METR 100: Weather and Climate–Peer Review of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio

The target course for this benchmark portfolio is METR 100: Weather and Climate, an introductory-level course about Earth’s weather and climate. Students enrolled span all undergraduate class levels and during the spring semester most students are non-science majors. Through the Peer Review of Teaching Project, this course was re-designed to better align the course objectives with the University of Nebraska – Lincoln’s Achievement Centered Education (ACE) program. The number of topics covered during the semester was reduced and time spent practicing skills was increased in an effort to improve student attainment of course goals. This portfolio outlines course objectives, pedagogical approaches and describes course activities that were used to give students practice with the desired skills. It includes a discussion of the development and implementation of an assessment tool (pre-post-test) for evaluating student achievement of the learning goals. The results of the assessment suggest that decreasing the number of topics covered and increasing the amount of time spent working toward the learning goals had a positive effect on student achievement of the learning goals