Located in the heart of “hurricane alley,” South Florida Community College serves three rural counties in south Central Florida; Highlands, Hardee, and DeSoto Counties. A minority-serving institution (approximately 35% minorities) with a total annual unduplicated enrollment of approximately 7,600 students comprised of 19% Hispanic, 11% African-American, 5% “other” or non-white, and 65% white students. Two-thirds of our students attend part-time and most work either full-time or part-time while attending.
While a major focus of our campus is to support our Allied Health Nursing Program, a growing number of students, many of whom are non-traditional, have been asking for more Earth science courses in the online format to satisfy their General Education requirements. The turnkey aspects of Online Weather Studies and the extensive online resources offered by AMS were key factors in selecting this course. Having attended the Online Weather Studies workshop at the National Weather Service Training Center in Kansas City in May and having successfully taught four online courses over the past year, I feel confident that I have the requisite background to pilot this course at my institution.
I plan to implement the course in a format focused on meeting the expectations of Millennial Generation students. As such, the cornerstones of my course will include 24/7 access to all materials, opportunities for group activities, strong dependence on internet-based materials, coupled with frequent electronic interface via email with each student where information will be “pushed” to them (e.g., friendly reminders of upcoming assignments with embedded hyperlinks for quick access). Weekly assignments will include two investigations (one from the Weather Studies Investigation Manual and one from the Online Weather Studies website), a conceptual Question of the Week which students will work online in groups to discuss and agree upon their solution, and the weekly Math Skills problem sets from the Online Weather Studies website. Weekly online quizzes and two online exams will be administered during the course, each with a time limit. A chat room will be established on the D2L course management system and students will be encouraged to dialog with other members of the class.
Other than the initial orientation session, there will be no requirements for on-campus meetings. During the initial hour-long orientation session, I will make sure students can log onto both our D2L course management system and the AMS Online Weather Studies website. During the first week, they will be assigned a variety of different online activities (online quiz, online survey, online discussion board, dropbox, and email) to ensure they have mastery over the basic online functions that will be required during the term.
To help assess student aptitude and readiness for taking an online course, all students enrolled in this first class will utilize READI (Readiness for Education At a Distance Indicator), a web-based tool that assesses a student's likelihood for succeeding in an online learning program. I will be prototyping this instrument for possible full-scale deployment at my College. I will analyze the correlation between student success and persistence as compared to their READI scores to see how effective this instrument is in predicting the success of future students of Online Weather Studies. Additionally, to assist with overall course assessment, I will administer both the AMS Online Weather Studies pre- and post-exam and then analyze the corresponding Hake Gain (g) scores.
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