They have the assertiveness and conviction that what they know is so strong and so deep that they can take an advocacy stance. Bower has used the brownfield project to teach environmental science for the past decade. The old way of doing the project was for information to be written on 3x5 index cards. Students requested information by coming up to a desk manned by Bower and his TAs, who looked up the appropriate card and wrote down the answer for them. Necessarily, the problem felt more like a school project than the real world.
Simulations have terrific possibilities in a new media environment.
Now, the brownfield is made up of over two million data points. Not only is the surface defined, but the data reaches up into the air and down into the ground 37 layers that include information on the soil, bedrock and water table, as well as the contamination. But as in the real world, the data is hidden until students probe it using the right techniques and tests, which they learn about in the class's lecture and through tutorials on the computer. Because the Brownfield Action CD-ROM could be used by other college and even high school classes to teach environmental science, Columbia may eventually license it through Columbia Media Enterprises, a new division of the University charged with turning new media projects into profit. In addition to the packaged material, experts could give presentations by videoconference, and teams at different schools could work together or compete.