RiverWeb: Students

Preliminary Findings - Teacher Data

The following findings are very tentative and await further confirmation.

Teachers affirmed that the simulator would be useful in a variety of classes covering a wide range of subjects in science, math and possibly social studies, but scaffolding of student learning is necessary and needs to be tuned to prior content and process knowledge.
Several teachers suggested that previous wet lab experience might help prepare students to use the simulator. Relevant wet lab procedures would include growing algae in a variety of nitrogen and phosphate concentrations, then measuring dissolved oxygen, and creating filters of organic materials.
A teacher's manual needs to be developed to guide teachers through the operational and technical information required in implementing the simulator in the classroom. However, the manual should also outline prerequisite student understanding of science content and process; provide model concept maps; and list difficulties commonly experienced by students, and how to help students overcome them. It should also capture the Jigsaw technique, and provide a matrix of indicators, grouped into physical, chemical, and biological, and comparisons between them, prioritized to bring out distinct themes relating to water quality versus land use.
Teachers want to be able to control notebook content, particularly the ability to employ, create or edit questions tied to student explorations.
Teachers would also like to control links to informational resources in keeping with their students\x92 learning needs during a given path of exploration with the simulation.
Teachers stressed that it was important that biological indicators be added to the model underlying the simulator.
The simulator should accommodate choices between alternative best practices (to mitigate water quality problems, as revealed by indicator behavior). A second best option would be to provide information about alternative approaches to mitigation, even if these could not be implemented through the simulator. Such information should include pointers to thinking about relative costs, risks, and benefits of alternative mitigation strategies, and balancing viewpoints of different groups of stakeholders.
It should be possible to vary the area of a selected sub-watershed (land use), and therefore the relative amount of a selected indicator that the chosen area contributes to the entire watershed.
It would be helpful if indicators for different sub-watersheds (i.e., land use areas) were plotted on the same scale or those students were able to alter the scale, provided that the notebook allows teachers to guide this. Without guidance, younger students would "have a hard time making that leap," i.e. changing scales to facilitate comparisons between different land uses. With adequate direction, a scale-adjuster could serve as "a good teaching tool".
Supplementary information is needed to help scaffold understanding of different graphical representations of data, i.e. line graphs, scatter plots, bar charts.
Teachers expressed a desire that the WQS environment support "persistence&qu ot; within and between sessions, i.e. that students can "capture" graphical objects created during one exploration, and return to those same objects later on, thus providing continuity of engagement from session to session.

Last Modified: October 2000