Active, Action-Oriented Learning with an Online Instructional Modeling Platform: MAGNET4Water

Abstract:

There is a growing awareness that hydrological science and engineering curricula must go beyond the traditional lecture format and “paper and pencil solutions” to include unconventional exercises that prepare students to employ concepts and theories for practical problem-solving in everyday situations. However, providing access to such action-oriented learning opportunities is not always easy, especially amid forced remote instruction because of the Covid-19 pandemic. While there are a number of computer programs available for facilitating hands-on learning, there are associated “irrelevant” tasks (i.e., tasks not related to the hydrological science) that create bottlenecks for students (e.g., software / operating system requirements, data processing / manipulation, and post-processing of model results). Here, we present our online, instructional modeling platform that eliminates (or significantly reduces) these bottlenecks so that students can almost instantly build, simulate, and visualize a subsurface (groundwater) or surface water (watershed, channel, water distribution, and storm-sewer) hydrological model anywhere on earth. The platform – MAGNET (Multiscale Adaptive Global NETwork) 4 Water – dynamically links pre-processed big data with realtime modeling, visualization and analysis tools within an interactive, user-friendly (GUI-based) GIS environment. In addition, there is a synthetic modeling mode for instant testing and visualization of concepts and hypotheses and understanding fundamental processes. Together, these tools allow students to spend almost all their time testing conceptual models / hypotheses, problem-solving, and exploring implications. We also provide an online curriculum system with integrated capstone projects, homework exercises, video lessons, and case studies/examples. All resources (modeling and curriculum) are free to use.