Prototype Development of SimStream, a Computer-Based Immersive Learning-Environment for Introducing Environmental Systems Concepts to Middle-School Students

The Need
U.S. middle-school students have few opportunities to explore contemporary environmental issues in the classroom in ways that connect with their experience, motivations, and technology use. Furthermore, while issues relevant to environmental science motivate lesson plans in earth science and civics alike, discussions are compartmentalized by disciplinary boundaries, leaving students to explore relationships between topics on their own. The need for improved, interdisciplinary environmental science training in U.S. schools is recognized at the federal level. A 2009 National Science Foundation Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education report describes the challenge to instilling K-12 students with an “understanding of the world as coupled natural and human systems involving complicated, multi-scale interactions and having the potential for complex behaviors such as tipping points.”

The State of Maine is in an ideal position to lead the nation’s charge for integrating environmental science concepts via cyber-learning into STEM classrooms through its Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI), specifically the Maine Laptop Program, which provides every middle-school student in the state with a personal laptop computer, offers students potential exposure to the computer programming, animation, and visualization technology that continue to revolutionize learning and creative thinking.

Program Overview & Objectives
Working with K-12 student- and teacher focus groups, the project develops a prototype computer-based immersive environment framework concept exploring relationships between a watershed and neighboring human settlement. SimStream is designed for integration into middle-school science curricula. The target audience is 6th-8th graders. The framework uses various population, ecological and hydrological models for students to explore and learn a variety of fundamental environment science concepts. By understanding and visualizing systems and quantitative problem solving, students learn to navigate in an uncertain future. The objective of this project is to provide a substantial learning tool that, in principal could be further developed into a comprehensive decision tool to analyze hydrologic changes, quantify impacts on human and ecosystems, and test and assess the adequacy of policy in the face a changing climate and uncertain forecast. The project seeks to push the educational frontier of this critical area of environmental sustainability, one that is complex and uncertain, by ascertaining flexibility, probability of surprises, and determining courses of action (flexibility in policy). The project also seeks to cultivate, in all SimStream users—learners of all ages, appreciation and understanding of the researcher-agency-stakeholder collective.

Contact
Shaleen Jain
Civil & Environmental Engineering
313 Boardman Hall
University of Maine
Orono, ME 04469

Michael Scott
New Media
403 Chadbourne Hall
University of Maine
Orono, ME 04469

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