Scientific institutes contribute to increase scientific awareness in local communities. They also provide students and teachers with learning opportunities outside the classroom. This is especially true when science centers create opportunities to visit laboratories or design activities based on learning by doing. LaMMA, a public consortium set up by Italian National Research Council and Tuscany Region (Italy), is the official weather service for Tuscany. In recent years LaMMA developed several educational modules on meteorology for different school grades. Activities are performed during a two-hour visit at the LaMMA laboratory. Since 2011 every year more than 1200 students come to visit LaMMA to follow one of the proposed modules on meteorology. Students are engaged in different activities and have the opportunity to visit the LaMMA weather operations room and meet the forecasters. In the last two years, an educational module on climate change based on a participatory approach was proposed to teachers of all school levels. More than 500 teachers and environmental educators from all over Tuscany participated and many of them developed a follow up project in the classroom.
Following the modern Science-Technology-Society's (STS) approach, science
education should not only transmit to students fundamental science knowledge
but it should also prepare citizens to take informed decisions within society
Meteorology is one of the topics of the science curriculum in elementary and
secondary schools. But it is also a common science topic for everyone
watching weather forecasts on TV, on the Internet or just opening the weather
apps on smartphones. To increase the understanding of weather phenomena,
climate variability, forecast principles, and uncertainty it is important to
make people aware of the scientific limits of weather predictability. There
are plenty of educational and outreach activities created by weather services
and research institutions to engage the public
The LaMMA Consortium (
As part of public outreach, LaMMA developed several educational modules for schools of different grade levels. Many schools in Tuscany have been interested in visiting LaMMA laboratories to raise students' awareness on meteorology and atmospheric sciences. These modules are organized at the LaMMA centre as a two-hour lesson. Participating students have the chance to increase their knowledge about weather forecasting, meet researchers and visit the weather operations room. The main proposed modules are the following.
A basic module is proposed to elementary schools. During the first part of
this lesson, a researcher gives a presentation on main meteorological
concepts and illustrates key steps of weather forecasting. Later, students
visit the weather operations room and see a functioning weather station. To
students of elementary and middle school is also proposed the module
These activities were designed and proposed gradually. Some years ago LaMMA meteorologists were often invited as “experts” in classrooms to give talks about meteorology and weather forecasting. As the number of requests increased, a more structured educational proposal was organized at LaMMA headquarter. LaMMA visits were designed as an opportunity for schools to have an external learning experience and improve students understanding on meteorology.
The first modules to be created were “Basic weather lesson” and “Who wants
to be a weather forecaster?”. Next, following students' feedbacks, the
module with experiments was introduced. The researchers' presentations on
meteorology were sometimes evaluated as “boring” by students who were
asking for more interactive lessons. The experiments module allowed for an
increase in students engagement in the learning process also thanks to
teaching techniques like the Inquiry Based Learning
The training course for teachers is structured both into classical lectures
on Climate Change and other didactic topics as well as working groups based
on several participatory approaches (OST-Open Space Technology
Numbers indicate the median value of the score for the answers to the different questions, on a 5 points Likert scale, from “very poor” (1) up to “very good” (5).
Growing of interest in meteorology as perceived by students of different school levels.
Since 2012 an evaluation questionnaire has been set up by LaMMA staff to assess the outcomes of the educational activities. The evaluation is aimed to measure the level of satisfaction among students visiting the LaMMA labs. It is composed of a short questionnaire which is delivered to students at the end of the visit. Students fill it out once back to school and return it to LaMMA. The survey is anonymous for students who only need to mark school name and class. The questionnaire is structured with six closed-ended questions and three open-ended. For the closed-ended questions, a Likert scale on a response scale 1-to-5 is used to rate each item, where (1) stands for a “very poor” rating, and (5) stands for “very good”. The evaluation covers six items: the whole visit experience, the level of engagement, the perceived increase in students knowledge, the increase in interest about meteorology, the clarity of the presentation, and a overall judgment about facilities at LaMMA. The Last three questions are structured as free answers about what they liked the most, what should be improved, and a free comment.
Growing of interest in meteorology as output of the different modules.
Perceived new knowledge as output of the different modules.
Here we present the data about the evaluation of the education activities ran in 2015–2016, which involved around 50 classes from October 2015 to June 2016. Out of 1000 questionnaires delivered, 351 were returned and were analyzed. The vast majority of survey respondents, 303, took part in the module “Who wants to be a forecaster” (video hereby), and only 48 in the module “What's up there” (experiments, hereby). Concerning school level, 60 students were form elementary schools, 152 from middle schools and 139 from high Schools. Results of the closed-ended questions are presented.
Generally, the educational modules proposed by LaMMA are very well rated by students, as shown by Fig. 1. All items reached an average evaluation (calculated as median value) of 4 on a 5 point Likert scale. It corresponds to a “good” judgment about engagement, clarity of exposition, increase in interest about meteorology, and increase in knowledge. LaMMA's facilities obtained a (4.5) evaluation.
Evaluation of the engagement level of the two modules, as perceived by students.
Looking more in depth to some items, we may see that the increase in interest in meteorology is more consistent in elementary school students. The column-graph in Fig. 2 shows that 25 % of elementary school students rate as “very good” (5) the growing interest in meteorology as outcome of the visit, while only 9 and 7 % of middle and high school students express the same evaluation. In contrast, almost 20 % of high school students affirm a “poor” (2) increase in interest in this topic. We also confronted how the different educational modules influenced student evaluation on the increase in interest in meteorology. The column-graph in Fig. 3 shows that students attending experimental module gave a highest rate on Likert scale, with almost 30 % of students choosing “very good” (5) for increase in interest, compared to only 8 % of the video module.
Another point investigated is whether students perceived to have learned new things during the visit. As shown in Fig. 1, the median score gained by this item is 4 out of 5 points. Looking at differences among participants of the two modules, Fig. 4, we see how the highest rating (5) was proposed by 38 % of students taking part in experiments module, compared to 18 % of those attending video module. To better understand these results, we have to remember that participants to experiments module are all young elementary school students with less knowledge on the subject, compared to middle and high school ones. These younger students were more curious and attentive during the visit.
Students considered the visit engaging and challenging. As shown in Fig. 5, no great difference emerges between the two modules. A slightly higher percentage of students taking part at the experiment module choose the highest rating “very good” (5) compared to those attending the video, whose preferences go to “good” (4) rating.
As part of its outreach activities, LaMMA consortium has been offering since
2011 a set of educational modules in meteorology and climate change. In the
last years, hundreds of teachers and students took part in the proposed
modules, with many of them visiting LaMMA, meeting researchers and increasing
their knowledge about meteorology and intrinsic uncertainty of weather
forecasts
Data of evaluation survey my be requested by writing at email: comunicazione@lamma.rete.toscana.it.
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Educational activities are realized thanks to many people working at LaMMA. In particular authors want to thank Susanna Lotti, who is in charge of many organizational aspects and helped with data entry. Authors also thank LaMMA Sole Director, dott. Bernardo Gozzini, who always sustained educational and outreach activities. Edited by: T. Halenka Reviewed by: two anonymous referees