This course is taught entirely online, except for the three recommended meetings listed on the previous page. Note that the current site does not require a login; the American Meteorological Society website, however, does. You should all have received your AMS login name and password by now; if not, please contact the instructor immediately.
Online Weather Studies, Joseph M. Moran, American Meteorological Society, Second Edition. (main text)
Online Weather Studies Investigations Manual, American Meteorological Society, Eighth Printing. (lab exercises)
It is essential that you have the correct edition for each (Second Edition, Eighth Printing); assuming you purchased your books from the Gavilan Bookstore, you should.
How the course works:
The first (truncated) week of the course, Preview Week, is Feb. 8 through Feb. 12. During this time you can get a head start on reading Chapter 1 in the main text and begin studying the first lab assignment. You may also wish to explore the AMS website in order to becom acquainted with its features.
Beginning with the first full week of the course on Feb. 13, you will be responsible for reading one chapter of the main text each week, and for completing two weekly lab assignments. These assignments are found partly in the Online Weather Studies Investigations Manual and partly on the AMS website. Specifically, you would complete the first portion of a lab assignment using the Investigations Manual, then go to the AMS site for the second portion. (The instructions in the manual should make this clear.) Electronic answer forms are provided on the website, one for each lab assignment. You can save the form as a text file or cut and paste it into a new Word document, then edit it to select the correct answers. You may also simply type the correct answers into a blank document; in this case be sure to identify the lab assignment they correspond to. When you have completed the assignment, send the documents as an email attachment to the instructor. Lab assignments will be due on the Monday following the week in which they are given; for example, Week 1 assignments would be due Monday, Feb. 20.
For certain assignments, mostly involving the contouring of weather maps, it will be necessary to fax you assignment to Gavilan, where I will pick it up. I am assuming that everyone at least has access to a fax machine; contact me if this is a problem. The Gavilan fax number is
PSCI2 is taught three weeks behind the official schedule for the AMS course, due to length-of-semester considerations at Gavilan. You will therefore need to get your lab assignments from the Archives section of the AMS site. This is done by first clicking on "Archives" at the very top center of the main page, then clicking "Spring 2006 (course to date)". Finally, click on the appropriate week number under "Click on Week to be Viewed". The lab assinments appear under "Online Learning Investigations". There you will find Investigation A and Investigation B, along with any images needed for the assignments. The answer forms are located immediately to the right of the assignments.
Grading:
The weekly lab assignments constitute 50 percent of the total grade. There will also be a midterm exam, worth 20 percent, and a final exam worth 30 percent. Refer to the Course Schedule for more details.
Contact information:
Andrew H. Van Tuyl, instructor
avantuyl@gavilan.edu (preferred)
atuyl@sbcglobal.net
American Meteorological Society website:
http://www.ametsoc.org/amsedu/login.cfm