Learning about flood risk: comparing the Web-based and physical flood-walk learning environments

Based on the physical flood-walk activity, a video-taped walk was produced in autumn 2011 to create a Web-based flood-walk environment. To compare the two kinds of learning environments, the content of the Web-based flood-walk environment was made comparable to the physical flood-walk environment. It is a mixed-method study with a questionnaire (including multiple-choice and open-ended questions) developed via this study to disclose the participants’ learning and responses from the two different learning environments.

The development of the questionnaire

In order to develop the learning environment (for both of the Web-based and physical environments), the teaching goals, the respective questions and the manuscript for the teaching content were discussed and developed by the authors during a number of project meetings. An overview of the flood-walk topics and the related learning objectives is shown below (Table 1).

Table 1. Learning objectives for different flood walk topics.

Flood-walk topics (connected to a specific stop along the walk)	Learning objective
1. Physical geography (hydrology, sedimentation, etc.) (Stop 1)	Learning about the natural system of rivers and causes of floods
2. Historical events (Stop 2)	Floods are a naturally re-occurring phenomenon but the impact is changing. Karlstad already faced several floods.
3. Hindrances for the water (Stop 2)	Learning about hydraulic mechanisms in a river, urbanised river, and in a delta
4. Vulnerability/critical infrastructure (Stop 3)	Learning about different vulnerabilities and direct and indirect effects of floods
5. (Urban) planning (including legislation)/ flood adapted architecture (Stop 4)	Learning about how urban planning works with regard to flood risk management and legislative regulations
6. Protection measures (Stop 5)	Learning about different measures and strategies for flood risk management

The most important flood-walk topics were identified and the learning objectives were formulated accordingly. Based on the learning objectives (Table 1), a questionnaire was developed and covers the topics to let the participants easily fill in during physical and Web-based flood walks respectively. The format of the questionnaire is a mixture of multiple-choice and open questions. The questionnaire was developed in Swedish first and translated into English to be presented in this article. The questionnaire is composed of five parts (please see Appendix I):

Part 1. Background information of the participant: age, education, place of living (city/countryside)

Part 2. Three pre-questions about awareness, experience and willingness about floods. The answer was made on a 7-point Likert scale from “disagree strongly” to “agree strongly”.

Part 3. Three open questions answered both before and after the walk. The questions were about the causes and consequences of flood, and the possibilities to reduce flood risks. The pupils’ answers were assessed by the second and the third authors of this article individually and a consensus was achieved after discussions. The pupils’ answers were given by the assessors with a 5-point scale, from 1 (low knowledge) to 5 (high knowledge).

Part 4. Multiple-choice questions answered after stop 2 and 5. The questions were about more detailed knowledge taught during the walk and used to assess and compare pupils’ learning outcomes.

Part 5. Ten post-questions about different aspects of the learning environment. The answer was made on a 7-point Likert scale, from 1 (disagree strongly) to 7 (agree strongly).

The design of the research and the participants

Originally, there were 14 stops developed in the physical flood-walk environment. However, in this project, according to our experiences, we identified the five most popular stops to develop a Web-based flood-walk environment and to compare with the same 5-stop in the physical flood environment (Figure 1). The five stops represented basic thematic parts of the risk management process, as described in Table 1. Besides learning objectives 2 and 3 were connected to stop no. 2, all the other objectives were connected to one stop each (Table 1).

		Questionnaire assessment
		Pre-test (part 1, 2 and 3)
Physical flood walk (Group A)	Web-based flood walk (Group B)	Stop 1 Stop 2 (part 4) Stop 3 Stop 4 Stop 5 (part 4)
		Post-test (part 3 and 5)

Figure 1. The research design of the study (for the questionnaire; see Appendix 1).

A total of 40 upper secondary school pupils (with an average age around 17 years-old) participated in the physical flood walk (Group A). The pupils were from either the science or the technology program. One class of 25 pupils (average age was around 16 years-old) from a science program joined in the Web-based flood-walk environment (Group B). Both groups of pupils needed to fill in the above-mentioned questionnaire before, during and after joining the physical or the Web-based flood walk.

Regarding the technical environment, we checked possible Web-platforms to integrate the e-module including the tests. We found that it was best to develop the Web-based flood-walk environment as an e-learning module. The platform called It’s learning platform (www.itslearning.com) that is a regularly used education platform at Karlstad University. Thus, this module can be easily imported and integrated into other learning environments.

Data collection and analysis

The questionnaire filled-in by the participants was the basis for both quantitative and qualitative analyses to compare the learning outcome. The qualitative part was analyzed through coding the learning process. Regarding quantitative data, learners’ responses were collected before and during the different flood walk activities, and analyzed through the descriptive analyses and Independent t-test statistical method (SPSS 12.0 version).