Understanding Severe Convective Environments

Principal Investigator: John Allen
Funder: NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program

Short Summary: 
This CAREER project, in collaboration with UCAR’s COMET program and Central Michigan University, developed learning activities for both non-science majoring undergraduate students and high school students around the topics of convective storms, hazards, and social media literacy. The SciEd team led development of two hands-on high school lessons, including field testing with high school science teachers. The COMET team led the development of an undergraduate social media literacy lesson as well as an interactive that lets students manipulate humidity and air temperature to see the storm intensity and hazards that might result. Both the high school and undergraduate-level social media lessons use the SIFT method (Stop, Investigate, Find, and Trace) to evaluate the credibility of social media posts about weather and the Earth system. Support for the development of these resources was provided by the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program.