REAL-TIME WEATHER EDUCATION THROUGH AMS ONLINE WEATHER STUDIES

The American Meteorological Society (AMS), with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), nationally offers Online Weather Studies, an introductory college-level, online distance-learning course on the fundamentals of atmospheric science. Fall 2003 marked the ninth semester of the course offering, with over 150 institutions having used course materials. The principal innovation of Online Weather Studies is that students learn about weather as it happens by utilizing learning materials written in real time and delivered using the course homepage. The AMS Education Program designed and services this course and makes it available to colleges and universities as a turnkey package with electronic and printed components.

The AMS delivers Online Weather Studies partially over the Internet. Students have hands-on learning experiences by completing two laboratory investigations each week based on current weather. Course components include a textbook, a study guide containing the first part of each twice-weekly laboratory investigation, and a course homepage providing the second part of each investigation and current weather links. The AMS designed the course for offering in a variety of instructional settings, by professors with a range of meteorological experience.

The AMS received NSF support to provide students at 100 minority-serving colleges and universities with access to Online Weather Studies over a 4.5-year period beginning in 2002. Through this Geosciences Diversity/National Dissemination Project, the AMS invites faculty members at participating minority-serving institutions to a course implementation workshop at the National Weather Service Training Center and a Diversity Session at the AMS Annual Meeting. Forty-eight undergraduate institutions are already participating in the Project. As part of this project the AMS has added a weekly critical thinking/diversity component to the course homepage, which explores critical thinking and its applications to course content and diversity topics, and a student resources page with education and career information.