Extended Abstract (452K)P1.22
Implementing Online Weather into the quarter system using archive files
Steve LaDochy, California State Univ., Los Angeles, CA
The AMS Online Weather course was offered for the first time at CSULA during the fall quarter of 2006. The course had a scheduled lab period on campus once a week, with the regular online course loaded onto the university server with a unique Internet address. In order to make the semester-long, 12-week Online Weather course compatible with our 10-week schedule, I had to rely on archiving most of the weekly files and squeezing 12 weekly assignments into ten weeks. Since the fall schedule of Online Weather begins the first week in September and the CSULA fall quarter begins in late September, it was necessary to save weekly files and upload them onto our course webpage 3 weeks later.
Course Webpage. I chose to use Instructional1, which is a flexible html program that allows the creation and storing of web pages on the Internet. It does not have the interactivity of WebCT or Blackboard, but is convenient when shifting files quickly from the Online Weather website to the course homepage. Since assignments are only active for one week on Online Weather, each week's assignments had to be saved by Sunday night and loaded onto the course webpage with links to the homepage. There is a link to the AMS Datastreme Atmosphere homepage so that students can read the Daily Summary in real time and see current weather maps and data. Other links, such as to the NWS, are also available on the course homepage and are recommended to students.
In-person Lab. Students meet once a week in the computer lab to go over assignments and review the new material for that week. This in-person lab allowed students to get help, ask questions, and to discuss questions from previous weeks' assignments. For students that have never taken an online or correspondence course before, lab time gave them more confidence in working on their own. It also added the social aspect of a university classroom that is missing in a completely online course. Some other changes were made from the regular Online Weather workload. I did not assign the Investigations Manual, but rather substituted some of my own meteorology exercises, such as Hurricane Katrina case study. Student evaluations were overall quite positive for the first online course. The fall 2007 online course should run more smoothly. The poster shows the course homepage, http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/sladoch/geog170.htm , additional exercises such as the Hurricane Katrina activity, and results from student evaluations from both 2006 and 2007.
Poster Session 1, Educational Initiatives Poster Session
Sunday, 20 January 2008, 5:30 PM-7:00 PM, Exhibit Hall B
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