Customization in the Design and Implementation of the RiverWeb Water Quality Simulator (WQS).

When developing curriculum materials for new contexts, designers feed forward work from similar projects. This customization process must attend to various influences to determine how features from previous efforts will be emphasized and combined. This paper discusses resources and ideas that influenced the design of the RiverWeb Water Quality Simulator (WQS), which has been used in biology and environmental science as well as in a special summer enrichment program emphasizing chemistry. Project staff investigated related materials, including various online notebook strategies and watershed modeling curricula from the University of Michigan. The paper describes how the WQS resulted from the combination of these ideas with the digital watershed concept developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Teachers may customize materials to more closely match their circumstances. The customization process for a Web-based simulation dictates a flexible architecture providing direct teacher modification such as addition of notebook questions and reorganization of resource links. In the Maryland Virtual High School Core Models Project, teacher leaders spent countless hours helping teachers do this, developing together, a more robust conceptual and pedagogical framework for the topic. The paper describes the nature of teachers' customization, which often reflected class level and discipline and local environmental features. Appended are computer screen print outs of the following program elements: WQS Map Page; WQS Graph Page: Station 0 Shown; Question Designated by "Location"; Question for Comparing Sediments within Stations 0 and 2; View of Question List by Teacher; and WQS Concept Map for Environmental Science. (Contains 11 references.) (SM)