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

地球系统科学（40）布朗菲尔德行动项目正在创建，测试和评估一个水文模块的基础上，一个非常成功的教学模式，用于教学介绍环境科学称为布朗菲尔德行动（BA）。BA是一个基于网络的交互式学习模拟，学生在三维数字空间中探索和解决现实世界的环境问题。作为巴纳德学院环境科学课程四年的实验室组成部分，BA挑战学生通过从各种形式的证据（包括社会历史和科学数据）重建详细的叙述来调查虚构的地下水污染。 作为BA课程模块化的概念验证测试，PI正在康涅狄格学院的水文课程中创建和测试该模块。新的模块是围绕着第二阶段的污染物羽流，嵌入在BA数字世界的划定。教师使用基于网络的交互功能向学生介绍BA界面、数据库、底图、历史相关文档以及作业。学生正在使用BA中可用的所有工具（例如，挖掘、探地雷达、钻孔和推送技术）来获取数据。该项目的智力价值在于通过多媒体环境中基于探究的、以学习者为中心的知识构建来整合跨学科信息。BA的传播将对环境科学的公众知识产生广泛的影响，将这些方法带给教授非科学专业，妇女和少数民族的教师。

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.