Course Project: CEWA 568

The goal of the course project is to give you hands on experience explaining and teaching snow hydrology topics of particular interest to you. Project will consist of an oral presentation (20% of total) and written/published teaching materials (80% of total), which may consist of a website, details for an activity, a jupyter notebook lab, a video, and/or written documents.

You should identify your target audience (graduate students? fourth graders? the general public?) and include teaching objectives. By the end of your lesson (lab, video, website exploration, makerspace activity, etc.) students should be able to do what (use actions verbs, such as explain longwave radiation or create a plot of snowpit data).

Potential project ideas…

You are welcome to use your own data and design a lesson on a subject of interest to you and relevant to your own research – please let the instructor know as early as possible so that we can make sure you have sufficient resources to be successful. Alternatively, you may choose one of the projects below.

1. What does a snow hydrology student need to know about the weather? The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration have been measuring a lot in the East River Basin of Colorado, as part of the SAIL and SPLASH campaigns. The data is publicly available for both SAIL and SPLASH. These data are complimentary to the date we've been analyzing in this class, so a new learning module focused on mountain or cold region meteorology could be useful.

2. Make this class better. Pick one of the modules from this snow hydrology class and develop a new lab or activity on the topic that students taking the class in future years would benefit from.

3. Choose your own adventure…

Grading Rubic

Presentation

(30 points; will account for 20% of project grade)

A powerpoint-type presentation, like you would expect at a conference, 10 minutes in length, with an additional 5 minutes for questions. Your classmates are your audience. Present your teaching materials and teaching objectives. , why it is important, what methods you employed to answer the question, your major results, and the implications of your results. For pairs, both project partners will present together.

• Clarity of Overall Presentation (10 points)
  • Clear statement of the topic and objectives
  • Clear explanations of what you did, easy to follow
  • Good transitions from one section to the next
  • Ability to answer questions raised by audience
• Quality of Visual Aids/Graphics (10 points)
  • All graphics easy to see, properly labeled, large enough font
  • Correct limits on plot axes to show relevant information
  • Proper choice of type of graph to convey information
  • Interest level – slides nice/interesting to engage audience
• Teaching Topics Conveyed (10 points)
  • Proper methods applied
  • Accuracy of information taught
  • Explanations, exercises, or “ah ha” moments to convey teaching objectives

Written/Published Teaching Materials

(30 points; will account for 80% of project grade)

Please address any questions or comments that were raised during the presentation.

• Quality of Presentation of the Materials (10 points)
  • Clear and easy to read
  • Proper grammar and spelling
  • Clear statement of the learning objectives and goals
  • Good transitions from one section to the next
  • Clarity of explanations
• Information Conveyed (10 points)
  • Clearly taught something related to snow hydrology, proper literature cited
  • Appropriateness of techniques applied to the target audience
  • Accuracy of information taught
• Originality and Interest Level (10 points)
  • Methods for teaching were more interesting than reading a paper or watching a powerpoint
  • Related target subject to larger context and greater importance
  • Addressed any underlying assumptions in the analysis/demo/presentation and how these may have affected results
  • Taught scientific inquiry more than basic presentation of facts