about

Creating the material to teach a hydrology course is very time intensive activity. Many topical areas (precipitation, infiltration, groundwater etc.) have to be covered while the instructor generally only does research in a few of those fields of study. Thus certain parts of a hydrology course may be very strong, and others sub-optimal because one has to cumbersomely collect material from textbooks, the web etc.

How good could a watershed hydrology course be if all aspects of the course would be covered by one or more experts in this particular aspect of hydrology, rather than having the whole course created by a single hydrologist?

How holistic would the approach to hydrology education be if both scientists and engineers jointly cover both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of watershed hydrology?

How much improvement would be possible of basic pedagogical guidelines would be followed throughout a course?   

The Modular Curriculum for Hydrologic Advancement (MOCHA) is establishing an online faculty learning community for hydrology education and a modular hydrology curriculum based on modern pedagogical standards. The overall objective of this module development is to create a continuously evolving core curriculum that overcomes traditional disciplinary biases and is freely available to, developed, and reviewed by the worldwide hydrologic community. This project is implemented using a web-portal to support this community-driven curriculum development.

MOCHA is advancing educators' abilities to challenge students to address complex and interdisciplinary problems across the field of hydrology. MOCHA provides hydrology educators with the tools and materials to be efficient and successful teachers, while enabling students to gain (in-class) access to current, peer-reviewed, high quality education resources. Diverse contributors are working collaboratively to create material that addresses a wide range of student learning styles and needs. Furthermore, MOCHA is creating and institutionalizing an interdisciplinary hydrology learning community that can serve as a model for other STEM fields.

What can MOCHA do for you?

• Provide you with free teaching material available in an easily accessible and classroom friendly format (Microsoft PowerPoint)
• Provide you with pedagogically-guided content that can be adapted to a range of courses and curricula
• Promote your expertise in a  specific area of watershed hydrology through the module you created
• Provide you with teaching notes containing the experience of colleagues on how to best teach the individual modules

	Thorsten Wagener (PI) Penn State		Mike Gooseff (Co-PI) Penn State
	Brian McGlynn (Co-PI) Montana State		Lucy Marshall (Co-PI) Montana State
	Priya Sharma (Co-PI) Penn State		Kevin McGuire Virginia Tech
	Tom Meixner University of Arizona		Markus Weiler University of Freiberg
	Christa Kelleher Penn State Graduate Student		Susan Gregg Penn State Graduate Student