SEA-CHANGE: A MULTIMEDIA INTERACTIVE SOLUTION TO TEACHING A TRICKY SUBJECT

Sea-level change is increasingly a topic of relevance in a variety of disciplines. At least some aspect of changing sea level is taught in departments of Marine Science, Geology, Geography, Environmental Science, and Coastal Planning and Management. Unfortunately, the topic does not lend itself to direct learning by students. They do not experience sea-level change in their lives, they can't do laboratory or field exercises to investigate it themselves, and problem-based learning opportunities are limited. We have developed a program called Sea-Change which allows students to experiment with sea level in their own neighbourhood. This interactive model uses Macromedia to provide maps and charts that change as sea level does. It also provides video simulations of the effect of sea-level rise on local landmarks. Students can melt ice sheets at will, choose to expose the entire continental shelf, or flood the university. The process of developing the model includes acquiring and formatting the underlying scientific data, convincing the university of the need for funding, programming, trials and revision, and finally integrating the program into teaching. We will illustrate how this process has worked at the University of Otago, New Zealand over the last few years.