A Forecasting Activity for a Large Introductory Meteorology Course

Yarger, Douglas N.; Gallus, William A.; Taber, Michael; Boysen, John P.; Castleberry, Paul

doi:10.1175/1520-0477(2000)081<0031:afafal>2.3.co;2

Cited by 13 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…The forecasting assignment included in the DWF was originally developed by Yarger et al (2000). This assignment is unique in that there are questions relating to advection, cloud cover, and fronts, items for which historically a student could not find quickly an expert forecast on the Internet.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because weather forecasting is a topic of broad public interest, it has been used even in introductory meteorology courses as a tool to improve student understanding of the atmosphere (e.g., Yarger et al 2000). Since students have grown up in an environment where weather forecasts are constantly communicated to the public, it might be expected that these students would benefit from trying to forecast the weather themselves, or perhaps find the experience interesting.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Weather Forecasting as a Learning Tool in a Large Service Course: Does Practice Make Perfect?

Suess

Cervato

Gallus

et al. 2013

Weather and Forecasting

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Each spring roughly 200 students, mostly nonmajors, enroll in the Introduction to Meteorology course at Iowa State University and are required to make at least 25 forecasts throughout the semester. The Dynamic Weather Forecaster (DWF) forecasting platform requires students to forecast more than just simple ''numeric'' forecasts and includes questions on advection, cloudiness, and precipitation factors that are not included in forecast contests often used in meteorology courses. The present study examines the evolution of forecasting skill for students enrolled in the class in spring 2010 and 2011 and compares student performance with that of an ''expert forecaster. '' The expert forecasters were chosen from meteorology students in an advanced forecasting course who showed exemplary forecasting skill throughout the previous semester. It is shown that these introductory students improve in forecast skill over only the first 10-15 days that they forecast, a number smaller than the 25 days found in an earlier study examining meteorology majors in an upper-level course. The skill of both groups plateaus after that time. An analysis of two types of questions in the DWF reveals that students do have skill slightly better than that of a persistence forecast when predicting parameters traditionally used in forecasting contests, but fail to outperform persistence when predicting more complex atmospheric processes like temperature advection and factors influencing precipitation such as moisture content and instability. The introduction of a contest ''with prizes'' halfway through the semester in 2011 was found to have at best mixed impacts on forecast skill. ABSTRACT Each spring roughly 200 students, mostly nonmajors, enroll in the Introduction to Meteorology course at Iowa State University and are required to make at least 25 forecasts throughout the semester. The Dynamic Weather Forecaster (DWF) forecasting platform requires students to forecast more than just simple ''numeric'' forecasts and includes questions on advection, cloudiness, and precipitation factors that are not included in forecast contests often used in meteorology courses. The present study examines the evolution of forecasting skill for students enrolled in the class in spring 2010 and 2011 and compares student performance with that of an ''expert forecaster.'' The expert forecasters were chosen from meteorology students in an advanced forecasting course who showed exemplary forecasting skill throughout the previous semester. It is shown that these introductory students improve in forecast skill over only the first 10-15 days that they forecast, a number smaller than the 25 days found in an earlier study examining meteorology majors in an upper-level course. The skill of both groups plateaus after that time. An analysis of two types of questions in the DWF reveals that students do have skill slightly better than that of a persistence forecast when predicting parameters traditionally used in forecasting contests, but fail to outperform persistence...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Weather Forecasting as a Learning Tool in a Large Service Course: Does Practice Make Perfect?

Suess

Cervato

Gallus

et al. 2013

Weather and Forecasting

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“…The labels will allow users to search the database for specific types of weather, reference multiple similar events, or study temporal distribution of like events. In addition, we are working to incorporate introductory lessonssuch as a folk meteorology exercise or the forecasting exercises developed by Kahl (2001) and Yarger et al (2000)-into the Weather Viewer framework. Over the long run, the program's usefulness for educators will increase as the data archive grows.…”

Section: Future Developmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first involves efforts to develop teaching methods that incorporate existing Internet resources into the curriculum. The introductory-level weather forecasting exercises designed by Yarger et al (2000) and Kahl (2001), as well as Nogueira and Cutrim's (2006) Whittaker and Ackerman (2002), as well as broader efforts to develop course information systems to supplement introductory textbooks. The Online Weather Studies program developed by the American Meteorological Society is a prime example of the latter.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Bloomsburg Weather Viewer: A Resource for Integrating Webcam and Local Weather station Data into the Introductory Meteorology Classroom

Brunskill

Jones

2011

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

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“…That contest has been recently replaced by the Weather Challenge (http://www.wxchallenge.com) that takes place for 10 weeks each fall and spring semesters and is open to meteorology undergraduates, graduate students, instructors, researchers, and alumni. These national contests are often accompanied at various institutions by meteorology courses that include their own forecasting contests or activities (Yarger et al 2000;Kahl 2001;Kahl et al 2004Kahl et al , 2005Hilliker 2008). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic weather forecaster: results of the testing of a collaborative, on-line educational platform for weather forecasting

et al. 2011

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The online Dynamic Weather Forecaster is an open, collaborative application available now to highschool and college instructors across the United States who would like to easily incorporate weather forecasting in their instruction. The application consists of a set of 13 questions that allow students to submit forecasts that cover most of the parameters used by professional weather forecasters. Submissions are automatically validated against weather parameters and graded. We tested the impact of the application on the learning of 199 undergraduate students in an introductory meteorology course in spring 2008. Students who begin forecasting early in the semester and continue to do so throughout the semester are statistically significantly more successful in the course than students who start late or complete a low number of forecasts.College, year in school, and gender were not significant predictors of success. Students found the application easy to use, and 92.3% of them found it at least somewhat helpful as they learned about the weather. Through the use of the DWF, students also experience first-hand that uncertainty is a critical part of weather forecasting and of scientific studies in general. With sufficient interest from potential users outside the USA, the DWF platform could easily be expanded to include global weather data.

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A Forecasting Activity for a Large Introductory Meteorology Course

Cited by 13 publications

References 3 publications

Weather Forecasting as a Learning Tool in a Large Service Course: Does Practice Make Perfect?

Weather Forecasting as a Learning Tool in a Large Service Course: Does Practice Make Perfect?

The Bloomsburg Weather Viewer: A Resource for Integrating Webcam and Local Weather station Data into the Introductory Meteorology Classroom

Dynamic weather forecaster: results of the testing of a collaborative, on-line educational platform for weather forecasting

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