Teaching groundwater dynamics: connecting classroom to practical and field classes

Preparing future hydrogeologists to provide inputs in societal discussions in a changing world is a challenging task that induces a need for efficient teaching frameworks. The educational literature suggests that hydrogeology courses should consistently integrate classroom instruction with practical and field classes. However, most teaching examples still separate these three class components. This paper presents an introductory course to groundwater dynamics taught at the Université des Sciences de Montpellier, France. The adopted pedagogical scheme and the proposed activities are described in details. The key points of the proposed course are: (i) an educational scheme that iteratively links groundwater dynamics topics to the three class components, (ii) a course that is structured around a main thread (well testing) called in each class component, (iii) a pedagogical approach that promotes active learning strategies, in particular using original practical classes and field experiments. The experience indicates that the proposed scheme improves the learning process, as compared to a classical, teacher-centered approach.