around a Phase Two delineation of the contaminant plumes that are embedded in the BA digital world. The instructor is using the web-based interactive feature to introduce students to the BA interface, database, base maps, historically relevant documentation, and to the assignment. Students are using all the tools available in BA (e.g., excavation, ground penetrating radar, and drilling and push technology) to obtain data. The intellectual merit of the project lies in its integration of interdisciplinary information through inquiry-based, learner-centered knowledge construction within a multimedia environment. Dissemination of BA will have a broad impact on public knowledge of environmental science by bringing these methods to instructors who teach non-science majors, women, and minorities.