Scandinavia Public Library

Weather is usually part of our daily discussion. Deepen your conversations by participating in the free, four-week class “Changing Weather and Climate in the Great Lakes Region” beginning on February 20.

Course content

Taught by Steve Ackerman, UW professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and director of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS), and Margaret Mooney, CIMSS’ director of education and public outreach, the course will also incorporate information from NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) Weather-Ready Nation initiative as well as findings from the recent National Climate Assessment and the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI).

For a course summary and video introduction, visit http://moocs.wisc.edu/mooc/great-lakes-weather-and-climate/.

Course format

The core of the course will be presented in a Massive Open Online Course or MOOC . This means that the lectures and other content will be available through the internet. It is open to anyone to enroll. For a video introduction to MOOCs at UW-Madison, visit http://moocs.wisc.edu/mooc-trailer/.

The “Changing Weather and Climate in the Great Lakes Region” MOOC content for the first week will be available beginning February 20. Students may view the content on their own schedule. According to UW-Madison, one can “Think of MOOCs as being like a big online museum. People can go in and find out about the subjects that interest them by looking at a number of artifacts. Sometimes visitors will go through the whole museum, while others come just to see one room, or even one statue. Similarly, in a MOOC, people go online to learn more about the topics that interest them. The videos, discussion forums and learning activities with-in a MOOC are a little bit like the artifacts in a museum.”

Moderated hour-long discussion of each week's course content will be held on Thursdays at 4:30 p.m. at Scandinavia Public Library. Discussions are at 4:30 p.m. on February 27, March 5, March 12, and March 19. Snacks will be provided.

Many students will interact with MOOC content from home or work. Public computers at the Scandinavia Public Library are available for this purpose as well.

Enrollment

To sign up for a UW-Madison MOOC or to learn more, go to www.moocs.wisc.edu and click on the icon for the “Changing Weather and Climate in the Great Lakes Region” MOOC. When you enroll you will be taken to our Coursera page, where you can create an account and sign up for free.

K-12 Teacher Graduate Credit

In 2015 the University of Wisconsin-Madison is launching six new MOOCs with environmental themes. The Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) in collaboration with the UW Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) is offering K-12 teachers an opportunity to earn 1 graduate level credit for taking the following two MOOCs: Changing Weather and Climate in the Great Lakes Region (2/23 – 3/23) and Energy and the Earth (6/21-7/18) and attending a day and a half workshop in Madison. For more information see this CIMSS website.

Partners

UW-Madison MOOC efforts are supported by Educational Innovation (EI), an initiative of the provost’s office that aims to transform teaching, learning and engagement to inspire students and empower communities.
 
Wisconsin Library Services (WiLS), a nonprofit membership organization that facilitates collaborative projects to advance library service, is providing coordination between UW-Madison and the 21 public library partners for the MOOC., primarily in the state of Wisconsin. Here is a map of the participating libraries.

Scandinavia Public Library is a member of OWLS, the Outagamie Waupaca Library System.