Courseware for remote learning in environmental engineering

Web-based courseware was developed to complement a postgraduate course on E nvironmental Management. The online material was designed to allow the stud ents to approach the topic intuitively and interactively in a self-paced mo de. Graduate students, including biologists, chemists, physicists and engin eers should be able to get a good understanding of the technical issues inv olved. In order to intuitively understand the effects of the emission and m eteorological conditions with respect to the plume rise, a simple simulatio n program has been developed that includes two different modeling approache s to estimate the plume rise: the Briggs methods [1] for stable and neutral /unstable conditions, and Zhang & Ghoniem [2] model for stable conditions. The courseware was used for 20 students. Students' feedback about the use o f this tool was obtained and evaluated by means of questionnaires. The tool will be applied in future courses. A more extended version of the program is being developed and adapted as a professional tool for air pollution reg ulatory purposes.