CALMet Online 2014
Topic outline
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Welcome to participate CALMet Online 2014!
This web site will be our area for discussion and sharing resources.
You can take a look into the session descriptions on the main page.
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Marianne Weingroff (COMET) and Bruce Muller (COMET).
The use of conceptual models enhances our understanding of the physical world. In the fields of atmospheric science and hydrology, students learn to define the world with equations representing physical parameters and processes. Bringing them to life via visualizations and 3-dimensional conceptual models can lead to a better understanding of the dynamics of the atmosphere and thus better forecasts. In this session, we'll discuss the use of conceptual models in teaching, develop a list of conceptual model resources, and identify conceptual model resources that need to be developed to support our collective training needs.
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Week 1: What's your take on conceptual models?
Welcome:
Closed Captioning (CC) is available
Let's kick this session off with some stories and thoughts on what we all mean when we throw around the term 'conceptual model'.
Tell us your thoughts by answering the following three questions:
- What's your idea of a conceptual model?
- What's an example of a conceptual model that changed your understanding?
- How do you use conceptual models in your teaching?
To get you started on thinking about your responses, here are a couple from COMET staff. Bryan Guarente recorded a quick video. Bryan is an instructional designer and has a degree in meteorology. He does a lot of work in collaboration with the Met Service of Canada with much of his focus on satellite interpretation.
Bill Bua is on COMET's scientific staff. Bill is an NWP expert and has worked closely with NOAA's National Weather Service to address forecasters' understanding of how models work. Here's a slide deck he put together to share his thoughts:
You can share your own thoughts and responses to the 3 questions on Conceptual Models in the accompanying forum via text, PowerPoint, Prezi, Google Slides, Vimeo or YouTube video, audio recording - whatever way is most fun and works best for you. I think the Moodle file upload size is ~50MB so that's you're only constraint.
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Week 2: Enhancing mental models
This week, we've got a pretty traditional assignment for you: reading and reflection. We've got a research article, Competence in Weather Forecasting, that was published in the book, Psychological Investigations of Competence in Decision Making. The article describes characteristics of competent forecasters. A common theme is the use of complex, dynamic mental models (i.e. conceptual models). That being the case, how do we go about fostering the development and enhancement of these mental models?
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An interesting research article that describes the characteristics of competent weather forecasters. Throughout, there is reference to the development and use of complex, dynamic conceptual models by those forecasters considered to be most competent. It's a lengthy article and unfortunately only available in English. For those of you interested in evaluation techniques, read the whole thing. To jump to the results and content for discussion, start reading on page 11 of the .pdf file (page 60 as marked on the article pages), 'Characteristics of Competent Weather Forecasters'.
This article was published in:
Smith, Kip, Shanteau, James and Johnson, Paul, (2004), Psychological Investigations of Competence in Decision Making, Cambridge University Press. -
Week 3: Teaching resources for conceptual models
Share resources, identify needs...
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Conceptual Models from the Week 3 Padlet in an easy to access Excel spreadsheet.
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