Teaching groundwater flow processes: connecting lecture to practical and field classes

摘要

Preparing future hydrogeologists to assess local and regionalhydrogeological changes and issues related to water supply is a challengingtask that creates a need for effective teaching frameworks.The educational literature suggests that hydrogeology courses shouldconsistently integrate lecture class instructions with practical and fieldclasses. However, most teaching examples still separate these three classcomponents.This paper presents an introductory course to groundwater flow processestaught at Université Montpellier 2, France. The adopted pedagogicalscheme and the proposed activities are described in details. The key pointsof the proposed scheme for the course are: (i) iterations into the threeclass components to address groundwater flow processes topics, (ii) a coursethat is structured around a main thread (well testing) present in each classcomponent, and (iii) a pedagogical approach that promotes active learningstrategies, in particular using original practical classes and fieldexperiments.The experience indicates that the proposed scheme improves the learningprocess, as compared to a classical, teacher-centered approach.