Cracking Dams Webquests for the Advanced Level

For the teacher

The Webquests for the Advanced level may be used with groups of 3 or 4. Once your students split into groups, each person in the group should choose one of the roles. Each role describes the parts of the process that person is responsible for leading.

Suggest that the students read through the Webquest before they begin. Remind the students to bookmark the Webquest as they will need to return to it for each step of the Process. Each step in the Process includes directions and a link to the appropriate section of the Cracking Dams website to review. The Process is scaffolded by the worksheet. Each step on the worksheet corresponds to the steps in the Process. The students are reminded to return to the Process at the beginning of each step.

The Advanced level Webquests have the students look up a specific arch or gravity dam in the National Inventory of Dams, study the advantages and disadvantages of dams, learn the steps to perform a computer simulation of either an arch or gravity dam, perform a simulation, study a case history of another dam that cracked, and consider the impact of a dam failure. The students should fill out the worksheet as they move through the Webquest. There are also several points at which the students are directed to post comments or responses on the bulletin board. Each time, the students are directed to put their comments in a particular "forum" on the bulletin board. Each group should reach a consensus on their answers to the final two questions and post these on the bulletin board as well.

Overall, there are several things the students should take away from the Webquests:

a consideration of the pros and cons of dams

knowledge of real applications of math, science, and technology skills

some understanding of the use of computer simulation

a realization of the impact of engineering on society

and teamwork and communication skills.

Specific skills used in the Webquest include the following:

National Inventory of Dams database searching

gathering information on a dam

visualizing a three-dimensional dam in two dimensions

calculation of the dam's dimensions

scale drawing

critical thinking about forces

calculation of forces and centroid

application of simple theory on cracking

performing a computer simulation

critical thinking about the simulation results

data analysis in loss of life estimations

case-based reasoning to determine cause of cracking

teamwork, decision-making, and communication, particularly in posting comments on the bulletin board

Following the WebQuest, discussion of the groups' posted positions is encouraged. Students may be evaluated based on the reasoning behind their positions, their presentation of the reasoning during discussion, and their worksheets. Once again, it is important the the connection between classroom topics and the WebQuest activity be maintained.

You are also welcome to develop your own WebQuests about Cracking Dams if you see something else in the site you would like to emphasize. Bernie Dodge has created a template (#) for designing WebQuests that you might want to use.

I am no longer working on this project, but if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me: megann.