How to deal with water conflicts? The use of role play at engineering schools for fronting real situations

Globalization, population growth and climate changes are directly impacting the global water cycle with consequences at the local scale. For instance, water extremes, scarcity and flooding, have overpassed the natural cycles to which water managers were used to. These breaking boundary conditions are particularly present in Mediterranean semiarid areas such as the Andalucia region, southern of Spain. These new scenarios require updated management strategies and skills in the water management field, Civil engineers have a crucial role, not only in the designing of new infrastructure but also in the planification and participation at the political debate from different perspectives. Therefore, these new skills and competences have to be developed during the undergraduate period. In fact, the use of new teaching methodologies and strategies has become a very common tool in the higher education system. Specifically, subjects such as Hydrology can create the right environment where students can be trained to propose solutions and resolve water management conflicts in which numerous interests are present. Therefore, the use of teaching strategies such as role play debates for the resolution of water conflicts appear as a fundamental methodology in the civil engineering field. 

This work presents the results of the implementation of role play in the subject of Hydrology in the Civil Engineering program at the University of Cordoba during the last 5 academic years. The role-play fronts students into a real water conflict scenario: A generalized drought and 10 months without rainfall make it impossible to meet the needs of both society and irrigation communities in two towns. One of the municipalities wants to build a small dam for water management and leisure activities; however, the vicinity municipality, which is located within the catchment, is not in favor of the construction of this infrastructure. All the agents involved in the water conflict are represented by students. The roles were assigned randomly to the students.

The experiment has two periods, the first one was a pilot case during the 2019-2020 to enable us the definition of the best assignment. The second period from 2020-2021 until 2023-2024 represents the 4 years study case, where students have faced the same hydrological scenario, in two phases, one face-to-face with oral debate, and another online and written in which the role of the first face-to-face part was changed.

The student performance results are complemented with three kinds of surveys, i) an quality improvement survey, ii) self-analysis of acquired competences and iii) a pre debate and post event survey that analyzes the student perspective on water management. The results obtained were very satisfactory. The competencies that the students consider to have improved the most are i) ability to argue and defend ideas, ii) ability to research information and iii) ability to develop a critical spirit. Moreover, overall satisfaction with the activity has been very high in all years.