IMMERSIVE LEARNING STRATEGY FOR TEACHING IN AN AQUATIC SCIENCE COURSE

The River Continuum Concept views a river as a continual linkage of the physical geomorphological attributes of a lotic system to its supported biota through functional traits. In much the same manner, student learning can be a linkage of their physical environment to learned material acquired through a traditional textbook and lecture-based system. In other words, we propose that the best method for students to learn about Robin Vannote’s River Continuum Concept is to actually immerse the students in a river. In this project we compare student learning outcomes from a traditional classroom based conditioned learning approach to those achieved through inquiry based experiential learning in a field environment. In an undergraduate aquatic science foundational course, we utilize a single lesson module dedicated to the River Continuum Concept to demonstrate and compare the efficacy of both learning methodologies in the cognitive and affective domains. One population of students was entirely restricted to classroom-based methodologies for instructing the relation of flow dynamics to ecological function in a theoretical system while a second population of students executed the same learning objectives utilizing field equipment and sampling techniques in a local riverine ecosystem. Identical student assessment measures provide quantitative analysis while student reflections and self-assessments provide qualitative insight into the affective domain of student learning. Although the sample size is small, results suggest that teaching methodology impacts student learning.