Using Podcasts and Supplemental Instruction to Increase Retention and Student Engagement in Atmospheric Dynamics

At Ohio University, Dynamic Meteorology is taught in a year-long, two semester sequence of courses. Typically, it is the most challenging of meteorology courses for students at Ohio, combining their pre-requisite physics and calculus courses. To help students understand, engage with, and retain the challenging material, I use two techniques to my typical lecture-driven structure: a) pdocasts and b) supplemental instruction. For the podcasts, students are given a URL at the beginning of the semester where they can subscribe to the course podcast feed, which can then sync automatically after every class to their iTunes, podcast App, or other podcasting software. They can also, if they wish, simply listen to the lectures on the course website. The podcasts have proven to be a very effective form of extending the class: students can freely take notes during class, and review those notes later with the full audio of the lecture at their disposal. In particular, podcasts have been extremely beneficial for students preparing for exams and completing homework assignments, and they are often specifically mentioned in end-of-the semester course evaluations as one of the most helpful aspects of the course to help students retain and understand the material (and require very little of a faculty member's personal effort). To help with student engagement, I also hold weekly supplemental instruction sessions beyond the classroom lecture. These sessions meet for an hour a week in a more relaxed setting, where we perform sample problems, discuss some of the more challenging material, and help students to prepare more for the tests. The supplemental instruction sessions are determined at a time most popular for students, and are not mandatory. Yet, I have found that students that attend these the most frequently do the best in class. The relaxed, informal, non-lecture approach to these sessions makes students feel far more comfortable to ask questions, seek further clarity, and get one-on-one attention; however they do require extra work on the role of the faculty member outside of lecture. However, I have similarly noticed that before I started having these sessions, I would frequently spend far more time weekly with students in office hours; therefore adding these sessions and addressing issues facing multiple students simultaneously has proven to be an efficient use of my time.