Designing Student-Centered Activities to Increase Engagement and Learning within Atmospheric Dynamics Courses

Thursday, Friday 8:30am-11:30am E Building 104

Workshop

Session Chairs

Casey Davenport, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Zachary Handlos, Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus

John Knox, University of Georgia

The goal of this 2-day workshop is to provide participants an opportunity to develop their own hands-on, student-centered (i.e., active learning) dynamics activity that participants can then readily use within their own courses (e.g. atmospheric dynamics, synoptic meteorology, mesoscale meteorology, related courses) to improve student engagement and understanding of atmospheric dynamics course material. The first day of the workshop will provide participants with information about the benefits of student-centered learning, the challenges of teaching atmospheric dynamics concepts and a plan to allow work time to develop a student-centered activity. The second day of the workshop will allow participants an opportunity to continue to work on finalizing their activities and then conclude with demonstrating their activity for the entire workshop as well as learn from other participants' developed activities from the previous day.

Participants: Please be sure to bring any relevant course materials with you, such as textbooks, syllabi, etc.

Overview

The goal of this 2-day workshop is to provide participants an opportunity to develop their own hands-on, student-centered (i.e., active learning) dynamics activity that participants can then readily use within their own courses (e.g. atmospheric dynamics, synoptic meteorology, mesoscale meteorology, related courses) to improve student engagement and understanding of atmospheric dynamics course material. The first day of the workshop will provide participants with information about the benefits of student-centered learning, the challenges of teaching atmospheric dynamics concepts and a plan to allow work time to develop a student-centered activity. Participants will have the opportunity to network with each other and discuss their own atmospheric dynamics instructional experiences to help with brainstorming activity design. The second day of the workshop will allow participants an opportunity to continue to work on finalizing their activities and then conclude with demonstrating their activity for the entire workshop as well as learn from other participants' developed activities from the previous day. Activities developed within this workshop will be shared amongst participants, which can then be shared with colleagues throughout the atmospheric dynamics community.

Workshop program

Target Audience

This workshop is designed for faculty or teaching assistants that teach atmospheric dynamics or related courses (e.g., synoptic meteorology, climate dynamics), both at the undergraduate and graduate level. Instructors that teach any mathematically-intensive physical sciences courses are also welcome to participate (e.g., oceanography, geophysics).

Goals

Goal 1: Meet and get to know colleagues who teach, and care about teaching, atmospheric dynamics or related content
Goal 2: Learn about the benefits of student-centered, active learning course activities
Goal 3: Fully develop at least one hands-on activity that can be used in a dynamics (or related) course
Goal 4: Develop a repository to share hands-on activities created during this workshop

Format

The first day will introduce participants to the benefits of active learning and why it should be incorporated into their courses. Participants will also have time to get to know one another and share their instructional struggles in dynamics and related content. The remaining time on the first day will be used to let participants generate ideas in small groups for how to tackle specific concepts in their own classes using active learning. The second day will provide time for everyone to finalize their activities and then give brief demonstrations to the full group. All materials generated for each activity will also be shared with everyone.