Using Social Media to Expand Peer-to-Peer Discussion in an Online Course about Regional Climate Modeling

Abstract:

The goal of this project is to make knowledge about regional climate modeling accessible to anyone in any location, regardless of their resources. We accomplish this through the development of a free online course, which introduces novice model users to an educational version of the Weather Research and Forecasting model (e-WRF). These courses are grounded in education theory and have been described in detail at prior AGU meetings (Kelsey et al. 2014, Walton et al. 2014, Yarker & Mesquita 2013).

Research indicates that effective dialogue is an important component for successful learning to occur and displays the following elements: asking complex questions, deep discussion, and use of evidence to construct arguments (Benus et al. 2013). These can happen between the student and tutor, but peer-to-peer interaction is especially important as well as the most difficult aspect of social constructivism to meet, especially in an online setting. In our online courses, standard course forums were underutilized and generally only used to ask the tutor clarifying questions or troubleshoot error messages. To rectify this problem, we began using social media to facilitate conversation and notice vast improvement in peer-to-peer communication. Moreover, we created a community of over 700 regional climate modelers from around the world, sharing information, asking questions, and creating research projects relating to climate change.

Data was gathered by qualitatively analyzing forum and Facebook posts and quantitatively analyzing survey data from participants in both courses. Facebook participants posted on the group more often about a wider variety of topics than the forum participants. Additionally, there were statistically significant increase (‘student’ t test and Mann-Whitney test) in the elements of effective dialogue. We conclude that social media can serve as a possible tool in the development of online learning, especially for difficult concepts like regional climate modeling. Not only are participants more active on social media than forums, it can provide a community that supports participants; not only as they take the course, but after it is over and they are working on their own individual research projects as well.