Bridge over troubled water – teaching in times of the Covid19 pandemic

Abstract:

Hydrology teaching during spring term 2020 was very different than usual. Like most university teachers, we were a few weeks into the spring term and faced an unprecedented situation when the university was closed due to the Covid19 pandemic in March 2020. Here we report and discuss experiences from teaching a first-year Bachelor level introductory course in Hydrology for a group of almost 200 students. We were in the fortunate position that we already used online resources to some extent and, thus, were able to adapt our teaching to an online-only format quickly, including both recorded lectures and live-events. Also, we already had started a project to develop a new smartphone-based self-guided excursion on the topic of ‘Water in the city’. We accelerated this development and used it to replace a traditional excursion, which had to be cancelled. While teaching and studying in spring 2020 was challenging in many aspects, there were also many encouraging experiences. Overall, the student feedback was very positive, and the exam results and student evaluations indicated that we were successful in providing good learning opportunities. Here we describe our approaches, discuss experiences and present materials and ideas that could be suitable for similar courses at other universities.