scholarly journals The WxChallenge: Forecasting Competition, Educational Tool, and Agent of Cultural Change

2013 ◽  
Vol 94 (10) ◽  
pp. 1501-1506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley G. Illston ◽  
Jeffrey B. Basara ◽  
Christopher Weiss ◽  
Mike Voss

The WxChallenge, a project developed at the University of Oklahoma, brings a state-of-the-art, fun, and exciting forecast contest to participants at colleges and universities across North America. The challenge is to forecast the maximum and minimum temperatures, precipitation, and maximum wind speeds for select locations across the United States over a 24-h prediction period. The WxChallenge is open to all undergraduate and graduate students, as well as higher-education faculty, staff, and alumni. Through the use of World Wide Web interfaces accessible by personal computers, tablet computer, and smartphones, the WxChallenge provides a state-of-the-art portal to aid participants in submitting forecasts and alleviate many of the administrative issues (e.g., tracking and scoring) faced by local managers and professors. Since its inception in 2006, 110 universities have participated in the contest and it has been utilized as part of the curricula for 140 classroom courses at various institutions. The inherently challenging nature of the WxChallenge has encouraged its adoption as an educational tool. As its popularity has grown, professors have seen the utility of the Wx-Challenge as a teaching aid and it has become an instructional resource of many meteorological classes at institutions for higher learning. In addition to evidence of educational impacts, the competition has already begun to leave a cultural and social mark on the meteorological learning experience.

Author(s):  
Lamees Fadl ◽  
Dina Hassan

In this chapter, the authors explain the integration of linguistic and cultural knowledge in two online beginner Arabic classrooms on a collaborative project between LaGuardia Community College and The University of Oklahoma. Students engage in a series of blended virtual and communal activities that result in new opportunities for learning, where the learning space is multi-voiced. The chapter highlights include an explanation of the project learning objectives, the project design, employability competencies learned, and synopses of students' interviews with members of the Arab communities as well as their reflections on the learning experience. The curriculum and pedagogy adopted for this virtual exchange project are grounded in the historical and current particulars of students' everyday lives and that of Arab communities living in the United States. This project aims at creating a third communal space where activities are discussed in meaningful ways, while unlearning stereotypes and shunning away prejudices, a goal informed by the belief that learning is a social process.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-45
Author(s):  
Lisa H. Gren ◽  
L. Scott Benson ◽  
Caren J. Frost

The University of Utah is a publicly funded, R1 university located in the United States, with a mission statement that includes recognition of its global role, asserting that “. . . we engage local and global communities to promote education, health, and quality of life.” As part of that engagement, the University of Utah has offered learning abroad opportunities since 1967. Approximately 1 in 10 students participates in a global learning experience, and 80% of programs are short term (defined as 10 weeks or less). The pedagogical theories that guide these short-term programs are experiential learning, authentic learning, and intentional targeted intervention. We describe three short-term learning abroad programs in public health and social work—for students at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate level—connecting the reported benefits to the pedagogical model and theories used to develop the specific curriculum for these short-term programs. Faculty use a variety of reflective tools to help students learn to function in their new setting (experiential learning); explore and meaningfully construct concepts and relationships as they address real-world problems (authentic learning); and facilitate intercultural growth (intentional targeted learning). The University of Utah has adapted a three-stage model for learning abroad that incorporates principles from these theories to drive program activities: Plan (predeparture), Learn (program participation), and Integrate (postprogram). Immediate benefits to students of participating in a global-learning experience include intercultural learning, personal, and career development. Benefits to faculty include scholarly products in the domains of education and service learning, community-engaged participation, and research.


Author(s):  
Zahed Siddique ◽  
Mrinal C. Saha ◽  
Firas Akasheh ◽  
Shaiful Arif ◽  
Bipul Barua ◽  
...  

It is well documented that students learn more effectively when they are actively involved in the learning process, and interacting with peers. Interactive scenario-based education is a novel concept expected to stimulate active learning and provide a peer-learning experience. In this paper we present Create your Scenario Interactively (CSI) module, which is an interactive storybook-like learning tool composed of interactive storyline, 2D/3D visualization, simulation, and state-of-the-art interaction technology. The CSI method allows peer-interactions and prepares students to solve open-ended problems. The CSI module has been developed for metal casting and implemented in manufacturing engineering courses at the University of Oklahoma and Tuskegee University. In this paper, we discuss the impact of the CSI on students’ learning in manufacturing engineering education. Our preliminary results suggest that a majority of the students feels that the CSI module is very effective in keeping them engaged. We also analyze the effect of peer-learning to develop critical thinking and solve design problems. The details of the CSI module, implementation details, and assessment results are discussed in the paper.


2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-162
Author(s):  
Uppinder Mehan

The Society for Critical Exchange held its first Winter Theory Institute from11-14 February 2010 at the University of Houston-Victoria, located inVictoria, Texas. Eleven scholars from a variety of disciplines and fromacross the United States came together to present and discuss their currentwork on questions regarding the affect terror and terrorism are having oneducation in higher education. The participants presented their work by turn,and all took part in the intense two days fully devoted to the discussions.Some of the questions we hoped to address included the following: Howhave institutions of higher learning responded to the specter of terror? Howshould academe respond? What is our professional role in a terroristicworld? ...


Author(s):  
Koen Van Gorp ◽  
Luca Giupponi ◽  
Emily Heidrich Uebel ◽  
Ahmet Dursun ◽  
Nicholas Swinehart

As part of a larger effort to support Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL) instruction in the United States, the LCTL Partnership at Michigan State University (MSU) and the LCTL Collaborative Partners initiative at the University of Chicago (UC) are supporting online LCTL courses to be offered to students across multiple institutions. As the initiatives were underway, it became clear that LCTL teachers’ familiarity with online teaching ranged widely. This is not surprising, especially considering that many LCTL teachers have never participated in any kind of online learning experience – let alone taught online. This paper reports on the first phase of a collaborative project that aims to identify and define key competencies for Online Language Teaching (OLT) and conceptualize a set of OLT readiness can-do statements. In a next phase, this framework will be used to build an assessment that gauges teachers’ readiness to teach language courses online and provide these teachers with formative feedback.


Author(s):  
Zahed Siddique ◽  
Mrinal Saha ◽  
Firas Akasheh ◽  
Shaiful Arif ◽  
Bipul Barua

It is well documented that students learn more effectively when they are actively involved in the learning process. Interactive scenario-based education is a novel concept expected to stimulate active learning and provide an engaging learning experience. Recently we have developed a Create your Scenario Interactively (CSI) module to teach metal casting and have implemented it in manufacturing engineering courses at the University of Oklahoma. In this paper, we discuss the impact of the CSI on students’ learning in manufacturing engineering education. The pedagogical effectiveness of the CSI instruction has been evaluated in several areas such as students’ engaging and active learning through pre-test and post-test format and survey questionnaires. Our preliminary results suggest that a majority of the students feels that the CSI module is very effective in keeping them engaged. Results also indicate that the CSI instructions help improve their understanding of the metal casting process. The details of the CSI module, implementation details, and assessment results are discussed.


2020 ◽  
pp. 198-211
Author(s):  
Sheldon Rothblatt

This chapter looks at two works by accomplished and informed scholars. The first book, Universities and Colleges: A Very Short Introduction (2017), is by David Palfreyman and Paul Temple. The second, The Origins of Higher Learning, Knowledge Networks and the Early Development of Universities (2017), is by Roy Lowe and Yoshihito Yasuhara. The Origins of Higher Learning is an account of what may be termed a run-up to the institutionalization of higher learning that occurred in what Charles Homer Haskins called The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (1927), the century in which the university as yet inchoate, is to be found. Meanwhile, Palfreyman and Temple essentially concentrate on the transformation in mission, organisation, and ‘stakeholders’ in the nineteenth century to the present, with particular attention to the provision for ‘higher education’ or ‘tertiary education’ in the United Kingdom (mainly England) and the United States.


Author(s):  
Gregor Bader ◽  
Pastory Bushozi ◽  
Manuel Will ◽  
Viola Schmid ◽  
Aurore Val ◽  
...  

Since more than 80 years, the University of Tübingen hosts the archaeological collections excavated by Margit and Ludwig Kohl-Larsen between 1934 and 1939 in modern-day Tanzania. Despite the great scientific relevance of these collections, most of them were never published on an international scale and were thus unavailable for the broader Africanist archaeological community. In the light of new excavations around Lake Eyasi, conducted jointly by the Universities of Dar es Salaam and Tübingen and the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, we decided to under­take a new inventory of the Kohl-Larsen collection, to analyze the assemblages using state of the art methods, link them with new excavation data and make them internationally available. As a first step, here we want to introduce the project by reporting on some preliminary observations from Njarasa Cave. Ultimately this research will help to create a coherent reconstruction of human cultural change and behavioral adaptions over the last ~200.000 years in this important archaeological landscape.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 237428952110370
Author(s):  
Gregory L. Blakey ◽  
Cindy B. McCloskey ◽  
Joel M. Guthridge ◽  
Christopher L. Williams ◽  
Rufei Lu ◽  
...  

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused much suffering through disease and death, disruption of daily life, and economic havoc. Global health infrastructure has been challenged, in some cases failing. In the United States, the inability of laboratories to provide adequate testing for the causative pathogen, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, has been the subject of negative press and national debate. Even so, these challenges have prompted pathology practices and clinical labs to change their organizations and operations for the better. The natural positive evolution of the University of Oklahoma Department of Pathology and OU Health Laboratories has been greatly accelerated by the global pandemic. While developing a substantial COVID testing response, our department of pathology and laboratories have evolved a much nimbler organizational structure, established an important research partnership, built a translational research resource, created a significant reference lab capability, and completed many key hires against a national background of hiring freezes and pay cuts. Also, the high visibility of the clinical lab and pathologists during the outbreak has reinforced the value of lab medicine to patient care across our health system. In the midst of significant ongoing changes to the structure and financing of our underlying organizations, high trust among departmental, hospital, health system, and medical school leadership during the pandemic has promoted these positive changes, allowing us to emerge much stronger from this crisis.


Author(s):  
Danny M. Adkison ◽  
Lisa McNair Palmer

This chapter describes Article XIII-A of the Oklahoma constitution, which concerns the Oklahoma State System of Higher Education. This article is probably one of the most important steps this state has taken to improve and better coordinate its public institutions of higher learning. Section 2 states that the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma is responsible for governing the university. The university’s president has only the authority given to him by the Board of Regents and their acts are subject to review by the board. Section 3 allows the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education to move money between funds and accounts as it sees fit. Lastly, under Section 4, a private denominational institution awarding academic and professional degrees may be subject to reasonable state regulation without violating the First, Fifth, Ninth, or Fourteenth Amendments. Thus, the secular-type activities of a religious school are subject to nonarbitrary governmental regulation exercised under the policy powers of the state.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document