EVALUATING THE USABILITY OF THE EZGCM CLIMATE MODELING TOOLKIT AND ITS IMPACT ON UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS’ UNDERSTANDING OF THE CLIMATE MODELING PROCESS AND CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE

Complex global climate models, or GCMs, are one of the primary tools used by scientists to make projections about the future of Earth’s climate system (e.g., atmospheric temperatures, precipitation, winds, etc.). To properly deploy climate models, scientists utilize a series of data processing steps and decisions. Many students are unaware of these decision processes that climate scientists employ when using climate models however, EzGCM, an educational cloud-based online climate modeling system, simplifies the process and makes it more transparent and structured. However, the EzGCM modeling tool has yet to be evaluated in regard to its usability or impact on undergraduate students understanding of climate modeling or climate change. The goal of this research is to evaluate the usability of the EzGCM software as well as to measure how the tool influences students’ understanding of the climate modeling process and climate change. This study will use eye-tracking with entry level college students as they advance through the steps of the EzGCM climate modeling tool. Eye tracking allows for the measurement of user eye-movements identifying important information regarding the decision making process of users, determine visual search efficiency, and identify usability issues when users engage with external information sources (Bergstrom and Schall, 2014; Bojki, 2013). Relevant educational and demographic metrics (e.g.,. gender, major, class) will be collected from participants and they will be given a climate content pretest, adapted from the climate change concept inventory (Libarkin et al., 2018), to assess their existing climate knowledge and climate modeling understanding. Students will be trained to use the EzGCM software and eye tracked as they move through the stages of running simulations, data post-processing, and visualization of results. After, participants will be post-tested and participate in a qualitative interview to gauge their satisfaction and user experience. This presentation will provide an overview of the study design and methodological approach and include preliminary data collected to date.