Collaborative Development of Student-Centered Classroom Activities in Beginner Through Advanced Atmospheric Science Courses

The importance of implementing student-centered, active learning activities in the classroom to support student success is well-established; yet, in practice, its use remains limited or uneven in the atmospheric sciences. One reason for this is the lack of well-designed, readily-available activities, given that development necessarily requires time, knowledge, and resources.

This theme came up at a 2.5-hour workshop held in July 2022 at the National Association of Geoscience Teachers’ Earth Educators’ Rendezvous entitled “Teaching Atmospheric Dynamics to Improve Learning and Engagement,” with approximately 30 attendees. The strong interest in this workshop and the unified desire of its attendees to have more student-centered classroom resources for instructors led to a lengthier, 6-hour follow-up at the Rendezvous in July 2023. This 2-day workshop, “Designing Student-Centered Activities to Increase Engagement and Learning within Atmospheric Dynamics Courses,” attracted 20 attendees and had the following goals: 1) Meet and get to know colleagues who teach, and care about teaching, atmospheric dynamics or related content; 2) Learn about the benefits of student-centered, active learning course activities; 3) Fully develop at least one hands-on activity that can be used in a dynamics (or related) course; and 4) Develop a repository to share hands-on activities created during this workshop.

This presentation will describe an overview of the workshop, its activities, as well as the collection of active learning exercises that were developed by the participants. Notably, these classroom activities were created to engage undergraduate students in topics ranging from introductory-level basics (e.g., Sun-Earth relationship) through advanced concepts (e.g., thermal wind). Future iterations of this workshop and how the community can access these resources will also be discussed.