THE 15TH AMS EDUCATION SYMPOSIUM

The 15th Education Symposium, held as part of the 86th American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting, addressed the scope of education and outreach efforts within atmospheric and related sciences. The first presentation outlined the critical need for reform, noting that the recent assessment "Trends in international mathematics and science study" indicates that U.S. students are not performing well in math and science, and that many science teachers, especially Earth science teachers, have not had opportunities to develop deep content knowledge or engage in research. After a formal poster-viewing break, five presentations focused on student learning and the use of technology in the classroom, including the students' responses to the use of an interactive personal computer (PC) Tablet by instructors in the meteorology classroom; the use of an active-learning quiz in Introduction to Meteorology, using the "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" approach; tools for teaching climate change science, including a pre- and postcourse questionnaire; an exercise on creating and distributing a survey focused on students' understanding of relative humidity; and educational tools to enhance a student's ability to go from coursework to applications using meteorological instrumentation.