My Approach In Hydrology

The third subject I am teaching every Saturday is Hydrology. I remember during interview that the dean wanted me to teach this since I have hands-on experience doing Flood Study.

So, I wanted my students to be able to fell the same fullfillment of doing a simple flood study especially since Valenzuela is always flooded as it lies near Manila Bay. Thus, while I asked the students to report on the subject, I injected my lecture with my experience and solve problems on board for the students to engage on the subject. Hydrology has very long problems unlike some subject, so I let the students form a group while solving the problem on board.

While doing the reporting per group, I assigned the students locations in Valenzuela to determine flooding scenarios and this require them going to PAGASA, purchasing the NAMRIA map, and picture taking on site to ask for maximum flood level the occupants experienced.

This sort of engaging the students with real life project motivates them to learn the subject and absorb it. Also, this made sure no dull moments in the 3 hour straight of lecture.

MY APPROACH ON CIVIL ENGINEERING RESEARCH METHOD

This is my first subject every Saturday. I last made my legitimate thesis when I was college though I always make report writing in the office and during Masters in Diliman. So I accepted the challenge to teach the subject for the first time. To date, we are on our 12th meeting. I always like to summarize everything I did on a certain task like this one. This gives me certain fullfillment and writing it like this help me improve on my next task assuming I teach this again. So far, I think my approach on this subject is pretty good. I asked the students to researched past thesis on the school library, deans office, and even available thesis in National Library of the Philippines.

I believe in saying.." You cant learn to swim unless you get yourself wet "..That is, if I approach the subject by referring to a textbook alone, they will not learn fully if they did not researched on an actual papers available locally and online. Also, the students will become aware of the difference in approach of thesis made inside their university and researches outside which are peer reviewed thoroughly to guarantee a place in the national library.

As they searched on National Library and prepare reports, I do parallel reporting in a chosen textbook to relate the topics to the researches they made.

Blogsite as Motivation for my Students

I intend to put up all my students researches into a blogsite for them to look upon in the future. I told them to build a reputation online and one of way of doing that is showcasing their researches online. But they have not build a blogsite like this before, so I will create it for them and hopefully will motivate them to publish a more ready-to-read-online reports for the subject.

By the way, since my subject that time was hydrology, I told them that the report they will make featuring their observations on Flood depth of some barangays in valenzuela will be searchable online thus helping other citizens to be aware of the flooding situations on that place. I told them this.."Imagine your profile on Linkedin being linked to that website where you showcase your skill of doing studies like Flood Study. That will definitely boost your reputation and hopefully give you a positive impression on your future employers"..I can see how the students became wide awake suddenly when I told them this.

Thinking about this, I am glad to live up to my earlier belief that a teacher is not always there to teach alone but to become a motivator for students to take action..

Below image shows how I caught students to understand the lecture by letting them solve a hydrology problem by group..This is a hydrograph routing topic which requires iterative solution..