Simulating a Volcanic Crisis in the Classroom

Abstract

Perhaps the most urgent responsibility of volcanologists today is the management of volcanic crises. This complex process, however, is one of the most difficult to convey to students in a classroom setting. We have designed a multi-week, cooperative learning activity for our introductory, undergraduate volcanology class, which culminates in the simulation of a volcanic monitoring crisis. We provide teams of students with regularly updated information about a volcano's increasing activity. The data are drawn from existing archives and consist of seismic, gas composition, deformation, and surficial variations, as well as eyewitness reports. Students must respond in real time to the volcano's changing conditions in a highly interactive, dynamic, and energetic experience. The exercise incorporates the development of skills including interpretation of volcanic data, design of hazard maps and alert-level schemes, analysis of rapidly changing databases, consideration of the human costs of scientific decisions, and management of multiple simultaneous tasks. We believe this activity creates an effective and exciting learning environment in which students have the opportunity to apply theoretical concepts to a more realistic situation than is achieved in conventional classroom exercises. In so doing, we hope to develop students' critical thinking skills as well as to convey the challenges faced by volcanologists in hazards mitigation.