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Integrating a Real-Time Remote Watershed Monitoring Lab into Water Sustainability Education

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Conference

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Indianapolis, Indiana

Publication Date

June 15, 2014

Start Date

June 15, 2014

End Date

June 18, 2014

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Research Experience in Stormwater Management

Tagged Division

Civil Engineering

Page Count

14

Page Numbers

24.767.1 - 24.767.14

DOI

10.18260/1-2--20659

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/20659

Download Count

539

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Paper Authors

biography

Walter McDonald Virginia Tech

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Walter McDonald is a Ph.D. Student, jointly advised by Drs. Dymond and Lohani, in the CEE program at Virginia Tech with a focus in water-resources engineering. He received a B.S. in civil engineering from Texas Tech University and a M.S. in civil engineering from Texas A&M University. He has had extensive training in hydrology and currently works in the LEWAS lab, where he conducts water-sustainability research. He has also developed and implemented curricula for introducing the LEWAS into freshman-level courses at Virginia Western Community College and a senior level hydrology course at Virginia Tech.

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biography

Randel L. Dymond Virginia Tech

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Dr. Randy Dymond is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech. With degrees from Bucknell and Penn State, Dr. Dymond has more than 30 years of experience in academics, consulting, and software development. He has taught at Penn State and the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, and has been at Virginia Tech for 15 years. Dr. Dymond has published more than 50 refereed journal articles and proceedings papers, and been the principal or co-principal investigator for more than 110 research proposals from many diverse funding agencies. His research areas include urban stormwater modeling, low impact development, watershed and floodplain management, and sustainable land development. Dr. Dymond has had previous grants working with the Montgomery County Public Schools and with the town of Blacksburg on stormwater research and public education. He teaches classes in GIS, land development, and water resources, and has won numerous teaching awards at the departmental, college, and national levels.

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Vinod K. Lohani Virginia Tech

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Dr. Vinod K Lohani is a professor in the engineering education department and an adjunct faculty in the civil and environmental engineering department at Virginia Tech. His research interests are in the areas of sustainability, computer-supported research and learning systems, hydrology, and water resources. In a major ($1M+, NSF) curriculum reform and engineering education research project from 2004 to 2009, he led a team of engineering and education faculty to reform engineering curriculum of an engineering department (Biological Systems Engineering) using Jerome Bruner’s spiral curriculum theory. Currently, Dr. Lohani leads an NSF/REU Site on ”interdisciplinary water sciences and engineering” which has
already graduated 56 excellent undergraduate researchers since 2007. This Site is renewed for the third cycle which will be implemented during 2014-16. He also leads an NSF/TUES type I project in which a real-time environmental monitoring lab is being integrated into a freshman engineering course, a senior-level Hydrology course at Virginia Tech, and a couple of courses at Virginia Western Community College, Roanoke for enhancing water sustainability education. He is a member of ASCE and ASEE and has published 70+ refereed publications.

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biography

Daniel S. Brogan Virginia Tech

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Daniel S. Brogan is a Ph.D. student in engineering education with B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering. He has completed several graduate courses in engineering education pertinent to this research. He leads the LEWAS lab development and implementation work and has mentored two NSF/REU Site students in the LEWAS lab. He assisted in the development and implementation of curricula for introducing the LEWAS at VWCC, including the development of pre- and post-test assessment questions. Additionally, he has a background in remote sensing, data analysis, and signal processing from the University of New Hampshire.

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Richard Lee Clark Jr. Virginia Western Community College

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Dr. Clark has served as the chair of the engineering program at Virginia Western Community College, located in Roanoke, Va., for the past 9 years. He also serves as an adjunct faculty member in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech.

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Abstract

Integrating a Real-Time Remote Watershed Monitoring Lab into Water Sustainability EducationThe LabVIEW Enabled Watershed Assessment System (LEWAS) research lab is an interdisciplinaryresearch group that has developed a real-time watershed monitoring lab in a local stream on a publicuniversity campus. The LEWAS components of water and weather monitoring instruments, solar powersupply, data collection hardware and data processing software are integrated to provide real-timewatershed data via an accessible platform to many types of user groups. The LEWAS lab is being usedfor watershed sustainability research and hands-on classroom education. The lab has been used in a seniorlevel undergraduate hydrology course at a public university by incorporating LEWAS-based hands-onmodules into the course curriculum. Three learning modules were developed for the course: (i) StormCharacteristics Module, (ii) Land Cover-Water Quality Correlation Module, and (iii) Watershed WikiModule. The lab has also been integrated in freshmen level courses at a community college. LEWAS-based course modules introduce students at the community college to watershed sustainability concepts, areal world application of LabVIEW and hands-on data collection and analysis projects. Student learningand motivation were documented through pre- and post-test survey instruments. Results from bothclassrooms have indicated that students benefit from LEWAS-based hands-on learning modules. Thiswork has been supported under an NSF Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM (TUES) Type Igrant.

McDonald, W., & Dymond, R. L., & Lohani, V. K., & Brogan, D. S., & Clark, R. L. (2014, June), Integrating a Real-Time Remote Watershed Monitoring Lab into Water Sustainability Education Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana. 10.18260/1-2--20659

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