News Archive

University Course Support
Posted on: 2021-05-12

The University Course Support resource has newly added the capability to download images and animations from the MetEd lessons. 

COMET welcomes your feedback on the University Course Support Resource: Take the Survey 


Flash Conversion Update
Posted on: 2021-02-10

COMET’s media development and production teams have been converting lessons from Adobe Flash to HTML5/MP4 for the past 19 months. As of the beginning of February, more than 120 lessons have been converted and 25 multimedia lessons have been retired while keeping the print versions available. You’ll notice these when you try to begin the lesson. You’ll see a pop-up notice that will take you to the print version.  Two of the most difficult-to-convert lessons, Skew-T Mastery and Tephigram Mastery are well on their way to be converted. Skew-T Mastery,...

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Conversion of Adobe Flash lessons on MetEd
Posted on: 2020-11-11

During 2020, COMET has been converting many of our online lessons from Adobe Flash to html5. COMET lessons have a wide range of use and are used by students and professionals alike to learn new skills and techniques in the geosciences field. Many lessons are used by sponsoring agencies in their staff training plans (For example, our S-290 Intermediate Wildland Fire Behavior course). University faculty also use our lessons for classroom instruction, and weather enthusiasts use our lessons to become National Weather Service certified storm spotters. Adobe announced that they will stop supporting and updating Flash at the end of 2020. With Adobe ceasing their support, COMET lessons that use Flash will no longer function in most browsers and those lessons will cease...

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New from COMET: University Course Support Resource
Posted on: 2020-09-23

The COMET Program is pleased to announce the publication of a new academic resource, University Course Support.

To support university faculty and students in their increasingly virtual learning, The COMET® Program partnered with NSF to map the vast catalog of MetEd content to U.S. university meteorology course curricula. Each included course is composed of the most common topical components at the undergraduate level.  MetEd lessons appearing within each course subtopic contain some material that is both topically-relevant...

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Which produces better learning outcomes: classroom instruction or e-learning?
Posted on: 2020-03-27

This is a question that I encounter often in my work as an Instructional Designer for the COMET Program, especially now as the coronavirus pandemic has forced many institutions to move to online delivery of their courses. Based on my current understanding, my answer is - the instructional event that uses effective learning methods. Some of those methods include realistic decision making scenarios, spaced repetitions, real-world contexts, and feedback.

In my experience, the key method that brings them all together was summarized nicely by Michael Allen: “To learn is an action taken by and occurring within the learner. Instructors cannot learn for their learners, and neither can e-learning technology even with all its graphics, animations, effects, audio, interactivity, and so...

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