RAPID: Collaborative Research: Increased access to infrastructure for distance education in hydrologic science

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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a sudden shift to online teaching for most universities in the United States, and many globally. With little time to prepare, water resource and hydrology professors and lecturers must generate online content rapidly for at least the spring and summer semesters of 2020, with an increasing possibility this format will extend into the fall 2020 term. At the same time, there is large variation in access to and preparation for online delivery among institutions and individual faculty. In the hydrologic sciences, we expect preparation for the transition to online instruction and the resultant learning to vary based on program size, institution, instructor experience, and availability of instructional support. Taken together, there is a significant risk that hydrologic instruction will divide into “haves” and “have nots” as a result of these critical differences. Equal access to critical support and instructional resources during the transition from traditional to distance learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is critical to closing this gap and providing equal access to high quality instruction in the hydrologic sciences. Thus, our goal is to enable access to educational infrastructure and training for instructors, and ultimately students, in the hydrologic sciences in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This project will implement six key activities to achieve our goal including: (1) facilitating two-way communication between instructors and students through panel discussions and survey templates; (2) enabling sharing of course materials through CUAHSI’s HydroShare platform; (3) developing open-source, data-driven educational resources; (4) developing a guest lecture database for hydrologic sciences; (5) community training and support using distance education materials and platforms; and (6) hosting a series of workshops and producing a synthesis report on distance education in the hydrologic sciences. The result of these activities will be a leveled playing field for accessible, quality education to all instructors and students in hydrologic science. Moreover, we expect these efforts to foster a community of online educators in hydrologic science who will develop and use educational resources that will persist well beyond the present COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the expanded use of distance education resources supports ongoing initiatives to expand Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion in the hydrologic sciences by CUAHSI and the HydroLearn platform to share undergraduate educational materials.This award was co-funded by the Hydrologic Sciences and Education and Human Resources programs in the Division of Earth Sciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.