Sunday, 13 January 2002
Hpvci—Distance education initiative and efforts
As apart of the High Performance Visualization Center Initiative (HPVCI) at Jackson State University (JSU), the JSU Meteorology Program (JSU MP) is developing a Distance Learning Initiative. The courses offered will be Introductory Meteorology and Mesoscale Modeling (MM5, and COAMPS), products, and datasets for college and professional users. Also, as a part of this effort, JSU is developing an educational initiative for lower division meteorology courses with Jones County Junior College (JCJC), in Mississippi, and the Navy’s Professional Development Center (PDC). The JSU MP is also planning to implement Online Weather Studies, a new component of the AMS education initiative which is an introductory undergraduate meteorology course offered partially via the internet. This course will also provide classroom and laboratory applications focused on current weather situations. Close collaboration with JSU MP undergraduates has produced three websites (http://weather.jsums.edu, http://rainbow.jsums.edu, and http://viz.jsums.edu/~coamps) that will address the needs of users with various academic backgrounds, and levels of meteorological skills. The sites will display course materials equivalent to Intro and Intermediate Meteorology (being taught currently at JSU), models output, datasets, and associated products. These materials will be incorporated into classrooms and websites, using electronic classroom environments. The three web pages, mentioned above, will be merged and/or linked into one homepage that will serve as the JSU MP Clearinghouse homepage. A usability test is planned to ensure that students, teachers, researchers, and web users, in general, will achieve their objectives when “surfing” the site. Users, with different academic backgrounds and levels of meteorological knowledge, will be exposed to the site, and asked questions about it (is the information clear? are maps cluttered? is navigation “free-flowing”?). After provided feedback, appropriate changes will be made, and the site(s) will be finally released to the meteorological and broader communities.
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