Abstract
The online Dynamic Weather Forecaster is an open, collaborative application available now to high-school 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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Acknowledgments
We thank Chris Schaffer, Daryl Herzmann, Scott Lincoln, and Doug Yarger for their assistance with this study. Cervato also wishes to thank the ISU undergraduate meteorology juniors who since 2002 shared their passion for forecasting with the students of Meteorology 206: Brandon Storm, Wes Sass, Kevin Sullivan, Matt Grewe, Heather Moser, Chris Conoan, Liz Suess, and Josh Alland. Comments kindly provided by two anonymous reviewers and editor Hassan Babaie have helped us improve the manuscript. Partial support for this work was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation (DUE-0618686).
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Communicated by: R. Ramachandran
Appendix: snapshots of the screens used to set-up a DWF assignment
Appendix: snapshots of the screens used to set-up a DWF assignment
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Cervato, C., Gallus, W., Boysen, P. et al. Dynamic weather forecaster: results of the testing of a collaborative, on-line educational platform for weather forecasting. Earth Sci Inform 4, 181–189 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-011-0087-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-011-0087-2