A community initiative for developing data and modeling driven curriculum modules for hydrology education

Hydrology and geoscience education at the undergraduate and graduate levels may benefit greatly from a structured approach to pedagogy that utilizes modeling, authentic data, and simulation exercises to engage students in practice-like activities. Extensive evidence in the educational literature suggests that students retain more of their instruction, and attain higher levels of mastery over content, when interactive and practice-like activities are used to contextualize traditional lecture-based and theory-based instruction. However, it is also important that these activities carefully link the use of data and modeling to abstract theory, to promote transfer of knowledge to other contexts. While this type of data-based activity has been practiced in the hydrology classroom for decades, the hydrology community still lacks a set of standards and a mechanism for community-based development, publication, and review of this type of curriculum material. A community-based initiative is underway to develop a set curriculum materials to teach hydrology in the engineering and geoscience university classroom using outcomes-based, pedagogically rigorous modules that use authentic data and modeling experiences to complement traditional lecture-based instruction. A preliminary design for a community cyberinfrastructure for shared module development and publication, and for module topics and outcomes and ametadata and module interoperability standards, will be presented, along with the results of a series of community surveys and workshops informing this design.