Moira Doyle - General Meteorology: One course and three delivery modes, is one of them the best?

General Meteorology is the first specific subject of our Atmospheric Sciences undergraduate program at the University of Buenos Aires. Throughout one term, with a total of 160 clock hours lessons, students are introduced in a descriptive way to the atmosphere's behavior. They will learn the basic concepts of different atmospheric variables such as radiation, temperature, humidity, clouds, precipitation, pressure and wind. Also some physical relationships such as stability, geostrophic and hydrostatic equilibrium, and an insight of dynamical movements like the general circulation model, and air masses and fronts are addressed.

For the past 5 years, prior to the present confinement, the course was delivered in 2 modes. Students enrolled in the Atmospheric Sciences program attended a face to face course, while undergraduate or postgraduate students from other careers had the possibility of an asynchronous on-line mode course. Recently, COVID-19  took us by surprise and in 2020 in order to continue with the university teaching activities, a third delivery mode was implemented: virtual and synchronic mode.

Hence, this course gives us a unique possibility of comparing 3 different modes of teaching-learning the same contents. Throughout the courses students have exercise guides and two evaluations, these are implemented differently in each mode. After passing these exams they have an overall final exam which in general has always been oral and face to face. This aspect has suffered only a minor change, since it's still oral but students meet individually with the examiners through zoom or meet platform.

The goal of this presentation is to discuss the cost-benefits of each mode and present a preliminary and quasi-subjective compassion of the results in terms of teaching and learning. The tools used in the development of the comparison are surveys addressed to students and out experience as teachers.

Is there a best mode? What do you think?

We would love to hear your thoughts and experience. We will share ours at the 2nd live session. In the mean time see what we found by clicking here. See you around!