13th Symposium on Education

3.2

VISIT -- providing teletraining for operational forecasters

Daniel T. Lindsey, CIRA/Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO; and D. Bikos, A. Mostek, S. Bachmeier, T. Whittaker, J. F. Weaver, B. N. Grant, and J. LaDue

The Virtual Institute for Satellite Integration Training (VISIT) provides distance learning for operational forecasters in the National Weather Service (NWS) via teletraining. Increasing travel costs and decreasing budgets have produced the need for an economical training alternative. VISITview, a software program developed at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), allows instructors to teach training sessions from their own desk. Annotations drawn on a slide by the instructor can be seen by each participating student, and a telephone conference line provides the audio. From April 1999 through May 2003, 662 teletraining sessions have been conducted on 40 topics, and over 11,200 training certificates have been issued. In addition to the NWS, other groups have taken advantage of this training, including emergency managers, the U.S. Navy, and the Meteorological Service of Canada. VISIT instructors come from a wide range of institutes, including the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA), CIMSS, the Warning Decision Training Branch (WDTB), and the NWS, just to name a few. This presentation will describe the VISIT program and offer examples of recently developed teletraining sessions.

extended abstract  Extended Abstract (772K)

Supplementary URL: http://www.cira.colostate.edu/ramm/visit/visithome.asp

Session 3, Education and Training for Government and Military Meteorologists (Room 615/616)
Tuesday, 13 January 2004, 8:30 AM-12:30 PM, Room 615/616

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